Bypassing The Garage Door Sensors Is Not A Garage Door Repair
Once you have bypassed the garage door opener sensors, you have manage to get the door closed. You will even be able to open the garage door with your remote when returning home. However, the problem is not fixed. There is a reason why the sensors are being tripped and we need to figure out why. It always comes down to a few things, obstructions, alignment, wiring, or a faulty sensor. It is best to troubleshoot one issue at a time starting from easiest to the most difficult.
What Is The Role Of Garage Door Sensors
The garage door sensors, also called photo eyes, enhance safety and security by ensuring that the garage door does not crash an object, small children, or a pet in its path when closing. The two sensors on either side of your garage door, the sender and the receiver communicate by sending signals and must see each other. The garage door will immediately stop when there is an obstruction in its path or reverse its direction.
For your garage door to continue closing, there must be no obstruction of the infrared beam between the receiver and the transmitter sensors. Any interruption of the Infrared rays transmitted between the two sensors will force the door to stop and reverse its direction, protecting the object, whether your pets or a small child on the garage doors path.
Replace Your Old Sensors
If youre still seeing the yellow light on your garage door sensor even after cleaning the lenses, realigning them, reconnecting/replacing sensor wiring, moving objects out of the way AND contacting support, then its time to buy new sensors.
There are countless possible reasons your old sensors stopped working time, overuse, exposure to harsh weather, etc. Regardless of the reason, your old sensors need to be replaced.
To start, go online, or to your nearest home improvement store and buy a replacement pair. Make sure the new sensors are compatible with your model garage door opener.
Once you have your new, compatible garage door sensors, youll need to install them. To install your new sensors, follow these steps.
Door track installation:
Installation without pre-wiring:
Pre-wired installation:
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How Do I Know If My Garage Sensors Are Aligned
Improperly aligned sensors can result in a number of closing and opening issues with your door. For instance, your garage door may start to reverse before even reaching the floor or refuse to close all the way. While there may be other culprits responsible for these situations, they often result from blocked or misaligned sensors. If you notice no debris or any other obstructions in your sensors path, you will probably have to realign them in order to fix the issue.
The Power Supply To The Sensor Is Disrupted
Sometimes a supply disruption may be the reason for the garage door safety sensor not working. A quick way to test if the power supply is not disturbed is to check the sensor lights. If the green light turns on then everything is fine. However, if it doesnt, you should check the power supply.
Make sure the cable is plugged in. If not, plug it in and test if the door closes. If the problem is the power supply, the door will shut once the power is restored. Sometimes a blown fuse may cause the sensor to malfunction. If this should occur, call a technician to replace the fuse and inspect the wires. You risk injuring yourself if you attempt doing it by yourself. If nothing happens after plugging in the cable, it may be an indicator that another issue is causing the garage to stay open.
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Garage Door Sensor Yellow
When the LED in your garage door sensor is yellow, your safety reverse sensors are misaligned or out of alignment. You need to fix the sensors before your garage can close. When the sensors are out of alignment, they cannot see each other. Hence, signals cannot be sent from the transmitter to the receiver sensor.
To fix the problem, adjust each sensor until they are perfectly aligned. Besides, you may consider cleaning the sensor lenses with a clean, soft cloth as the dirt that accumulates on the lens surface may also prevent the sensors from seeing each other.
Fix Your Garage Door Sensors In These 5 Easy Steps
Your garage door sensors are an integral mechanism of your automatic garage door system, and the most common type of garage door sensor is called a photoelectric safety sensor.
These make sure your garage door stops opening and closing if it senses something is in the way, preventing accidents caused by automatic garage doors. These sensors have been required by law to be part of automatic garage door kits since 1993.
Before the popularity of photoelectric safety sensors, automatic garage door sensors were mechanical. Instead of the infrared beam that detected if anything was in the way, the mechanical sensors made the garage door move in reverse once it came in contact with an object.
While the older model may have been easier to troubleshoot, the photoelectric safety sensor is a much safer option! Lets make sure you know how to keep your modern garage door sensor in tip-top shape.
