Solution for Weak HomeLink Performance

10886 Views 16 Replies 11 Participants Last post by electjohn, Mar 4, 2012

Pushbutton

Discussion Starter · Aug 29, 2006 (Edited)

I posted this comment in another thread, but felt that it could use some more exposure:

My Magnum EVIC HomeLink (despite the dealer replacing it once) did not have the range of my 300M, nor the hand-held remotes. I solved it by lengthening the garage door operator antenna by a fractional wavelength. That is to say I doubled the length of the OEM opener antenna.

All you need to do is:

1. Get a piece of 18-22 gage (not important) wire exactly as long as the existing antenna (you will have to guess the length in some cases when the wire disappears into the housing).

2. Use a butt connector to join the stripped ends of the existing wire and the new one.

3. Let it hang down from the opener.

Now the Magnum hits the opener from a reasonable range and the others can hit it from about 100m away!

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k9eros

· #11 · Aug 31, 2006

I've been toying with this idea for the last week, one of my garage doors has no range while the other is OK at best. The garage is metal with metal doors, the door installer said it's due to all the metal killing the range. My Homelinks are much weaker than the OE openers. I went ahead and did this after reading your post, and it sure seems to have made a difference. I just opened the weaker door from 30 feet away with the Homelink in my truck, where I would normally have to almost hit the door to do it.
For you radio gurus out there, if adding this fractional wavelength helps, would adding more help out even more? For instance, if the original antenna is (I'm assuming) a 1/4 wave, and I just made it a 1/2 wave, would making it a 3/4 or full wave give me better performance?

Pushbutton said:
All you need to do is:

1. Get a piece of 18-22 gage (not important) wire exactly as long as the existing antenna (you will have to guess the length in some cases when the wire disappears into the housing).

2. Use a butt connector to join the stripped ends of the existing wire and the new one.

3. Let it hang down from the opener.

Now the Magnum hits the opener from a reasonable range and the others can hit it from about 100m away!

Save

k9eros

· #14 · Aug 31, 2006

My openers are Chamberlain also, the real problem is that my garage is a steel building. There is no better spot for the antenna unless I run shielded coax outside then attach an antenna out there.
That being said it is one cool garage, 1200 square feet, lots of parking and work shop room. Don't pay attention to the mess, half of my house is out there since I tore the house down and am building a new house.

Pushbutton said:
k9eros, I also have a steel garage door...two layers thick for that matter. But I do have a row of windows about chest high acroos the door which probably helps.

Obviously going to a full wave length would maximize your gain. But gain is probably not your issue, its location. You may want to play around with running a length of wire upwards (instead of down) so that it is above the door where the wood (or maybe stucco or brick in Seguin) would be more passive to the radio waves. It may work or not, but wire is cheap.

As far as what a full, half, quarter wavelength is see: http://www.csgnetwork.com/freqwavelengthcalc.html Just plug in the frequency, select the desired wavelength and read the length in inches, etc.

My Chamberalin opener runs at 315 Mhz. YMMV

PB

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