Well, this has been interesting.
A call to Tesla customer support yielded a conversation with a nice young woman who knows nothing about making homeLink devices work with a Tesla. She gave me the phone number for HomeLink.
I called HomeLink customer service and got a guy who asked if I had anything programmed to any of the other HomeLink buttons. Buttons? What buttons? He admitted that he knows nothing about Tesla. The next guy asked what is programmed to the other buttons. WTF! I told him that it is a Tesla, so there are no buttons and that I had only one garage door programmed and that won't work since I replaced my broken Genie with a Sommer Direct Drive. "Who convinced you to buy a Sommer?", he asked, "Sommer is not compatible with Tesla. "How was I supposed to know that?", I asked. "Tesla claims to support HomeLink and Sommer supports HomeLink and nowhere did the sales information of either say they are incompatible." He told me to call Sommer.
Sommer customer support (877-766-6607 m-f 8am to 4pm ET) was very helpful, telling me that the newer Sommer devices use a rolling code and that Tesla has chosen not to update their software to work with it. He offered me a $25 old style non-rolling-code receiver that would work with Tesla. As for the increased security of rolling codes, he said that is mostly marketing hype. It is unlikely that robbers are going to have a device to capture your garage door opener code and then sit around waiting for you to use your HomeLink so they can intercept the signal and store it for later use. It's simply easier to pry the door or break a window.
One of the reasons that I chose Sommer in the first place is that it employs a momentary-contact two-wire wall switch, so my existing external keypad will still work with the new opener. So all I have to do now is to re-connect my old Genie receiver to the wall switch terminals on the Sommer receiver and use the Genie remote to program my Tesla HomeLink.
It would have be nice if Tesla would either update their software to work with newer garage door opener receivers or at least publish a list of devices that are Tesla-compatible.
Edit 1-19-16: Turns out that my old Genie receiver ran on 34VDC but Sommer runs on 24VDC, so I had to order the Sommer receiver after all; same one listed online for $49 but when sold direct from manufacturer as "Tesla kit" they charge $25 plus $6.99 USPS shipping.
