Garage Door Remotes and Locks

 Garage Door Remotes

Garage Door Remotes – Access Locksmiths stock and supply a substantial range of garage door openers.

We are sure to have the exact opener that you need.

Some Of The Services We  Offer Are:

• Garage Doors Automatic Gates
• Gain Entry Service
• Supply and Encode Garage Door Remotes
• Servicing of Garage Doors and Auto Openers
• Servicing of Gates and Auto Openers
• Installation of Garage Door and Auto Gate Openers
• Servicing of Solar Power Gate Openers
• Repairs

                         Garage Door Remotes                          (A short story)

I was asked to write about garage door openers and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything at all interesting to write about the trusty remote, except, as far as my experience with a remote goes, I push button, door opens. I am one of those people who has never had a remote go missing. My remote has never failed to open my door and my battery has never gone flat. I am pretty luck (touch wood) with my remote.

When we moved to our Brisbane home, we did need some extra remotes for the garages. We ordered them, they arrived, we programmed them and that was that. No drama. I want to leave the house, I push the button, door opens, and I leave, my openers have a three (3) minute cycle, meaning they will close three minutes after they are opened. Simple.

I do the exact opposite when I come home.

Now after many, many years of working in the locksmith industry, I am constantly amazed at the amount of trouble some people have with their remotes.

Of course, we hear the usual, “It just stopped working” most are angry that it “just stopped working” Now, some remotes have quite obviously been run over, some have been dropped in water and some have had the batteries removed (bizarrely, remotes don’t work with no batteries) for such a small simple devise, it is quite funny how some of our clients claim innocence at damaging their remotes.  Brisbane does, of-course have a very high humidity  level in summer, and as such, I think a lot of remotes are damaged through perspiration leaking through the buttons into the circuit board (yuck).  This will, over time, wreck a garage remote and it will need to be replaced and reprogrammed into your garage door motor.

In order to at least write something interesting about remotes I decided to take a look at where this humble, magical, devise came from. A remote is an amazingly modern convenience, and I for one would be absolutely annoyed without it. If I am honest I am pretty sure my car would be parked outside most of the time if I had to manually open the garage door.

Now back in 1921 a man named Mr Johnson invented the overhead garage door. This was 13 years after the Model T rolled off the production line. It is quite strange to think that before the Model T came along, we didn’t actually need a garage – no cars, no garage!

Garage Door Remotes

Mr Johnsons garage door quickly caught on and as popular products tend to grow and change, in 1926, yes, the electric garage door motor was born (thank you!). Now in 1926 the garage doors were electric, but the remotes were not wireless. There was a button on a post outside the door and a button inside the garage.

Strangely, although the remote openers were invented in 1926, they were not very popular (What??) Could the lax in popularity have had something to do with the lack of safety features? I read an article recently relating to the safety features on the first garage doors and although the first auto openers had a safety feature that stopped the door coming down if there was an obstruction, this was a feature that did not become standard in manufacturing for quite some time. There were many deaths (exact number unknow) and many of the deaths were sadly children. Laws were passed in 1933 that required safety features in all garage doors.

As the population increased and our living spaces began to shrink (neighbours got closer) a problem arose with our garage remotes. One remote fits most it turned out. Most garage remotes were programmed to the same frequency so if your neighbour opened their door, yours would open to. This caused a problem with “door hacking”, thieves had it made back then.

This problem was solved with fixed code pulses that were set to both the remote and the opener. Fixed code system came in the 1970 and offered a binary switch combination with 8 or 12 switches.

Today we have rolling-code technology. Each time the remote is used, the code expires, and a new code is primed.

Next will be the internet-controlled opener, I haven’t seen or heard of one, yet, but I am sure we will be opening our doors, garage and home doors, with our smart phones.

All that being said, Access Locksmiths offer a wide range of remotes for garage doors including:

• • • Avanti
    • Boss
    • Chamberlain
    • Marantec
    • Merlin
    • Superlift

Here, at Access Locksmiths we can supply new remotes and program them for you. We also supply and fit new garage door motors and auto gate openers.