Homelink Auto Close/Open Malfunction ...

[ajith007]

Homelink auto close/open feature kicked in while I started to back out my ModelX from the garage and the garage door crushed the rear glass and broke the spoiler.

I had it set to auto close in 20 ft and auto open in 100 ft. We always open the garage door by pressing the wall switch, get inside the car, back out and the door closes when we drive away 20ft. At times it wouldn't auto close and we had to manually select the homelink option to close. This time it sent the signal at the wrong time. The garage sensors are way down and so it didn't detect the car as I was backing out slowly.

Incident happened about a month ago, reported it to the nearby Tesla service center(Plano, TX), they pulled the logs and then referred it to Tesla Legal for review. I still haven't heard back from them.

As per the suggestion by Tesla service center manager, took the car to an authorized body shop, they ordered the parts, Tesla then cancelled the order for some reason and nobody knew, waited for almost 10 days for nothing. We got to know that Tesla doesnt have the order in their system when we called Parts just to follow up. Body shop placed the order again, took almost over a week to get everything. Now when they started to fix, they noticed they will need few more parts, so they placed another parts order today. The new estimate to fix everything is about $2500.

We took delivery only about 2.5 months ago, really enjoyed the car until this incident happened. I had setup homelink and enabled auto close/open only couple weeks prior to the incident.

So folks, just be careful while using the homelink auto close/open feature. It's really misleading. The auto close will open the garage door if it's already closed and vice versa.

Tesla could have easily recorded the location where we stop the car right infront of the garage door while configuring homelink and prevent sending the homelink signal if the car is within +/- 10-15ft from that location.

 

[ajith007]

pls disregard the train picture that got attached inadvertently to the thread. i'm not able to remove it. (admin, pls help!)

 

[TacC]

Huge bummer. We really feel for you.

Similar thing happened to my wife while backing the X into the garage. While the damage was painful to look at, it was cosmetic.

There are definitely issues with Homelink. It is so bad that I have to spend an extra minute or two making sure the garage doesn't go back up. My wife has given up on it and uses an old school opener. I'd like to see Tesla put some serious work into improve the service because it has potential to be great. Right now it just has the potential to fund body shops.

 

[jboy210]

Pretty sure Auto open/close use GPS based location. GPS has an 90-95% accuracy of 4 meters (14 feet) under current conditions in unobstructed ski conditions. But, this also means it can be off by more than that 10% of the time especially if there are obstruction like buildings nearby.

There have been other reports of garage door closing on cars. Because of these reports and the inherent inaccuracies of GPS I use AutoOpen, but not Autoclose.

 

[wamochi]

ouch - so sorry to hear that and see those photos! we had a similar homelink setup at 20ft and a few times it seemed like the chime came on very quick to close the door as we backed out. but that is only a handful of times in 100's of closings. it looks like you have a very spacious garage and fairly long, so a distance of 20ft is probably a little short considering the length of the car alone needing to get out of the space? i think i changed mine to 30 or 40 just in case.

we did have a mishap in the S which my husband really could not tell if the garage was opening or closing, but long story short it appears he backed out the car after opening it from the homelink button and didn't wait long enough for the door to fully open (of course he was in a hurry), thereby crushing the fixed rear portion of the pano roof. i'm pretty sure our case was driver error though, not homelink related. in any case, fortunately for us the glass was only cracked inside the glass panes and still air/water tight. parts took forever to get here! hope you have good rental car coverage while you wait for repairs ...

 

[ajith007]

Pretty sure Auto open/close use GPS based location. GPS has an 90-95% accuracy of 4 meters (14 feet) under current conditions in unobstructed ski conditions. But, this also means it can be off by more than that 10% of the time especially if there are obstruction like buildings nearby.

There have been other reports of garage door closing on cars. Because of these reports and the inherent inaccuracies of GPS I use AutoOpen, but not Autoclose.

Please be aware that the car doesn't know the state of the garage door. So whether it's AutoClose or AutoOpen, the car just sends the signal to the homelink and it will close if the garage door is open, and will open if it's closed.

 

[jboy210]

Please be aware that the car doesn't know the state of the garage door. So whether it's AutoClose or AutoOpen, the car just sends the signal to the homelink and it will close if the garage door is open, and will open if it's closed.