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How Do I Determine If Its A Problem With The Garage Door Sensor
If your garage door opens normally but then doesnt close or starts to close and then reopens without any obstructions in the way, theres a good chance that your garage door sensor is malfunctioning. This could result in two main problems.
The first is that the door wont close. This issue can arise from malfunctioning door sensor. Press the remote control or hit the electrical switch on the inside of the garage to close the door. If the door starts to close but then stops and reverses so that is completely open again, you know theres a malfunction.
The second issue occurs when the door closes even with obstruction. This is the other sign of a possibly malfunctioning door sensor, and its a much worse problem because theres a possibility it could cause an injury or significantly damage your car or some other piece of equipment. To determine if the sensors are malfunctioning:
Garage Door Sensor Is Damaged :
Garage doors are subject to continuous stress and motion throughout the day because they have to withstand all kinds of weather conditions while being used repeatedly. The sensors are also subjected to stress as they are used repeatedly, and this may cause the sensors to break.
For example, if you find that your garage door sensor light does not come on even when you pull up in front of the garage door, but it comes on after tapping on the sensor itself a few times or if one or more of your photocells are broken, it may be time to call for a replacement and put in an order with a garage door repair company.
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Something Triggered The Motion Sensors
A benefit of a garage door system is there are motion sensors that trigger the lights to come on when it senses movement. If you want to disengage this feature, access your wall-mounted panel, select Menu, Light Settings, then Automatic Light.
You will have two options, choose the one that says Motion Sensor and press the off button. The motion sensor light will not come on when it detects movement. If you change your mind in the future, you can reverse this setting.
Ways To Troubleshoot Your Garage Door Sensors
Once you identify theres an issue, its time to figure out how to fix your garage door sensors. Although it might seem complicated at first, there are a lot of simple strategies you can utilize to troubleshoot your sensors and, hopefully, get them to work again.
Follow these four simple ways to troubleshoot your garage door sensors:
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How To Fix A Yellow Light On A Garage Sensor
You have by now established that LED lights are vital components of a garage door opener system. If you take note of a deviation from the normal steady illumination of LED lights, there is probably something wrong.
Particularly, when the yellow light is not solid or is totally off, chances are your garage door is already malfunctioning. This can get really annoying, but fret not! Here, we look at how to fix a yellow light on a garage sensor in detail, as elaborated further.
Problems with the sensor yellow light indicate a few sensor issues, including malfunctioning, misalignment, obstruction, coating of photo-eye, or worn-out sensors. Begin with cleaning the sensor lens with a wet paper towel to get rid of the dirt that accumulates on the lenses over time if you observe a yellow light on your sensor.
Misalignment of the sensor units is yet another highly probable cause for the yellow light issue. You ought to accurately realign the sensors so that they point each other at the same exact angle.
You will want to examine the wiring leading to the sensor if cleaning the lenses and realigning the units did not do the trick. Examine for damage, corrosion, fraying, or worn-out wires that could be causing a shorting of the opener system. You might want to seek help from garage door experts since you are dealing with electrical connections.
Trouble Closing The Garage Door
This is among the first things that will indicate that the garage door opener sensor is not working. If thats the case, the door will open without any problems. However, once you try to close the door, it becomes impossible. Either the door will not close or only go down halfway.
Another relevant issue is when the door closes but immediately opens again by itself. That may be why you remember that you closed the garage door properly in the morning, but you find it open when you come back home.
Regardless of how this happens, the reason is most likely an obstruction in the doors pathway. So the door stays open to avoid any injuries or damage to the object thats blocking the door. You can easily fix it by carefully checking between the door and floor for any objects.
If you see nothing, you can use the cardboard box test to see if something is wrong with the sensors. Place some cardboard boxes under the door. If the sensors are working correctly, the door will fail to close. If the sensors are bad, the garage door would close, damaging the boxes. You may have to call a professional garage door opener safety sensor repair in Frederick, MD, to avoid injuring yourself or your loved ones.
