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Author Topic: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?  (Read 502 times)

W4RXK

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #15 on: December 11, 2022, 09:59:55 AM »

You didn't happen to have replaced any light bulbs recently did you?
Rick, K9AO

I have not replaced anything in the house for a while, no new electronics, nothing new at all.

This is very strange. I understand that some devices may act-up when transmitting, but my two door openers are practically deaf now. I bought new batteries today and the door won't open unless the remote opener is a few feet from the receiver. The wire buttons of course open/close the door perfectly.

Last night when we returned home, the garage door bulbs were off, the garage was dark, and it still wouldn't open - I waived the remote around in the air with the button pressed and it eventually opened.

On a perhaps related note, my Vizio soundbar mysteriously died Friday night while watching a movie. It is dead. I opened it and didn't see any blown/bulging capacitors. Googling the problem, I see many others have similar problems with the Vizio soundbars crapping out after a few years. It is coincidental that the garage door openers and soundbar are both affected the same day.

I was not transmitting when the soundbar died - the radio was off and we were watching a movie.

As I lead-off, very strange.

Could the front-end of the garage door receiver be damaged? I presume it either works or doesn't work. It doesn't make sense that it works but only when the opener is a few feet from the receiver.
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W4RXK

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #16 on: December 11, 2022, 10:01:25 AM »

What, if any, test eqpt do you have available???

Mike, I don't have any test equipment or means of troubleshooting the problem. What could I use for testing? I know the transmitter/receiver work but only when in very close proximity.
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AA4PB

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #17 on: December 11, 2022, 10:04:49 AM »

W1VT may have the answer. I live near a military base and two years ago both my garage door openers started having range problems with all the hand-held controllers. I eventually found out that the controllers were on a government frequency and the base had started using that frequency for security comms. My solution was to purchase a two-channel remote gate opener system from amazon. I mounted that controller as high up in the garage ceiling as possible and wired one channel across each of the opener's push button control connections. Since then I can open the doors reliably from the end of my driveway.
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Bob  AA4PB
Garrisonville, VA

W9IQ

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #18 on: December 11, 2022, 10:52:19 AM »

On a perhaps related note, my Vizio soundbar mysteriously died Friday night while watching a movie. It is dead. I opened it and didn't see any blown/bulging capacitors. Googling the problem, I see many others have similar problems with the Vizio soundbars crapping out after a few years. It is coincidental that the garage door openers and soundbar are both affected the same day.

Is the soundbar now disconnected from the AC? You are looking for a source of RFI...

- Glenn W9IQ
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- Glenn W9IQ

God runs electromagnetics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the wave theory and the devil runs it on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday by the Quantum theory.

K7MEM

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #19 on: December 11, 2022, 12:05:19 PM »

I had a problem with one door (out of 2) where the opener would open the door by itself at any time of day.  Sometimes days would go by and no unexpected opening. Hearing the door open at 2AM is a bit unnerving or coming home from work to find the door open equally so. swapping the mechanism with another didn't do anything to narrow down the problem. The other mechanism did the same thing on the same door.  After much trial and error, and some suspicion, conclusion was microwave oven microprocessor was causing false triggers.

When I lived in Peoria, AZ, I had a neighbor that would come home from work to find her garage door open. She immediately blamed me because I had a 50' crank-up tower with a tri-band yagi on top. But I was never on the air when she had her problems. So I watched her house for a while.

While we were a good distance from the airport (Sky Harbor), we were still in the flight path for landing. Sometimes the planes would come in lower than expected. Sure enough, as a plane would fly low over head, her garage door would open and sometimes close. So I finally went over to her and changed the codes in her opener and remote. Completely solved the problem.

She never did thank me for the help. But that's OK. The look on her face, when the FBI showed up at her door, was good enough. They were just checking with my neighbors for some clearances I was put in for. She never bothered me again.
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Martin - K7MEM
http://www.k7mem.com

WA9AFM

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #20 on: December 11, 2022, 12:22:03 PM »

What, if any, test eqpt do you have available???

Mike, I don't have any test equipment or means of troubleshooting the problem. What could I use for testing? I know the transmitter/receiver work but only when in very close proximity.

If you know someone in the amateur radio community who has access to a spectrum analyzer, they could check for RFI in/around the frequency your openers.
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W4RXK

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #21 on: December 11, 2022, 12:49:55 PM »

Is the soundbar now disconnected from the AC? You are looking for a source of RFI...
- Glenn W9IQ
Yes it is, unplugged and torn apart to look @ the boards.
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WA9AFM

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #22 on: December 15, 2022, 07:46:28 AM »

I was at a Christmas gathering yesterday evening.  One of the folks in attendance runs a lift door company.  I mentioned the problems you were having.  He said it sounds like you have single frequency openers and a signal has popped up which is swamping the opener's receivers.

He offered it would be more economical to simply replace your openers with current equipment rather than to upgrade/modify your current openers.  This way you gain current technology and capabilities.  He also added, parts for older openers are getting hard to obtain.
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AA4PB

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #23 on: December 15, 2022, 02:21:07 PM »

W1VT may have the answer. I live near a military base and two years ago both my garage door openers started having range problems with all the hand-held controllers. I eventually found out that the controllers were on a government frequency and the base had started using that frequency for security comms. My solution was to purchase a two-channel remote gate opener system from amazon. I mounted that controller as high up in the garage ceiling as possible and wired one channel across each of the opener's push button control connections. Since then I can open the doors reliably from the end of my driveway.

Here's the unit I purchased:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00283W442/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Bob  AA4PB
Garrisonville, VA

AI5BC

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #24 on: December 15, 2022, 07:28:38 PM »

Have you tried Resetting it with the LEARN button?
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W4RXK

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #25 on: December 16, 2022, 04:08:42 AM »

The garage doors openers are back to normal, operating properly as they did before. As quickly as the receivers went deaf, they can hear again. I never did find the source of the problem.

Using my RTL-SDR and tuning from 300-400 MHz, I found them @ 309.5 MHz. I was expecting to see something else on the waterfall but the only signal present was the door opener transmitter. Not much noise at all from 300-400 MHz actually.

The dead Vizio soundbar ... that too did not emit any noise (that I could see) from 300-400 MHz. I expected it was the culprit by the test proved otherwise.

The neighbors to the immediate left and right of me did not have any garage door problems while mine was acting-up. So the problem was isolated to my house. Again, nothing new in the house, the same bulbs, electronics, and everything.

I am glad that they are back to an operational state and still wonder what the root cause of the problem was.

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KK4GMU

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #26 on: January 11, 2023, 11:37:34 AM »

FWIW...
I've had LED bulbs in my garage door opener for 3 years and everything worked perfectly.

Last week my car's key fob and none of my 3 wireless garage door openers would work, including the one built into the car.  I tried reprogramming the garage door remotes and nothing responded.

I had the garage door guy come out.  The first thing he did was unscrew the LED bulbs in the garage door opener.  He programmed everything in 2 minutes.  Even the car key fob now worked like expected.

He enlightened me that there are LED bulbs made specifically for garage door openers that apparently emit a lot less RFI.  They are $17 for 2 on Amazon.  $20 at Lowes.

Apparently regular LEDs begin emitting copious amounts of RFI with age.

Problem solved. Lesson learned.
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SWMAN

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Re: Garage Door Opener Damaged by HF RF?
« Reply #27 on: January 11, 2023, 06:55:13 PM »

 GMU, 
 That’s very interesting.
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