Definitely. I was coming home today and had some quys working on wiring for my garage lights. The guys were up on ladders right below the door. The autoopen kicked and dropped down the list of doors, and thankfully the cancel button. I hit the cancel button so hard I was afraid I broke the screen.

 

[ajith007]

ouch - so sorry to hear that and see those photos! we had a similar homelink setup at 20ft and a few times it seemed like the chime came on very quick to close the door as we backed out. but that is only a handful of times in 100's of closings. it looks like you have a very spacious garage and fairly long, so a distance of 20ft is probably a little short considering the length of the car alone needing to get out of the space? i think i changed mine to 30 or 40 just in case.

we did have a mishap in the S which my husband really could not tell if the garage was opening or closing, but long story short it appears he backed out the car after opening it from the homelink button and didn't wait long enough for the door to fully open (of course he was in a hurry), thereby crushing the fixed rear portion of the pano roof. i'm pretty sure our case was driver error though, not homelink related. in any case, fortunately for us the glass was only cracked inside the glass panes and still air/water tight. parts took forever to get here! hope you have good rental car coverage while you wait for repairs ...

I had gone in reverse only about 1.5ft, so a distance of 20ft or at least just 2ft would have prevented this accident as the garage door sensor will stop the door from closing. Per the service center manager, dont use the wall switch to open the garage door, just get inside the car and put in reverse and it will send the signal to open the garage door. It's not really the AutoOpen in action. This was the hidden feature that I wasn't aware of and caused this accident!

 

[mswlogo]

Ever driving along and suddenly the GPS shows your on a side road next to highway. And it starts blurting directions to get back on. Well that can happen. And more likely happen when you first start up. GPS probably glitched and thought you had moved away.

I knew that feature was asking for trouble. I never know for sure if someone is next to the door on the other side (including our dogs). And I always assess if it’s safe to open. I can see the garage light come on and I know someone could be near the door. Also if the gate on Jeep is up the garage door will hit it.

The auto pop up of the home link works great.

 

[wamochi]

I had gone in reverse only about 1.5ft, so a distance of 20ft or at least just 2ft would have prevented this accident as the garage door sensor will stop the door from closing. Per the service center manager, dont use the wall switch to open the garage door, just get inside the car and put in reverse and it will send the signal to open the garage door. It's not really the AutoOpen in action. This was the hidden feature that I wasn't aware of and caused this accident!

i will have to try that sometime, but that seems so crazy not to open it manually from the wall switch! and weird that they would give that "advice"! usually the kids need to load stuff and i don't want to worry about them scraping the bumper or trunk with backpacks or sports gear if they are squeezing between the trunk and garage door. i also don't want to put it in reverse and wait every time for the door to fully open, that seems like a disaster waiting to happen (actually, it did happen!)

as jboy mentioned above, it's geo fenced GPS so the homelink distance isn't always accurate. apparently it thought you had traveled 20 ft away already when you had only gone a fraction of that! also make sure to have the chime checkbox enabled so you can hear the homelink activate. i am not sure why that is not on by default!

btw, did the rear glass break from the weight of the door or because the spoiler got yanked off?

 

[ajith007]

Definitely. I was coming home today and had some quys working on wiring for my garage lights. The guys were up on ladders right below the door. The autoopen kicked and dropped down the list of doors, and thankfully the cancel button. I hit the cancel button so hard I was afraid I broke the screen.

Oh oh .. here's another scenario - you drive off the driveway, someone at home closed the garage door using the wall switch and went inside. AutoClose will send the signal and will then leave the garage door open!

i will have to try that sometime, but that seems so crazy not to open it manually from the wall switch! and weird that they would give that "advice"! usually the kids need to load stuff and i don't want to worry about them scraping the bumper or trunk with backpacks or sports gear if they are squeezing between the trunk and garage door. i also don't want to put it in reverse and wait every time for the door to fully open, that seems like a disaster waiting to happen (actually, it did happen!)

as jboy mentioned above, it's geo fenced GPS so the homelink distance isn't always accurate. apparently it thought you had traveled 20 ft away already when you had only gone a fraction of that! also make sure to have the chime checkbox enabled so you can hear the homelink activate. i am not sure why that is not on by default!

btw, did the rear glass break from the weight of the door or because the spoiler got yanked off?

the glass broke from the weight of the door ..

so just to be on the safer side, i lifted the garage door sensor to the height of the rear end of the car. i will also turn off the AutoOpen/Close feature until they fix it.

i had the chime enabled, but it was too hot that day and the AC was running in full, so didnt really hear the chime and also the door from closing ...

