Garage Door Opener Sensors

Garage door sensors are an essential part of an automated garage door door opener. Thus increasing your house’s security is only a fantastic idea. When your Liftmaster garage door opener safety sensors fail, it is best to call the experts to diagnose the problem to avoid all the guess work from your part.

In fact, the majority of complaints in connection with garage doors are associated with photo-eye safety sensors.

The very first thing that you want to check for may not be a malfunction in any way, but the security eye merely doing its job. 

Sensors Placement 

The sensors should be placed 2 inches above the ground. In the event of the former, you want to reinstall the sensor to make certain that it’s aligned properly. You can also get a new garage door opener with new sensors.

Make certain to keep your shed and garage door away from children. For instance, a child running to win against the closing door or simply to stop a kid from being crushed by the door if it’s accidentally closed and they’re in the manner. 

If it’s the latter, you will need to locate a replacement sensor. It is advisable to look at your sensors often to make certain that they are in working order.

It’s mandatory that all automated door openers ought to be equipped with a non-contact invisible beam system which can sense the approach of someone and create the door to reverse back to the open position. 

Contact Your Garage Door Opener Brand

Garage door openers are supplied with unique kinds of warranties. The principal step in buying a garage door opener is to find out the true drive system. There are several things that can make a garage door opener to malfunction. 

The manufacture company has customer support to assist you on fixing your opener sensors.

Garage storage also needs to be avoided since they are inclined to be damp which will adversely influence how your sensors work. If it will not open at all, you may not have the ability to get the household cars and truck out. The front door is among the most heavily used components. 

There are lots of possibilities as soon as it comes to a particular choice. Test the garage door opener and see whether the issue is fixed. 

As the case could be, a lot of people are currently using them in their household regardless of the costs.

Garage door opener won’t work without safety sensors

There is no Garage door opener will not work with out safety sensors. Garage door Openers manufactured after 1993 are not capable to operate without sensors or if the sensors are defective or miss aligned. We had a garage door business where we would not be allowed legally to install the sensors out of the way, or where they normally go, but for our own house, we had one door that we put the sensors on top of the unit on the ceiling (shining against each other of course.) Keep in mind this is against safety building code.

We did this so that we could push the wall button and run out the door without it reversing back up. Obviously, it isn’t a practical thing to do, especially if you have children or pets, because whatever is under the door will get crushed and possibly cause death. We never would do this for a customer, but for our own door it was okay since we had no young children or pets at the time. That was years ago, now we have sensors on all of our doors.

How Garage Door Opener Sensors Work

The garage door opener sensor receiver located close to the floor sends a special signal (by wire) to the garage door opener (and turns on a red LED at the sensor to indicate it is sending the signal). You can tell which sensors os the receiver by the green light on it in most Liftmaster and Chamberlain garage door openers. If this signal is missing, the garage door opener will refuse to close, or if the signal drops while closing the door, it will reverse and open the door.

There is a sender sensor with an amber light on it. This sensor sends the invisible light signal and as long as they communicate via this light the green light on the receiver will turn on.

The signal is a waveform about 150 Hz, normally at +5V or +6V or possibly higher, with an inverted pulse on each cycle that grounds the signal to 0V. The width of the pulse is about 0.5 millisec.

Internal to the garage door opener, there is a circuit that produces the exact same signal. It then compares its internal signal using an LM339N IC, with the incoming signal from the optical sensor, and if the two signals don’t match, it refuses to close (or reverses) the door. Thus shorting or opening or putting a sinusoidal signal on the sensor wire to the opener will not work.

Garage door opener sensors Communicate via invisible light

I’ve seen garage door openers using an safety sensor receiving a signal from a light source, such as a laser beam. I’ll base my response on an experience of a garage door controller I used when parking at work.

When the door is open the controller will runs a timer to close the door again. When the time expires and the controller wants to close the door. If the optical sensor is not receiving the light signal then it identifies that something is blocking the doorway and remains open until the signal returns. Simply covering the optical sensor on an open garage is usually enough for it to remain open.

When door closes

In the case the door starts closing because the optical sensor is receiving the light signal, and then the optical sensor is blocked from receiving receive the light source, the controller sees this as something blocking the door and opens again until the signal returns

Note that each manufacturer may use a different signalling technique. What I just describes seems to be the case for Liftmaster, Chamberlain, Sears, Craftsman and Wayne Dalton and a few compatible openers and OEMs.

Bypassing garage door opener sensors

Bypassing garage door opener sensors is against code and is not easy. You can build a circuit to emulate the signal. A signal generating chip can emulate the signal with the correct capacitors and resistors.

Or you may go to the internal opener board, find where the comparator is, and set the output pin to high (or low) pretending that the comparator has received a correct signal.

If your garage door doesn’t close because of a sensor issue this might be helpful. You should see a small color light on each one of your sensors.

Genie garage door opener sensors repair Chicago

For Genie openers a red and a green. They should both be on and solid.

If one of the light is off or blinking.

Try pointing directly to the lens of the other sensor. If you manage to get both on and solid you should be done. (They are mounted on a track) when they point at each other, green and red light should both be on.

You can insure they are in good range by wiggling either sensor and and check if by moving it around still stays in range.(light will stay on)

The key is to have them face one another without any obstruction in between.

If this is all right and you still have problems, check wiring for staples, cuts on the wire or lose connection.

You could also have a defective sensor. At this point you might want to call an expert to replace.

Hope it helps at least one frustrated homeowner out there.

To replace them is fairly easy. All you need is a par of wire strippers and electric tape. The wires are always line color coded.

Genies brands

For genie garage door opener brands, when the infra-red sensors are malfunctioning, usually one of the sensor lights will be blinking. The problem is either due to a blocked path between the sensors, dirty eyes, loose wires at the sensors or at the motor head, or just bad sensors. The transmitters (remotes) will not work to close the garage door.

Genie makes the safety beam system very foolproof; shorting the wires to the sensor won’t work at all. The only way I could think of bypassing them is to put both sensors facing each other and mount them on the wall or somewhere near the garage door opener itself. Set the motor force to maximum if you want as well.

How do you line up safety sensors?

If you are talking about the optical sensor mounted at ankle height on most garage doors, then look for an LED on one of the sensors. If the LED is off and there are no obstructions between the “transmitter” and “receiver” that blocks the light beam then the light beam is misaligned. You can usually loosen the mounting screws on one unit and wobble it around. When the LED lights up it is aimed correctly. Tighten the screws to hold it in the proper orientation. Test it by blocking the light beam with your hand. The LED should turn off when your hand is in the way.

LED Lights

The transmitter projects a fairly wide light beam, so alignment is not exactly rocket science. If the transmitter is pointing in the general direction of the receiver lens, then you are good to go.

Note that if the wires running to the sensors are old and corroded then you have a wiring problem and not a light beam alignment problem. Wiggle the wiring connectors that hook up to the sensors. If the LEDs turn on and off then focus on fixing the wiring. You will need more specialized tools and skills to fix wiring issues that are beyond the scope of a Quora answer.

The laser sensors on my opener system are mounted on metal tabs which are built into the guide rails, placing the beam about three inches above the ground. There is no other option for mounting these sensors, and I can’t think of a reason to do it differently. A child or animal or adult would block the beam preventing operation. If the beam is not blocked and the door descends on, say, the protruding end of the vehicle, separate sensors in the drive unit stop the door and raise it again because of the increased resistance.