Garage Door Opener - Interference Issue when Leaf is ON

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evtifosi

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 27, 2015
Messages
61
Location
Monterey Bay/Central Coast, CA
We have a 2015 Leaf, without the HomeLink mirror - so we are using a standard garage door opener remote. We also have an Acura Car with a HomeLink mirror that doesn't have any issues. On our Leaf we have successfully used a black Liftmaster 895MAX 3-Button Multi Frequency Remote for over a year.

Recently it has stopped working well - and just yesterday after re-learning the buttons, resetting things etc...I tried it again on the way back from a trip and it failed. I then turned the Leaf off - and boom door opened perfectly.

I wonder if the new 3G radio we had installed a couple of months ago has changed something in the RF signals/noise that the Leaf generates?

What could we do to not have to turn the car off to open our garage door???

We have a pretty sensitive garage door opener it seems - It is 2012 Liftmaster Unit - we can't use LED Light bulbs on the motor unit or it will kill the RF so you can't use the opener with a remote beyond about 10ft.

Any tips would be great!
 
I recently added a Genie Dual-Frequency conversion receiver to my opener. That solved an interference issue I was having with the built-in radio receiver on my opener (likely related to a nearby military base ground radio system).

While at Home Depot just this week, I saw that kit on clearance for $17 from the original $50, and included a Genie rolling code remote (the clearance price was actually less than buying an extra remote by itself).
 
I suspect your opener and not the car. I went through one opener first and then the second responding to remotes only if they were really close to the opener and had nearly new batteries. Range kept getting worse until opener would only work from wall button. The power supply on the main board was gradually failing and the first impact is range of the receiver (and increased sensitivity to interference). A few months after repairing the first opener, the second one failed the same way. I installed the openers on both doors in 2000. The manufacturer claims the new circuit boards are improved and they are working well so far. My openers are Craftsman, but Liftmaster, Chamberlain, and Craftsman are all manufactured by Chamberlain.

I have talked to several others who had the same issue. The receiver has a really high gain amplifier to receive the very low power signals from the remotes. That amplifier is sensitive to low voltage so reduced receiving range is the first symptom. I kept my old circuit cards, but have not yet tried to repair the power supplies.

FWIW, I have had no issues with my openers and the Homelink mirror after having the 3G upgrade done in January. I open and close the smaller door at least twice every day. Also, when the opener first started to fail it would work if I took the lights out so I thought it was interference from the LED bulbs which I used to minimize heat when leaving the lights on. It worked for a while with CFL or incandescent bulbs, but not long.
 
evtifosi said:
We have a pretty sensitive garage door opener it seems - It is 2012 Liftmaster Unit - we can't use LED Light bulbs on the motor unit or it will kill the RF so you can't use the opener with a remote beyond about 10ft.
I first heard about LED bulbs not working right on garage door openers not long ago in my Nextdoor community. I've used CFLs with mine for many years w/o issue.

Someone on ND pointed to bulbs like http://www.geniecompany.com/garage-door-openers/accessories/led-light-bulb.aspx.
 
GerryAZ said:
I suspect your opener and not the car. I went through one opener first and then the second responding to remotes only if they were really close to the opener and had nearly new batteries. Range kept getting worse until opener would only work from wall button. The power supply on the main board was gradually failing and the first impact is range of the receiver (and increased sensitivity to interference). A few months after repairing the first opener, the second one failed the same way. I installed the openers on both doors in 2000. The manufacturer claims the new circuit boards are improved and they are working well so far. My openers are Craftsman, but Liftmaster, Chamberlain, and Craftsman are all manufactured by Chamberlain.

I have talked to several others who had the same issue. The receiver has a really high gain amplifier to receive the very low power signals from the remotes. That amplifier is sensitive to low voltage so reduced receiving range is the first symptom. I kept my old circuit cards, but have not yet tried to repair the power supplies.

FWIW, I have had no issues with my openers and the Homelink mirror after having the 3G upgrade done in January. I open and close the smaller door at least twice every day. Also, when the opener first started to fail it would work if I took the lights out so I thought it was interference from the LED bulbs which I used to minimize heat when leaving the lights on. It worked for a while with CFL or incandescent bulbs, but not long.

Well, I am not sure on the opener being the problem - but it certainly is possible.

The remote works just fine with the car off, and our other car Homelink mirror works from pretty far down the street. More testing may be in order.

If anything the remote transmitter radio could be the failing component - it might be more sensitive to noise now. I would bet that there is plenty of RF noise produced by the LEAF...and it may have changed slightly with the 3G radio???

On the LED Front - we don't have CFL or LED's in the opener now - just a good old incandescent high vibration bulb. When we had the problem with LED's it wouldn't affect opening the door from the street as the LED's wouldn't be on - we just couldn't close to door after driving out of the garage with the LED's on. This was happening with any of our cars and even our remote keypad.
 
I did some more testing.

Here is the summary of what I have found.

The handheld remote(s) are susceptible to a bit of RFI from the LEAF - with the car OFF the range is about 10-20 feet better compared to having the car ON.

I also have 3 handheld remotes - I decided to replace the batteries in all 3 and test them. Two of have shorter range. With brand new batteries the range is much better on all of the remotes.

In addition, if a remote button is pushed while just beyond the normal range of where it should work, then for the next button push you have to get much closer to the garage door or it won't open. What I think is happening is on the first power up, and radio transmit, the voltage is strongest so it works great on that button push. However, any button pushes shortly after must have reduced battery voltage and thus the radio power must be slightly lower - much like what was happening with an older battery.

My conclusion is that the radio in the handheld transmitter is quite sensitive to the available voltage from the batteries. Liftmaster must be driving the radio directly from the battery voltage with no regulator - so when the voltage drops the RF transmit power drops as well. I now have a bunch of batteries on hand - I will probably need to replace them more regularly.
 
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