Any amateur radio gurus out there?

[Mike Berrevoets]

also, crappy led light bulbs in garage door openers can stop them from working.

This was my problem. Garage door opener would work fine from 2 houses down when coming home. But wouldn’t shut the garage door from 15’ away after I backed out and the light was on. I finally bought a specific garage door opener light bulb at $7/each and now it works fine.

Probably not the OP’s problem but could be an issue for someone else.

[Kev Williams]

hi-jack on...

I posted to this thread above, #10. Before doing so I googled some info on radio waves, to see if I could find some info on cross-talk harmonics & such to do with radio waves in the 315mHz bandwidth. Found a few troubleshooting websites, but most of it was a bit over my head.

the hi-jack: that simple search for info led to this in my mailbox this morning-
315.jpg
Now, an email steering me to, or providing me with some actual info that I was searching for that might help with the subject of this thread would've been welcome!
But it's all about the money, and there's no money in free advice.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm getting very weary of everything I type online ending up as on-screen ads and Amazon emails. Any VPN recommendations?

hi-jack over...

[Roger Feeley]

hi-jack on...

I posted to this thread above, #10. Before doing so I googled some info on radio waves, to see if I could find some info on cross-talk harmonics & such to do with radio waves in the 315mHz bandwidth. Found a few troubleshooting websites, but most of it was a bit over my head.

the hi-jack: that simple search for info led to this in my mailbox this morning-
315.jpg
Now, an email steering me to, or providing me with some actual info that I was searching for that might help with the subject of this thread would've been welcome!
But it's all about the money, and there's no money in free advice.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm getting very weary of everything I type online ending up as on-screen ads and Amazon emails. Any VPN recommendations?

hi-jack over...

Kev,
there are a lot of ways to track you. We all know about cookies. There is something called fingerprinting where they look at all sorts of things, not just your iPhone address. They look at cookies, how your JavaScript is enabled, the versions of various plug-ins and even the fonts you have installed. None of these things by themselves are particularly instructive but all of them hand more) taken together can let them target you.

a distant relative is an “ethical hacker” for a big corporation. He leads a team that tries to pierce the company data and suggests remedies. He likes the Brave browser for privacy.

[Roger Feeley]

There also possibilities of where the interference is getting into the receiver. If it’s traveling through the power lines or lines to sensors a ferrite choke might help .
https://palomar-engineers.com/bullet...-Kit-p74369055
https://www.k6jrf.com/FT2k_GDO_Fix.html

John

fyi, I ordered two kits from Palomar. The big choke was fine. Of the 3 small ones, one was shattered and the catch broke off another when I tried to open it. I called and left a voicemail. I also emailed them. No response so far.

[Roger Feeley]

Thanks for all the good advice.

to summarize:
bought kits to extend the antennas from the opener to outside the garage. Helped a little but I had to drive fight up to the garage to operate from the car.

score: interference 1, Roger 0

bought filters (chokes) for all wires leading to the openers. No difference.

score: interference 2, roger 0

nuclear option. Bought a new receiver from liftmaster (850lmj that runs on 3 frequencies somehow. Worked.

score: interference 2, Roger 1

the receiver is really pretty sweet. It will control 3 openers (we have 2).
now I’m going through the remotes. Some are compatible, some aren’t. My 2014 Chrysler town and country required a really arcane training session. We had these three button fobs where the big button worked with the new receiver but the little buttons wouldn’t. The numeric keypad we had would only pair up with one door or the other but not both.

but I can smell victory. My only regret was trying to save money. I should have gotten the new receiver in the first place.

The reviews on the receiver are pretty good. It’s not designed for the homeowner in that you need other stuff and people complained. It’s marketed more to the industrial crowd. I ran the antenna to the outside because of the steel siding and because I had already done it. I had to run some hookup wire to the two openers. Nothing hard.

[Roger Feeley]

Almost final report:

Installing a Liftmaster 850LM receiver did the trick. It increased my range from less than 10 feet to at least a half a block. This is their Security+ 2.0 or the Yellow learn button. I wound up replacing some of the remotes, fobs and keypad.

One interesting thing that I still haven't resolved with Liftmaster is that their keypad for this tech can't seem to control more than one door. I can program Channel 1 (door A) with PIN 1234 and it works. Then I program Channel 2 (door B) with PIM 5678 and it works. But when I program the second channel, I lose the first. I have an email chain going with LiftMaster but I don't have high hopes. What I did was leave the old keypad in place which can communicated with one door. On the opposite side, I have the new keypad that communicates with the new receiver.

Other than that, it all went well. We reprogrammed our 2014 Chrysler Town and Country to work with the new doors. We found that some of the older fobs (3 button) kind of worked with the new tech. The big button would talk to the new receiver but the two little ones wouldn't. New fobs work on all three buttons.

Again, thanks to all. The takeaway here is that if you have range problems with any garage door opener, just go buy the Liftmaster 850LM and have done with it. I don't know how it uses three different frequencies but whatever they did seems to work great.

[Thomas McCurnin]

I have an RF Explorer. Set the frequency on the RF Explorer and walk around. The RF Explorer will tell you the signal strength for that frequency at that location.