 

[Terthen]

I had gone in reverse only about 1.5ft, so a distance of 20ft or at least just 2ft would have prevented this accident as the garage door sensor will stop the door from closing. Per the service center manager, dont use the wall switch to open the garage door, just get inside the car and put in reverse and it will send the signal to open the garage door. It's not really the AutoOpen in action. This was the hidden feature that I wasn't aware of and caused this accident!

Are you saying your SC manager is saying to leave the garage door closed, put car in reverse, and car will know to open the garage door? I’m not so sure about that one... I feel that’s a recipe for backing right into the garage if I understood that correctly. Hopefully people’s parking sensors will go crazy and stop them....

As another user posted above the car doesn’t know the state of the garage door being open or closed.

Our MX home link is finicky in that sometimes it sends 2 signals or something, so we have to watch carefully after backin out that our garage door indeed closes and doesn’t get paused. Our 3 has never had this issue interestingly, not sure if it’s a different transmitter or algorithm.

 

[mxnym]

I'm sorry to hear about this incident, and I hope Tesla pays for your repair. A little over a year ago, I had something similar happen, but was fortunate that the garage door didn't break anything. In my case, I was maneuvering in the driveway getting ready to pull into the garage, but auto-close had started counting feet. I was curious as a new owner whether it would count back up, so I kept it between 5 and 20 as I worked my way across the driveway until I was pulling into the garage. When it got up to 20, because I was still pulling forward, it must have rolled to a negative and treated the negative as 0 (didn't see this, but you don 't see feet once it triggers, so I wouldn't expect to have been able to see it if I had tried), so it triggered while I was pulling in. I asked the service center to report this to engineers for a fix, but certainly am not going to retest it myself. I wonder if it is possible that something similar triggered this incident. That having been said, I have a number of thoughts (mostly based on having read the thread):
1) In my case, the door hit the piece of glass between the falcon wing doors and the windshield and caused no damage at all, so either that was really lucky for me or the opener the OP is dealing with is not configured correctly and could also crush a person or animal if they are under the now too-high sensors when it closes. My opener specifically states that a 2x4 laying flat on the ground across the area where the garage door hits should trigger the garage door to re-open, further stating that if this is not the case adjustment is necessary for safety.
2) Keep in mind that not every Tesla employee owns a Tesla to have familiarity with the features. The suggestion that you could put it in reverse and the door will open itself is not only wrong, but downright hilarious to someone with experience with the system. Auto-close doesn't usually function in my X, presumably because of power saving mode paired with how fast I start everything up, but I have found that opening the garage door with the screen makes it even less likely to function. My best guess for why a Tesla employee could think that is because they aren't familiar with the feature at all but the service center door is completely automatic using motion or proximity sensors.
3) The suggestion in (2) is also scary, as you can find threads in this forum where the camera image is stuck and/or the sensors don't work, so that advice paired with this suggestion is just begging for someone to back into their garage door. Keep in mind that when you are driving a vehicle, you are responsible for what it does, so you should use the mirrors and windows since they are available.
4) As someone else already mentioned, Homelink isn't designed to tell the position of the door, so it is pertinent that you are aware of whether or not the feature is going to trigger. Fortunately, the screen automatically pops it up and shows when it will occur (using the countdown), so it should now be easy to train yourself to look at that and be ready to hit skip if anything unusual does happen.
5) Yes, the automatic Homelink features can be a pain on occasion because of (4), but they are nice more often than not, so IMHO, the feature is worth having even though it sometimes triggers an expected but undesired action (open when you don't need it to while coming up to the house and forgetting to skip, open when auto-close is triggered after it was manually closed, etc).

 

[ewoodrick]

Homelink auto close/open feature kicked in while I started to back out my ModelX from the garage and the garage door crushed the rear glass and broke the spoiler.

I had it set to auto close in 20 ft and auto open in 100 ft. We always open the garage door by pressing the wall switch, get inside the car, back out and the door closes when we drive away 20ft. At times it wouldn't auto close and we had to manually select the homelink option to close. This time it sent the signal at the wrong time. The garage sensors are way down and so it didn't detect the car as I was backing out slowly.

So folks, just be careful while using the homelink auto close/open feature. It's really misleading. The auto close will open the garage door if it's already closed and vice versa.

