Garage Door Openers All stopped working

[apostolakisl]

Nothing to do with ISY here.  Today, all of my rf garage door openers stopped working.  3 different overhead doors, multiple cars with homelink and multiple hand held remotes all stopped working for all doors.  Only the hard wired ones are working.  I have never heard of such a thing.  I have had one get out of whack and need to be re-programmed, but never all of them.  My neighbor says his are working fine, which I would assume rules out rf interference.  Anybody ever heard of something like this happening?  I assume I'm going to have to go through and re-program every single one.

 

EDIT: I've discovered that with the hand held remote at very close distance, it works.  So, I'm assuming rf interference.  But I don't have any idea how to track this down.  I've installed nothing new and my neighbor denies anything as well.

Edited October 29, 2022 by apostolakisl

[Techman]

Ony other suggestion would be to measure your line voltage at the openers.

[kzboray]

This is interesting. I'm going to make a couple of guesses, but something that is able to knock out RF communications to your garage door openers at a distance would also most likely knock out Wi-Fi.

Do you have Wi-Fi in the area where the garage doors are? If you do It's unlikely it's RF interference.

How close are the garages to each other?

You mentioned you were able to get one remote to work on one opener. You could use the remotes as a kind of rudimentary detector. Put some new batteries in one of them and then see how far away from each opener you need to be for it to work. You have three of them so draw a map to scale and use that data to triangulate the problem.

Anyway. I'm really curious to hear how this turns out. I hope you keep us posted.

[apostolakisl]

4 hours ago, kzboray said:

This is interesting. I'm going to make a couple of guesses, but something that is able to knock out RF communications to your garage door openers at a distance would also most likely knock out Wi-Fi.

Do you have Wi-Fi in the area where the garage doors are? If you do It's unlikely it's RF interference.

How close are the garages to each other?

You mentioned you were able to get one remote to work on one opener. You could use the remotes as a kind of rudimentary detector. Put some new batteries in one of them and then see how far away from each opener you need to be for it to work. You have three of them so draw a map to scale and use that data to triangulate the problem.

Anyway. I'm really curious to hear how this turns out. I hope you keep us posted.

I'm responding on wifi here, no issues.  I can trigger all the garages if I take the handheld and click it right up next to the opener.  It seems to me something is on the gdo frequency.   

[kzboray]

Is it possible one of the GDO is the source of the RF interference? Maybe power them all off then apply power one at a time.

[Brian H]

I have seen some reports of the openers lights causing issues. If they are LED type bulbs.

I have seen one opener brand selling LED bulbs tested and known to not cause RF issues.

Trying each one individually as suggested maybe a way to start looking.

[elvisimprsntr]

I’ve had issues with cheap LED bulbs affecting my garage openers and causing 60Hz interference patterns in video cameras. In particular, Feit bulbs from HD and Costco. Stick with incandescent bulbs in those situations.

[larryllix]

I had issues with Chamberlain garage door openers period making Insteon noise. When I got my second Chamberlain GDO, with all the latest battery backup, etc...my whole Insteon system only worked about 25% of the time. Then I knew they were noise makers when sitting idle, even.

Two FilterLincs fixed those problems after testing unplugged to prove it.

[MrBill]

if you haven't gotten it figured yet, the first thing I would look for is a stuck transmitter button on one of the wireless devices.  the second thing i would try is unplugging one garage door opener at a time and re-checking. 

[larryllix]

20 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

Nothing to do with ISY here.  Today, all of my rf garage door openers stopped working.  3 different overhead doors, multiple cars with homelink and multiple hand held remotes all stopped working for all doors.  Only the hard wired ones are working.  I have never heard of such a thing.  I have had one get out of whack and need to be re-programmed, but never all of them.  My neighbor says his are working fine, which I would assume rules out rf interference.  Anybody ever heard of something like this happening?  I assume I'm going to have to go through and re-program every single one.

