Garage door relay

I've currently got my garage door hooked back into a channel on one of my L5512 relays back in the switch box. The keypad is programmed for a bell press to activate the relay channel. But the activation is not very reliable. In fact, more often that not it just doesn't work.

The cable run from the relay to the garage door is a figure-8 speaker wire, and the run is probably about 15m end to end. Could the length of the run be causing enough of a voltage drop to make the signal unreliable? Should I look at using a single relay (5101R?) mounted next to the door opener?

 

Does the Garage Door controller require a voltage or is it a pair of dry contacts?

 

I had the same issue and changed from 'Bell Press' to a '1s Toggle' and now it works fine.

Ingo

 

Yes i was going to suggest a 1 second timer, as the bell press might be too quick for the garage door controller

 

No voltage required, just a close contact.

So what's the best way to do that then?

Set the function to "Toggle", then "Timer 1" to 0h0m1s, and "Expiry" to "Off" ??

 

Set it up with On Key as the Short press microfunction, then Retrig as the Short Release and Long Press microfunctions, with the Long Release function as Idle. Configure the timer for 1 second and set the expiry function to Off key.

This will guarantee a pulse of at least 1 second long on the relay contacts.

As Ingo says, really short pulses can be so short that some systems miss them or just ignore them.

 

Thanks Newman, I'll give that a shot this weekend and see how it goes

 

Tried it on the weekend. Not so much luck. After reconfiguring the key, I went down to the garage and hit the button. Keypad light went on, door opened, keypad light went off after 1 second. But after that, further keypresses just turned the keypad light on then off. No garage door movement.

I also reprogrammed the key for short press to be "On", and then both long and short release to be "off". Going from the keypad light, that seems to have the desired effect (keypad light stays on as long as the button is pressed, and turns off when it is release). But still no joy on the garage door.

Didn't get a chance yesterday, but next step is to hook a multimeter across the terminals on the garage door end and see if that tells me anything.

 

This is definitely a good idea as it will confirm if the relay is operating as desired.

You can also try longer contact closures to see if it's looking for a longer button press.

Many garage door systems have separate inputs, where one input will do the up/down/stop toggle operation and a separate set of inputs will handle independent buttons for up/down/stop control. Make sure the relay contact is wired up to the toggle input (if that's what you want). I prefer to use the independent contacts so that I know that open really is open, close really is close, etc. A single L5108RELVP can still handle 4 doors with independent open/close contacts this way and you're never in doubt as to whether the door has been accidentally opened.

 

You will probably find xvolts (DC) across the terminals. By shorting the two together the door moves (as you have seen).

What I would do is check that the voltage on the pins is relatively safe, remove the wires and short them out manually to see how long the short needs to be held there for door movement.

If you find that you get good response from the door with relatively small time, then you have a wiring issue.

Can you confirm that the relay is actually closing every time (I doubt that it is not as C-Bus is quite reliable).

Check the voltage across the pins at the door motor when shorted, it may be right at the controllers threashold. Run a second cable in parallel (even across the floor) if possible and try again. If it works well then it looks like you will have to replace the cable.

I have done my doors initially as a bell press, but found that I could be too quick with it sometimes, so now its a 1 sec timer event and it works everytime. (except when the bloody door jambs up and I have to fix it over and over and over...another story)

Mick

 

Thanks all for your help, I've managed to solve the issue. And it was the last thing I would have thought of. And I'm still unsure how it has ever worked!

First, disconnected the wire from the door controller. Shorted it out with a paperclip. Contact only a fraction of a second triggers it. Get the multimeter out and attach to the wire, added the garage door group to the Cbus Android app. Turn on, turn off, turn on. Still open circuit. Hmm, dodgy wiring? Twist the ends (at garage door) together, head upstairs to the CBus panel, multimeter across the screw terminals on the relay. Open circuit. Dangit! Unscrew the relay terminals, multimeter across the wire. Close circuit! The sparky inserted the wire too far into the terminal, and one of the screws was tightened down on the sheathed part of the wire! Adjusted it to make sure that it was screwed on the stripped wire, and it's working a charm! As I said at the start, I don't know how it was ever working at all - must have been making an ever-so-slight connection that was really flaky.

 

Thanks for reporting back on your findings. Great to hear it was solved. Most interesting!

 

Well done.

I have seen this before a few times and it is one of my first checks on a wiring issue. I have eliminated it to some degree by using bootlace lugs on all my wiring now - stops frayed wired and insertion too far.

At least is was something simple.

Mick