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Sensor Lenses Require Cleaning
As you know, garage door sensors arent the same as a light bulb. Instead, they require regular maintenance and upkeep to function at their best.
If this happens, you will need to clean the lens on your garage door sensor. Then, you can turn off your garage door opener and remove it from its mounting bracket.
From there, if your garage door sensors are not lighting up, the most likely culprit is that they have become clogged by debris or dust and require attention to cleaning.
Do Both Garage Door Sensors Need To Be Green
Your garage door has sending and receiving sensors with LED lights that should glow steadily if there are no issues with the alignment. The lights on of these types of sensors will be green if there are no obstructions or misalignment. Some newer garage door models also have a sending sensor that has an amber light which should be on regardless of these issues. If the green lights dont work or start flashing, you will most likely need to realign the sensors.
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Light Indicator Signs For Common Garage Door Sensor Problems
One of the straightforward ways to determine if your garage door sensor experiences the above problems is by checking if its exterior lights are on, off, or blinking when you try to close the garage door. Here are the general light indicators and what they mean about the working condition of the garage door sensors:
- LED lights turned off
This is a problem with the power supply or electrical components such as wiring. Turned off LED lights may also indicate faulty sensors that perhaps need to be replaced.
- LED lights turned on and glowing
When functioning correctly, the LED lights on garage door sensors should be glowing Green. If you observe that the LED lights glow Red, you might be dealing with misalignment problems.
- Garage door opener flashing continuously
It is not all about the LED lights on the sensors themselves, blinking of the garage door opener can also indicate an issue with the sensors since these two components are interconnected. If the garage door opener is flashing continuously, then it is an indication that it cannot sense that the door sensors are connected or working correctly. Here, the flash will persist, and the door will not close unless the issue is fixed.
There Isnt A Solid Light Coming From The Safety Eye Sensors
Liftmaster suggests they be placed no higher than 6 .
As of January 1, 1993, it became mandatory that all garage door openers have safety eye sensors built into them. These sensors are designed to protect children from unnecessary harm and are usually positioned about 6 to 8 inches in front of the vertical tracks on which the garage door moves up and down.
There are two sensors. One is a transmitter that sends a beam, and the other is a receiver that reads the beam. When this beam is obstructed by an object of some sort, you wont see a solid yellow light, and the garage door will immediately quit working. For people who do not know, the transmitter has the yellow light and the receiving sensor has the green light. The garage door sensor yellow light and the green light together create a solid illumination.
If you do not see a solid illumination or your garage door is not working, the problem is most likely due to the sensors being out of line. So, how do you fix this issue? Youll need to first equip yourself with a wrench of some sort and a tape measure. Once you have these tools:
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Troubleshooting Garage Door Sensors
If youve ever pulled out of your garage and discovered your door wont close, youve likely encountered problems with your garage door sensors. Although this isnt the only reason your garage door may not be operating correctly, its one of the most common.
Luckily, there are some easy ways to troubleshoot your garage door sensors without immediately having to call a service.
Garage Door Sensor Blinking Red
The red blinking light occurs when something is blocking the safety beam or sensors are not correctly aligned. An object may bump the sender or the receiver out of position, or a wire may have come close. Homeowners can fix the situation by inspecting the bracket or tightening a screw in the blinking sensor.
The LED on your garage door plays an essential role in informing you of the status of the sensors. The indicators show different colors while in operation or when they malfunction. For instance, the exterior LED indicator will blink red when you try to close the door if the sensors are out of alignment, damaged, obstructed by an object, or covered by dirt.
Often, the green light indicates that the sensors are working correctly, while the red light indicates an issue with the sensors and requires the attention of the garage owners.
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Malfunctioning Safety Eye Wires :
If your sensors do not light up when you pull up to the garage door and try to open it, there is a possibility that one or both of the wires are damaged. To check if this is the case, feel with your hands at where the wire comes out from its cover and feel for any unusual bends or cuts. If you find any, it means that the wires have been cut or squished and will need to be replaced with new ones along with a garage door opener replacement kit.