HomeLink

[DUNEDIN01]

I had a major problem with my HomeLink. System it was working fine. Opening and closing. Then the disaster hit, while I was pulling out the door tried to close with my car under it. Tried means it did a hell of alot of damage. Anyone else had this problem?

 

[isracing]

don't park in the garage, but so far homelink has worked perfectly. We enter/exit through the garage door so the car will close it as I back out of the driveway and open it when I approach.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Not that this helps you now but this is why I have all of my garage door "auto" features disabled. I've seen enough "quirks" from my cars that the last thing I want is them handling something as critical as garage door operation. I'll manually press the button on the screen to open/close the doors. As an added bonus, the car will automatically bring up the garage door menu whenever leaving or arriving so I'm thankful enough that it saves me a couple of button presses but I still don't trust the cars to know when to actually send a command.

Related: you may want to have a garage door installer decrease your open and close limits to prevent damage if it's maxed out currently which it sounds like it could be if it damaged your car. It could have damaged your door too if it's maxed out. Either way, yikes!

 

[DeanP]

Ouch, that really sucks. As noted above is yours on Auto? I disabled this due to I don't always park in the garage. Thanks for sharing as Murphy's law prevails again.

 

[Kiwiadventure]

To me its a simple push of a button using a remote to open & close a garage door but now its a major event with Homelink.
Keep things simple.

 

[Ostrichsak]

Ouch, that really sucks. As noted above is yours on Auto? I disabled this due to I don't always park in the garage. Thanks for sharing as Murphy's law prevails again.

Another good reason I disabled it is my wife and I both drive Teslas and often times I'm working in the garage so the last thing I want is the car automatically sending the command to the door if it's already open and I'm out there working. Then she has to manually open it and send another command which is a best case scenario. In the rare instance I've got a car partially pulled in because I'm working on it or I'm working on the door itself or something it could end up much worse as the OP found out. I see people who combine this "feature" with summon and cringe given we just replaced both of our overhead garage doors and I'd rather not have to pay to do that again anytime soon.

This is one of those "features" that sounds good on paper but just isn't worth the exposure to risk IMO. If they could somehow implement the car knowing door status and better override safety provisions it might be a little bit safer but I still doubt I would trust it with my doors and my cars.

Remember also that the Homelink in these (or any for that matter) cars aren't that smart. As I mentioned they don't know door state. They literally just trigger a toggle to the opener whenever it sense the GPS location change. It's a lot like having a universal remote control that just sends a toggle to the TV to power on/off without actually knowing it's state to know if it should send on or off. Only in this case the consequences can be much much more dire.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

I had a major problem with my HomeLink. System it was working fine. Opening and closing. Then the disaster hit, while I was pulling out the door tried to close with my car under it. Tried means it did a hell of alot of damage. Anyone else had this problem?

Do you have the chime enabled so you can hear when it sends the signal to open or close the door?

We had a close call once when I came home and one car was exiting at the same time that I was entering the driveway. Fortunately, I heard the chime and saw it closing so I was able to stop it before it hit the other car. We have individual garages and normally don't have to worry about other cars being in the garage but for some reason, the other car was in my garage that day.

 

[DUNEDIN01]

Thanks everyone my Tesla S is being repaired now along with my garage door. Definitely will have the chime on , further thought I AM GOING TO DISCONNECT the HOMELINK. and never use it again.

 

[pilotSteve]

Hope that Tesla uses the cameras in a future software release to VERIFY the door position actually need a homelink command to be sent (i.e. is it closed now and needs to be open?)

 

[beatle]

Do you have safety sensors tied into your garage door opener? I thought they were pretty standard and designed to stop things like this. If I attempt to close the door with the car in the way, the sensors will abort the door from closing and reopen it. The only real danger is if the bumper is hanging over the sensors and I attempt to close the door. This is somewhat of a fringe case.

 

[murphyS90D]

The car uses the ultrasonic sensors to determine the door position. If I do a summon out of the garage with the door closed it opens the door. If I do a summon out of the garage with the door open it does not issue a door command. That said I only have the car configured to do a door open on arrival. I control the door when I am leaving.

 

[BigNick]

I use HomeLink, but manual only. Had it set auto with my previous Tesla (no AP/summon) and it tried to close the door while I was backing out.
Lucky for me I was pointed straight and nothing was behind me, so I just nailed the accelerator and avoided the errant closing door.
Been using manual mode ever since.

 

[Huachipato]

I can second what most here are saying. I had it on auto for a while, but one day I came home and my wife was pulling groceries out of the back of the van, and the lift gate was clearly still in the path of the garage door. The garage door did close the van's lift gate for me and put it's signature scratch on it.

SInce then I decided that it was not worth having it on auto. Like others, I too switched back to manual.

In my previous house I did have a gate that would auto close after being open for a minute. For a gate like that I think the auto setting would work very well.

 

[DUNEDIN01]

Follow up on Home Link. In answer to all the comments. The garage door came down from the open position . Tires had not broken the beam yet. No sensor for something coming down on the car till it hits. By that time the damage is done.

 

[Chaz]

We had a close call once when I came home and one car was exiting at the same time that I was entering the driveway. Fortunately, I heard the chime and saw it closing so I was able to stop it before it hit the other car. We have individual garages and normally don't have to worry about other cars being in the garage but for some reason, the other car was in my garage that day.

This is EXACTLY what happened to me, except that my wife wasn't able to stop in time. It came down just far enough where the roof of her SUV took out the bottom panel of the garage door (tires hadn't passed the safety sensors)... Surprisingly, there wasn't any damage to her vehicle.

At least I got a new set of garage doors! Needless to say, I have disabled the auto-open/close feature.

 

[Big Toys]

When using Auto, I have mine set to trigger further down the driveway, so my car is always far away from the door, maybe 25 feet or so.

 

[quickstrike12]

Same here @Big Toys
About 20’ for me and I’ve never had any real issues.
I do have to be a little careful if me and wife are both pulling in and or out at same times. I have missed the skip button a couple times and caught it in the nick of time