 

EDIT: I've discovered that with the hand held remote at very close distance, it works.  So, I'm assuming rf interference.  But I don't have any idea how to track this down.  I've installed nothing new and my neighbor denies anything as well.

When CFL bulbs were popular I had my single GDO go basically deaf at times. I had to be still in the driveway to make it work. Later I discovered I could open same from way down the street so I logiced out it may be the bulb. I was right after replaceing bulb with an LED bulb.

It's possible you have an LED bulb with a suddenly ailed power supply capacitor, (since this seems to be the group to have this frequent the masses LOL).

Another thing I had happen is after opening and closing the protective lid to replace a bulb, the antenna wire was bent crooked. Re-forming the antenna wire to straight down helped a lot for signal success.

[apostolakisl]

@larryllix @MrBill @Brian H @kzboray @elvisimprsntr

Thanks for all the suggestions.

So, today, everything is working.  ????

This was 3 different GDO and every single wireless remote.  So an antenna issue would mean all 3 got the same antenna issue at the same time.

It did occur to me that there was a "stuck button".  I only have 1 GDO remote that actually has buttons, and I took the battery out of it to no avail.  I also had one that was controlled by Elk and I took the power supply away from it (also to no avail).  The other remotes are the keypad remotes and the homelink built into the cars.  I did not check with all the cars out of range, but at least 2 of 3 were at one point out of range.

I don't have any CFL bulbs.  I only have LED.  Is one of those bad?  This happened during the day yesterday when most of the lights were off.  It is now again daytime and all is working.  If it happens again, I'll try shutting off every single light.

Anyway, I am at a loss why it didn't work yesterday and why it is now working again.  Concern of course is that it will happen again at an inconvenient time.  By and large, the GDO's are how we get into the house.  I don't even carry a key.

[MrBill]

19 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

By and large, the GDO's are how we get into the house.  I don't even carry a key.

We use garage entry 99.9% of the time, we do have a front door key hidden outdoors that I figured would be used for a power outage entry but would also save us in this weird scenario. 

(it's not under the mat or flower pot nor even near the door, not even a clever person would think to look where it's hidden.)

[apostolakisl]

3 minutes ago, MrBill said:

We use garage entry 99.9% of the time, we do have a front door key hidden outdoors that I figured would be used for a power outage entry but would also save us in this weird scenario. 

(it's not under the mat or flower pot nor even near the door, not even a clever person would think to look where it's hidden.)

ditto.

[apostolakisl]

I found this website.  https://yourgaragedoorguys.com/garage-door-opener-interference/

Pretty much they say to power your GDO on a clean circuit and starting shutting down all your other circuits until you find it.  Of course that only finds the problem while your having the problem.

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

I found this website.  https://yourgaragedoorguys.com/garage-door-opener-interference/

Pretty much they say to power your GDO on a clean circuit and starting shutting down all your other circuits until you find it.  Of course that only finds the problem while your having the problem.

So far, I am leaning toward a bad bulb losing it's filtering cap. That may come and go but I wouldn't ave thought it would interfere with the GDO signals that badly. Any new PV panels on a nearby roof lately?

Any strange van on the street with a large EMP engine inside?

[apostolakisl]

2 hours ago, larryllix said:

So far, I am leaning toward a bad bulb losing it's filtering cap. That may come and go but I wouldn't ave thought it would interfere with the GDO signals that badly. Any new PV panels on a nearby roof lately?

Any strange van on the street with a large EMP engine inside?

I live on 7 acres, so not much at all nearby except my neighbor on the one side.  And he denies any issues with his GDO and denies any new electronics.

[elvisimprsntr]

On 10/30/2022 at 2:27 PM, apostolakisl said:

This happened during the day yesterday when most of the lights were off.

Might be worth looking up the GDO remote specs for what frequency the transmitters are on

On 10/30/2022 at 7:48 PM, larryllix said:

Any strange van on the street with a large EMP engine inside?

I've had problems with GDO remotes and car key fobs during peak solar flare events.  

Edited November 7, 2022 by elvisimprsntr
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