Question:
Have a 20 year old Sears screw drive garage door opener. It only has
one remote that came with the unit. It is the type that has 12 code
swithes in the remote and 12 more in the receiver. I went to sears
and bought a Rolling Code garage door receiver with 2 remotes and tried
it on my garage door opener. It worked, but the remotes seemed to have
about 1/2 to 1/3 of the range of my old unit. You would have to be
in the driveway right up against the door to have the door open.
I checked the batteries in the remotes with a volt meter and they were
up to par. I brought it back to sears and they said, Oh, it would not
work on your garage door. I guess they are used to people buying the
conversion units and they do not work for a lot of poeple. I did notice
that the manual push button on the receiver was pushed to open or close
the door and it would take a few seconds, where the old one would move
the door as soon as you touch it.
Any suggestions where I can get a rolling code garage door receiver
with 2 remotes that works?
Answer:
If your current door requires the button to be held down for a few
seconds to work, I don't think you are going to find anything that will
work out of the box. However I believe a little relay with a delay circuit
between the new receiver and the opener should do the trick.
Is it possible that your current door has to move X distance before you
release the button? If so my guess is there is a sensor that detects the
movement of the door. You may be able to adjust (move) that sensor so it
reacts faster and that may solve your problem.
Replaced a Sears unit with a newer Sears. Models were almost identical
but I needed to get the electric eye feature (new grandkid). I noticed
a dramatic decrease in range. Driveway is ~100 ft and I now have to be
in it, sometimes halfway to the garage. With the old unit I could open
from two houses down the street. Keypad is mounted at the side door of
the house, ~50ft from unit and often takes 2-3 tries to operate, even w/
fresh batteries.