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I have 2 older Home Builder garage door openers. Both have hard wired buttons on the wall that work fine for opening and closing.

My remote in my vehicle and another hand held one work to open my door but will not close until I wait for about 3-4 minutes.

If I use my vehicle or hand held remote on my wife's side it will work fine. So it is only my side that will not work using my vehicle or hand held remote.

What could cause this?

FreeMan
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Frank Haylow
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2 Answers2

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When 3-4 minutes has passed since activation, the room light on the garage door opener turns off. This suggests that the light is creating RF interference. Remove the light bulb and see if your remote now works reliably. If so, you may have to do without the opener's room light, or use an incandescent bulb or find an LED or CFL that does not create RF interference.

MTA
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    There are even bulbs specifically branded as 'garage door bulb' which are designed to not interfere with openers. – KMJ Jan 25 '23 at 21:20
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    @KMJ I believe bulbs specifically branded for garage doors are designed to handle the vibration of the openers rather than RF interference. Note that there are incandescent bulbs, which should cause no interference, labeled for garage doors. – Barry Jan 25 '23 at 23:04
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    @Barry Lack of RF interference is the specific claim made by bulbs such as https://www.geniecompany.com/led-light-bulb-/LED-Bulb – KMJ Jan 25 '23 at 23:22
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    @KMJ wow, that's a ripoff. I guess some people are used to buying special garage bulbs, so why not sell them some? Most newer (>2020) LED bulbs won't cause interference, and in fact, ones that might are usually some of the better bulbs (otherwise). If you have a diode handy, you can test the bulb to see if it lights up when the diode is inline; if so, it won't cause interference (as it's a linear current regulator behind a capacitive dropper rather than a RF-interfering switch-mode power supply) providing DC to the LED chips. – dandavis Jan 26 '23 at 00:49
  • Also ensure that if the garage door opener has an antenna, typically a wire, that it's properly dangling down and not poorly positioned, like placed into the light bulb compartment. – user71659 Jan 26 '23 at 03:02
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    @dandavis switch mode supplies will happily run off a DC supply, so your test doesn't really say much. Anyway I have found that all you need to avoid interference is to buy quality bulbs. Pretty sure they came up with these so they would have something to point people to that they know works. – KMJ Jan 26 '23 at 07:12
  • @user71659 Or tied into a loop. RF antennas are supposed to be straight. – Nelson Jan 26 '23 at 08:21
  • @dandavis Depends a lot on the quality of the LED itself. Remember, LED bulbs come in el cheapo all the way up to "fully programmable". It's the former that will give you trouble with EMF. All Genie did was create a bulb guaranteed not to cause said issues. – Machavity Jan 26 '23 at 13:17
  • @KMJ DOH! I had that written backwards; if it still works on DC, it could cause an RF issue. The cheapest of the cheap, ironically, should not cause RF issues, so buying "quality" is actually, in this one use case, potentially problematic, and "el cheapo" is too simply (and cheaply) made (~4 components) to cause issues. SMPSs are better in every other aspect like heat, flicker avoidance, dimming, longevity, etc. In short, a dollar tree 2-pack sunbeam bulb would work great in an opener. – dandavis Jan 26 '23 at 16:29
  • Even though I've replaced almost every bulb in the house with LED or CFL, the garage flood light is the one exception that's still an incandescent. The reason for this is that a.) It's never on for more than 5 minutes, so I'm not worried about power usage, and b.) On the occasions when I do need to use it, I kind of want it to come on right away, which none of the LED or CFL flood lamps I've tried seem to be capable of. They all seem to start really dim and take 3 minutes or so to warm up, and by the time they do I don't need it anymore. – Darrel Hoffman Jan 27 '23 at 15:57
  • This is so true. Across the US (world?), countless thousands of hours have been wasted trying to figure this problem out, one opener at a time. I had the same problem after substituting higher "wattage" LED bulbs. Opener would open with remote (when the bulbs were off), but wouldn't shut with the remote (when the bulbs were on). – jrw32982 Jan 27 '23 at 19:17
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From what you write, I am taking the following conclusions:

Both openers work properly

This is proven by the hardwired button.

Both your remotes (your vehicle built-in remote and your handheld remote) work properly

This is proven by their ability to operate the opener on your wife's side

From that, we can assume the problem is with the RF interface of the opener on your side.

I would start by checking the antenna on your opener. Make sure it isn't kinked, broken, or tucked up inside the housing. Especially look for differences in the antennas on the openers.

I wouldn't bother troubleshooting the remotes themselves as they've been proven OK.

If the antennas are both undamaged and dangling downward, you can move to troubleshooting more finicky stuff like system board connections, etc. but first try the low-hanging fruit.

Chris O
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