I just installed on a 15 year old Genie Excelerator opener. Most of the time when closing from the App or from the wall button the door will close half-way to 2/3rds and then come back up. Nothing is blocking the sensors and as soon as I unplug the Garadget door closes fine everytime. App indicated that the door was closed before trying to close and the App indicated that the door was closing when the door comes back up.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Do you observe the same behavior if you push and hold the wall button?
I had another case where old opener ran too much current through Garadget’s relay and resulting arc was welding the contacts together. The contacts would get unstuck eventually, but door would not operate as expected at the time of command.
Everything works fine when holding the button down the entire time as long as the Garadget is unplugged.
Did I understand it correctly from the initial post that the app was indicating the door as closed when it was in fact open?
Where was the laser pointed at that time and what was the reflection rate reported by the app?
I’m going to try this again on Saturday. Right now I have it all disconnected. The app shows the door correctly open and closed. The problem is when it’s in open position and I close it with the button or the app, it goes down about 2/3rds and comes back up most of the time. The reflection rate was in the upper 90’s. When open, the laser is pointing at the top edge of the door. I also put some blue tape on the top edge to avoid any reflection when the door is open.
I just got my garadget today and experienced the same problem. I have the same opener. I don’t have scope or logic analyzer at home. I measured the voltage between the two connecting points using the multi-meter. At idle, the two points show ~4V. I assumed that it is DC. When a wall-mounted button is pressed, the voltage drops momentarily to ~0V probably. As it happens quickly, the lowest point observed on the meter is ~1V. FYI, the same two points drops down to ~2V when button for the light is pressed. This is a tri-state switch.
When I operated using the app, I observed that another voltage drop down to 1V occurred after door is triggered to open/close. The 2nd drop causes the door to stop closing or opening fully. The garage door opener is operating correct per spec.
How does garadget work? Are the two leads connected to a relay? Is 2nd switching action by design, or a glitch?
Yes, there is a relay that closes for the duration configured in the settings. Multiple clicks a possible for stopping the door in motion or restarting the stopped door but not in normal operation from fully open/closed state.
Please make sure that the app is in sync by closing the door with the wall button and confirming the same state in the app. From there see if click on the door in UI should result in one relay click.
The wall button press always generates one pulse. I think it is just a dumb mechanical switch. When the garage door is in motion, one pulse stops it; another pulse restarts the motion. Whatever decision the app makes to generate two pulses is making trouble here.
I found this setting description:
Door Motion Time - the time it takes for the door to move from fully opened to closed state. Increase this value if controller reports stopped shortly before the closed state. Decrease this value if door animation continues long after the door completed the actuation.
Relay On Time - the controller electrically simulates the press on the wall button. This parameter controls how long the "button is being held pressed" when the command is issued remotely. Some door openers interpret short pulses as a different command (e.g. wireless remote lock-out). Increase this value if remote command is not handled as expected.
Relay Off Time - some commands such as reverse direction while opening, require multiple "button taps". This parameter sets the minimum time between multiple consecutive commands that opener can distinguish.
Door Motion Time affects the animation in the app. I changed it to match the actual time more closely. Does it affect the decision on sending two pulses? BTW, I am not pressing in UI when door is animated either at this time.
Relay On Time (0.3s) seems to be reasonable.
Relay Off Time (1s) seems irrelevant as my opener is dumb one. I don’t intend to send multiple commands closely.
What setting can I use to completely prevent multiple pulses from being generated?
Thanks!
Door motion time setting should be a tad longer than the actual door motion otherwise the system will momentarily report a “stopped” state when closing the door. This happens after the motion time runs out before the sensor confirms the closed state.
There is no setting to completely disable multiple clicks, but they’re almost never used. Please try the web app to see if you have the same issue.
The installation guide doesn’t point out the importance of the sensor. I haven’t really bothered with setting up the sensor yet.
After setting up the sensor and prolonging the door motion time, I can operate the door properly now!
The UI doesn’t seem to reflect the state of sensor in the main page. If it deemed to be in the stopped the state, the GUI doesn’t suggest that’s the case. Showing door at the half open state probably will improve our information exchange.
Thank you very much for debugging this with me promptly.
You’re very welcome.
Do you see the state of the door (including stopped) being promptly reflected in the web app?
Didn’t try it earlier as you requested. I followed the lead on the sensor and door motion time.
I’ll try it later when I get time. Sensor reliability is something I need to pay attention to. Is there a way to log the sensor read-out by time?
There is no such feature in the stock apps, but because Garadget supports REST API and the reflection rate is reported in status response, it is relatively simple to script a logger for reflection rate. It’s a matter of making a web request periodically and recording the responses.
The other option is to set the threshold at different levels and use state notifications to track when the reflection rate dips below that value.
Etunnel
Can you tell me the settings you used to get everything working? I had to disconnect everything because I can’t get it configured correctly.
Thanks,
Dave
Please reconnect the device and describe the issue you experience and I’ll suggest the solution.