Wiring multiple garage door "eyes"

[Sacedog]

My wife got a new suv recently, that has a swing out rear door, rather than a tilt-up hatch style. From personal experience, I know it is very easy to forget that your rear door is open when you close the garage door, and you end up with a nice big scratch on your car. My fear with her swing out door, is that the garage door could cause a lot more damage than a scratch, such as bending the hinges.

My thought was to put a second set of electronic eyes up higher, so that if the car's rear door was open, the garage door would not go down.

Is it possible to do this, by wiring the second set in parallel with the original ones near the garage floor? If anyone else has tried this, I would like to hear if it worked.

 

[electron]

Good question, my door opens that way as well, so I should probably do this too. That said, a hardcore automator would monitor the door status using a wireless door/sensor and report it back to your ELK M1 :lol:

I did add a opener button right next to the garage door (using a UPB switch, all I had to do was update the faceplate and create a link), so I can close it while watching it.

 

[sic0048]

While I haven't tried it, I suspect if you wire them in series it will work. I assume when the beam is blocked, it stops sending the ready signal. If you wire them in series, then a break in either beam should prevent the door from closing.

 

[gatchel]

You could use any other kind of beam detector with a dry contact and interrupt one of the wires for the beam detector circuit to the GDO. If the GDO doesn't see a valid voltage or signal from its beam detector it's not supposed to work.

I think the factory beam detectors are set to send a specified voltage and doubling them up or wiring them in series might not work. I could be wrong.

You could always call the manufacturer to be 100% sure. Good luck. Let us know what you decide to do.

Edit: Did a bit of looking and it seems that most sensors use a pulsed signal to the opener to say the path is clear. If the pulsed signal is removed the opener won't work. I would open the door and then unhook the 2 wires to the sensor input and see if it works. If not then and contact closure can control what you want to do. Also see how long it takes after the signal is reconnected to the opener for it to work. Is there a learn time? Or does it work almost immediately after reconnecting.

 

[Steve]

I'm sure you can add more stuff like being discussed to help but I also have to believe that if the force settings on the GDO are adjusted correctly the door would stop and reverse if it hit the top of the open door way before any hinge damage or anything would occur.

 

[oberkc]

What about putting the first set up higher? I don't know your personal situation, but do you have anything that may trip the lower location but not the higher?

 

[premiernic]

What about putting the first set up higher? I don't know your personal situation, but do you have anything that may trip the lower location but not the higher?

I have this situation in my garage, and yes it works with my Mine, check the power draw though....

 

[drozwood90]

I bought saftey gates for this.

Haven't hooked them in yet, but basically what was said in gatchel's post is what I'm going to try.

I'm pretty sure, without the active OK, the (newer) GDO units won't go (older...some were active high...which is bad if the wire breaks...or the sensor fails).

--Dan

 

[Sacedog]

I called Chamberlain tech support, and they said that wiring them in series would likely not work, as the voltage drop woudl be too much.

So I guess I will look at wiring in a dry contact to interrupt the safety circuit. I would rather not just move the eyes higher for safety reasons (one of my cats was killed by being smooshed under the garage door that didn't have eyes...and the auto reverse failed).

 

[oberkc]

I wonder how hard it would be to use a couple of small mirrors to create multiple beams across the opening. I don't know how powerful these little LASER/IR gizmos are, or how wide their beam spread, but this might be a simpler and more reliable solution.