Homelink and backing into a driveway

[lutherm1]

My driveway is about 100' long, and off of a busy street... I'm too far from the garage door for Homelink signal to reach the opener from the road, and I tend to back up my driveway so I can park in the garage nose-out. As it stands, I have the homelink set to a location about 50' out from my garage door. When I'm pulling OUT of the driveway, or if I pull in nose first, the homelink triggers, and the garage door opens/closes appropriately, but if I'm backing in, the homelink does NOT trigger to open the door when cross that 50' maker. Am I correct in assuming that homelink will NOT trigger in reverse?

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[DerbyDave]

My homelink triggers in reverse when I am backing out of the driveway to close the garage door after I have left the garage. Sounds like you need to set the garage door to open further out, as you approach the garage facing forward. Then you can turn around and back in. It should not close after it opens the door as you approach.

 

[PCMc]

I believe the issue you may be fighting is that the homelink transmitter is oriented to target in front of your car, so when you're backing in, directionally it is focused in the opposite direction. It works well for backing out of the garage as the car is still pointed towards the garage and the receiver. I have the same issue with a mini-van I own that it has a hard time detecting from the street before I've started the turn into my driveway as the signal is directionally still focused down the street and not in the general direction of the house.

I realize the signal is not perfectly straight line, but even if you think of a field of broadcast of 180 degrees, and while you may find you can get it to detect, I suspect you'll need to reduce the distance to much less than 50 ft as I expect you'll find whatever signal my radiate towards the rear of the car is much weaker than the signal directed in front of the car.

Just my two cents worth. Good luck.

 

[Silicon Desert]

Did you try setting the GPS to trigger a bit closer to your garage door than 50 feet? Like maybe half that distance. That's what I do. Similar situation to you. 120 feet from garage door to private street. I guess you know the transmitter is in the front of the car and doesn't work as well at a distance.

 

[TessP100D]

Here is a easy fix for you. Extend the antenna thus the range of your garage door motor. It’s easy.
get a piece of wire, join it to your current antenna wire, then extend towards your garage door with staples. about an extra 8-10 feet should do It. You will be amazed how far your garage door can receive a signal after this fix.
good luck.

 

[lutherm1]

Great suggestions guys! I did try extending the antenna for the opener, out several feet, but it didn't seem to extend the range much. The opener itself is probably 20y old and only had a 1' antenna on it. Some of my reading indicated that it needed to be multiples of exactly 1' long to attenuate properly... long story short, I tried a few lengths, and none really impacted range much. Definitely not to the street.

I think the core of my issue is that, backing up the driveway, homelink never even triggers (ie you don't hear the auto-open chime) if you're in reverse. If i'm pulling in nose in, it activates normally and the door opens.

If I'm leaving, backing OUT of the garage, homelink auto-triggers to close the door just fine.

 

[TessP100D]

Ok. If you extend out the wire 8-10 feet you will pick up more range for the transmitter/receiver.

if you set your Tesla in car homelink to open the garage door say—80’ away, as you drive up it will open the door, then you can back in.

I only use the automatic feature when arriving to the barge, but not when leaving. I manually close the door for safety reasons, and to make sure the actually closes.

 

[BigNick]

Try turning OFF the automatic feature, position your car on the driveway with your front end facing the street, and try to find the point at which manually opening/closing the door works 100% reliably, and set that distance as your trigger point for automatic door opening.

 

[lutherm1]

Try turning OFF the automatic feature, position your car on the driveway with your front end facing the street, and try to find the point at which manually opening/closing the door works 100% reliably, and set that distance as your trigger point for automatic door opening.

I'll give this a try, thank you!

 

[Aggie_Aloha]

Any luck? In the same situation

 

[Silicon Desert]

Any luck? In the same situation

His last post was a year ago. Maybe he solved it or forgot all about it by now