Tesla could have easily recorded the location where we stop the car right infront of the garage door while configuring homelink and prevent sending the homelink signal if the car is within +/- 10-15ft from that location.
]

As someone else mentioned, GPS isn't exact, I've seen it off by thousands of feet at times. Automotive GPS compensate for this by using a "pin to road" feature as additional input.

In my Model 3, there isn't a different distance for open and close, only one and I've got it set for 50 feet. Remember, Homelink doesn't know the difference between opening and closing, it's only a command to do something.

I had an incident where my wife was in front of me and she was pulling into the garage as my car sent the command, we ended up with some damage to the other car, since I didn't hit the button in time. BUT, what I've done since then is to move the safety sensor higher, so that that it doesn't shoot under the car. It is at a level now, that the car will block the sensor and the door won't close, or reverses if it tries to. That may be a little high for small dogs and kids, but that's not a problem we have.

Also, since the door broke the glass, your reversing sensor may be set a little too tight. In theory, it should have detected the obstruction from the motor's perspective and reversed it. You may want to see about reducing the pressure needed for auto-reversing. If it is too light, then the door may not close though.

 

[ajith007]

Are you saying your SC manager is saying to leave the garage door closed, put car in reverse, and car will know to open the garage door?

Yes, thats right. I was surprised too when I learnt that from him. I think that was the root cause of this accident. I'm waiting for Tesla to confirm after their review.

I had AutoClose set at 20ft and AutoOpen set at 100ft. Since I had gone in reverse only about 1.5ft(the gap between the rear end of the car and the garage door in the picture above), none of the AutoClose/Open feature should trigger.

 

[ajith007]

I had an incident where my wife was in front of me and she was pulling into the garage as my car sent the command, we ended up with some damage to the other car, since I didn't hit the button in time. BUT, what I've done since then is to move the safety sensor higher, so that that it doesn't shoot under the car. It is at a level now, that the car will block the sensor and the door won't close, or reverses if it tries to. That may be a little high for small dogs and kids, but that's not a problem we have.

Also, since the door broke the glass, your reversing sensor may be set a little too tight. In theory, it should have detected the obstruction from the motor's perspective and reversed it. You may want to see about reducing the pressure needed for auto-reversing. If it is too light, then the door may not close though.

I got the sensor moved yesterday to 2ft high. Once I get the car back after the repair, I'll ensure it's high enough to detect the rear end of ModelX.

Regarding the reversing sensor you mentioned, the garage door was already open when I got inside the car. So when I put in reverse, there was nothing behind the car to detect. I could see the driveway on the screen (thru rear view camera).

 

[Enginerd]

I got the sensor moved yesterday to 2ft high.

Please keep in mind that the purpose of the garage door sensor is not to prevent your Tesla from auto-closing the garage door on itself (at a height of say 20"). It's to prevent crushing someone who's fallen in the path of the garage door, at a height not greater than the breathing chest of a child. Please consider putting the sensors where they belong, and looking for another solution to the auto-close. I do mine manually. You could also set the auto-close distance great enough to accommodate typical GPS inaccuracy.

 

[Rockster]

This is why I never set my homelink to automatically close. Only to automatically open. That way, I can see from the bottom of the driveway that the door has opened successfully before I pull in. I'd much rather bear the trivial burden of closing the garage door myself when I leave than risk a mishap.

 

[ajith007]

Please keep in mind that the purpose of the garage door sensor is not to prevent your Tesla from auto-closing the garage door on itself (at a height of say 20"). It's to prevent crushing someone who's fallen in the path of the garage door, at a height not greater than the breathing chest of a child. Please consider putting the sensors where they belong, and looking for another solution to the auto-close. I do mine manually. You could also set the auto-close distance great enough to accommodate typical GPS inaccuracy.

valid point, but we have no smaller kids in the area, so i guess we should be good with that height.

i had the auto-close set to 20ft, but it sent the signal when i had gone in reverse for just 1.5ft. thats way too bad timing to send the signal.

 

[ajith007]

This is why I never set my homelink to automatically close. Only to automatically open. That way, I can see from the bottom of the driveway that the door has opened successfully before I pull in. I'd much rather bear the trivial burden of closing the garage door myself when I leave than risk a mishap.

It wasn't really the AutoClose feature that caused this mishap, it happened just because the car sent the signal to homelink when I put in reverse.