Folks, A normal motorised garage door with a control box - Rollixo something or ot her. I've lent the installation manual to father in law. This control box has a worthless light on it that comes on when you activat e the door either up or down, and stays on for 2 minutes after the door sto ps. I'd quite like to have the actual garage lights come on instead of this ver y small bulb built into the control box. I suggested a some sort of relay s et-up to father-in-law (an electrician) but he was skeptical and started ta lking about contactors, which I've never heard of. My understanding of a relay is that they are usually used in low-power situ ations to switch circuits of higher power. So my idea would be to have a re lay somewhere alongside my existing two garage light switches, the relay ef fectively acting as 3rd switch. Helpfully the connector bar in the control box doesn't have connections for the internal light, so I further envisaged removing the bulb from the hold er and somehow wiring to the actual light fitting to provide the switching in and off connections to the relay, i.e. when the control box puts the lig ht on, instead of the bulb illuminating the relay would energise. Are you with me so far? Anyone else managed to do this successfully? Jon

Contactors are the name used by electricians for relays To avoid digging into the door control circuit, use a photo sensor to note the light has come on. This can then operate a contactor, possibly with a "delay off" if you want the garage lights to stay on longer than the one in the door mechanism. Haven't felt the need.

Motorised garage door - make garage lights come on via relay?

Aug 10, 2016 42 Replies

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Jon Parker 9 years ago

On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 9:20:38 AM UTC+1, snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com w rote:

isting 2-way switch wiring. That will force the lights on for the time peri od regardless of the existing state of the lights.

Owain,

Just getting round to this project. I have the necessary adapters and screw

-in bits to get the electrical connections from the lamp holder to outside the control box where I can work with them.

In your post above you refer to strapping wire, which I think is another na me for 'switch wire'?

I also have been doing some looking for relays, would this simple one do th e job?

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Regards Jon

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Jon Parker 9 years ago

Project now completed successfully, thanks for the input.

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Roger Mills 9 years ago

So what was the final solution?

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