Garage-door push button

[clare]

You can NOT use a lighted pushbutton for a garage door opener. It will NOT work.

[clare]

By his (the OP's) own admission it is NOT a simple momentary contact - it has a light (a resistance) in it.

[clare]

If the ohmeter reads at all with the button not pushed (which it WILL since it is a lighted button) it won't work for the door control.

[Evan]

So umm, a question for you man -- why bother replacing the "original button" at all if it still works ?

It sounds like you were looking for something stupid like a lighted button so you could find it in the dark or something not realizing that such a device is not compatible with your garage door opener without installing a relay and your own low-voltage transformer to power up the lighted button side of the circuit...

Good luck...

~~ Evan

[Metspitzer]

This really has noting to do with the OP. I was just refreshing my memory on latching relays and I found this:

[mm]

But that's where it gets its power, right? Works fine when you use it for a doorbell. It's these newfangled gadgets like those goldarn geerage door oapners that cause trouble.

I don't think the OP is the one to be putting in a separate power supply, or a transformer and latching relay.

[Han]

[e-mail] wrote in news:j6ius6p7qrb8oeem8q91e53g44qjtl5a6o@

4ax.com:

Well, I have a Genie garagedoor opener system, and next to the door is a nice lighted button that does exactly what it is supposed to do. The light is green, if that means anything, and the wire looks like something low- voltage. Looking up a manual for Genie openers it says in big letters:

NOTE: Additional wall controls are available from your dealer. ONLY ONE OF YOUR WALL CONTROLS MAY BE THE LIGHTED TYPE. If you have a lighted wall control, all your additional controls must be un-lighted. More than one lighted wall control per operator will cause a malfunction.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Of course that is LED(a diode), our Genie screw drive opener has red colored LED in it. It is different from ordinary lamp. If you are talking about wall mounted keypad with lighed keys, it's different again. One shot relay is sending kinda pulse to the opener when you punch the code from keypad. Whatever you are dealing with, if you understand.....

[Peter]

I originally installed 2 Sears chain drive garage door openers that came with lighted doorbell push buttons. When they died, one after about 8 years and one after about 15 years, I replaced them with 2 Stanleys. One is a chain drive, one is a screw drive. Both contained non-lighted push buttons. Being lazy, I did not exchange either of the 2 old lighted ones from the Sears openers. Guess what? Both openers work perfectly using the lighted push buttons.

Don't be so quick to say "never".

[mm]

He can probably paint the original one with fluorescent or luminescent paint. I used to have a 2 or 4 oz. bottle of white paint like that. I painted the edge of one of my living room doors, so I didn't keep walking into it at night. It wasn't very bright but it worked.

[clare]

Evan - in the VAST majority of lighted doorbell buttons there is NO "lighted button side of the circuit" The light is across the switch contacts and draws little enough current that the doorbell does not know it is there. The "lamp current" flows through the coils of the doorebell constantly - and when the button is pushed the lamp goes out and full current flows through the coil of the doorbell, making it ring.

On the garage door the actuator draws a lot less current than the doorbell, so the current flowing through the lamp on the button does not allow the relay in the door controller to fully disengage, not allowing the unit to return to the "neutral" position.

The "switch" only has 2 contacts.

[clare]

And THAT lighted wall control is designed to work with THAT Genie door controller. A lighted button that draws more power than the specified Genie button will not work - and that Genie button may draw too much power for a non-genie or different Genie controller.

[clare]

And if you replace those garage door lighted push-buttons with "normal" lighted doorbell buttons, your current door openers MAY or MAY NOT continue to work - and if you replace those Stanly openers with another manufacturer's door opener, say a Genie or some other brand, they may or may not work.

On my Genie TracDrive I cannot use the lighted doorbell button purchaced from Home Despot

[Evan]

And you are clearly not someone experienced in electrical circuitry...

When you absolutely *need* to use a lighted door bell button with a garage door opener you certainly can, if you know enough about electricity to know how to lay out circuits which would use relays to close the circuit to operate the doors... The control side of the relay is entirely electrically separate from the output side and you could use whatever buttons or switches you wanted to as long as you provide the correct power required for them independent of the garage door opener...

So yes, what I said was absolutely accurate... In a relay circuit there is a control side and an output side...

~~ Evan

[gcotterl]

Solved!!!

One of the new doorbell push-buttons was lighted; the previous two were not. NONE of them worked! So I trashed them all and replaced the original one with a simple brass doorbell button.

[Peter]

For all of us who contributed or lurked on this thread, it would have been interesting if you had measured the resistance in ohms across the 2 terminals of the switches that did not work (both unpushed and pushed, checking 2 cycles of push-release-push again-release again) versus the one that does work and reported that here. If your trash has not been collected, are you willing to retrieve at least one of the ones you trashed, make the measurements, and let us know?

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

And check with both polarities (meter is probably using DC to measure resistance) in case there's a diode in there.

[Michael Stair]

replying to gcotterl, Michael Stair wrote: There is your problem.NEVER buy a lighted button for your garage door. I've seen many posts saying that! Why, I don't know, but that's what they say.

[Mark]

replying to gcotterl, Mark wrote: Did you find a work around for the push button replacement switch?