Garage Door Safety Sensors

It's a North American thing. Effectively (if not explicitly, I have not looked at the exact wording) mandated by the "voluntary" UL standard UL 325, since ~1991.

Nobody really wants to take the risk of selling or installing garage door openers that are not compliant, and then get sued because some careless numbskull allowed one of her brood to get squished.

Even so, it's not foolproof:

Hmm.. I hadn't thought of leaping over the sensor beam as the door is closing, thanks Mr. Guthrie..

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Well, I got the 20 years thing pretty close. ;-)

Many zoning codes require it.

All "fool proofing" does is create more ingenious fools.

I caught my cleaning crew was doing that. So I added an outside keypad. Better that than be sued :-(

...Jim Thompson

What a drugged out maroon.

Most of them are IR light beam interrupter based. One active side is a source and detector and at the other side is a retroreflector.

I presume they are similar in most countries. Current monitoring tends not to work since when closing the door it may be out of balance and have enough momentum to crush a small child.

I remember an alarming demo of automatic car windows in Japan relying on overcurrent sensing that would cut a daikon in two first! (think arm diameter white carrot)

Regards, Martin Brown

What was that ditty, "Be kind to your fine-feathered friends...." ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

At least they save half the time, when you have to tar & feather them. :)

Which brand? My Genie uses a pair of red LED/green LED units (the red LED being the RX and green LED being the TX).

This

vs.

This:

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I had to rebuild my garage door opener motor unit lot too long ago, and = it has both the IR beam and the back pressure type sensors. After i rebuilt it i had redo _all_ the adjustments, fortunately all the required information was in the manuals (available online). Kind of fun in a way, i learned stuff.

?-)

Spehro,

Have you run across any specification that says, red/green sensors run on a specific voltage? ...Jim Thompson

Just what I am guessing from the patents I previously referenced and the video. One type is (from one patent and the video) six-ish volts, but I'm pretty sure there's a higher voltage type out there.