Your garage door won’t open when you use your remote control from your car in the driveway? If your garage door opener is working properly in every other way but NOT receiving the signal from your remote when the garage door is closed, there are a few things you can do. (If your garage door button on the wall of your garage opens your garage door, then we know the door is working and must consider this as a communication issue.)
We are going to assume there is a communication problem from using your remote from outside with the garage door shut. There may be something interfering with the signal or possibly something else.
First make sure the batteries are in working order in your remote control. If so, go inside your garage with the remote you had in your car, and with the garage closed, test the remote to see if the door opens. If not then your remote is most likely broken and you need to replace it. We will assume this since the button on the garage door wall opened the door. Try another remote you know that works. Test it from inside the garage and then test it from outside the garage.
How to fix a Garage Door Opener – Remote not working
If the remote works from inside the garage but not from the outside, then most likely the antenna wire on the garage door opener itself may be damaged, broken, or not in visible range. Check to be sure the antenna is attached and if it is not hanging down from the unit, move the antenna so it can catch the beam being sent by the remote. Please note that the antenna on some garage door openers is encased inside the unit itself.
Garage Door Opener Antenna Extension
Another issue could be that there is some sort of interference from different wireless devices in use near your area. If this is the case then find the antenna mount point and add a wire to it to make it longer. If this does not work there are other solutions. There are extenders that allow you to send the signal from outside the house and it runs by a wire to the garage opener unit.
There are reliable units called universal garage door opener receivers. These are an optional add on unit if you have issues opening your garage door from the outside. These units are used because they improve the range of your remote. As most garage door remotes work only about 20 feet from the opener, this unit will make it so you can open your garage from up to 100 yards away. This unit is called the Liftmaster 850LM Universal Gate and Garage Door Opener Receiver and is available for right around $40 dollars and WILL solve your garage door opening issues.
There are now systems that link into your home WIFI wireless that let you open your garage door with your smartphone.
How To Open Your Garage Door With Your iPhone or Android Phone
Do you know of an easier method to allow a remote control to open a garage door with interference problems? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
i have two remotes for my overhead door opener. they worked fine until i installed a universal wireless keypad opener. that works fine. but the two remotes stopped worked. what can i do to make all three work?
My garage door opener did not open from outside the house, but did open from inside the garage, when I stood within 5-6 feet from the opener. I just enlarged the antenna by adding to the existing wire another foot. And it worked great!
This is indicative of using a LED light instead of a incandescent or CFC. A LED light bulb pulses at the same frequency rate that the garage door remote works and totally interferes with the operation of the opener. Typically when the light is off the door will open of close. When the light comes on the LED interferes until it goes off. There are special LED light manufactured for garage door openers.
I have 2 single garage doors. Each door is controlled with a Lift Master Professional 1/2 HP. So two Lift Master openers. They were already installed when we moved in 11 years ago. Prior to last year we were only using the 1 side to park in. Ever since August 2016 we have been using both sides to park our cars in. The one side opens and operates perfectly as it should. The other side several times a week has issues and wont open when using the remote in my car. I will come home from work and be parked in driveway and it takes several presses of the button to get it to open (like 8-10 times). Sometimes I have to open the other side in order for my side to open. What I mean is that no matter how many times I press the button it won’t open, but as soon as I open the other door it opens immediately. Other times it works on the 1st press of the button. I have erased and reprogrammed the remote and changed the batteries all to no avail. Any ideas why this happens and how to fix it?
Craftsman Garage Door model 139.53648SRT.
We have Craftsman Garage Door model 139.53648SRT2 this started about two weeks ago, cleared out all codes, reprogram all units.
I noticed you can open it with remote but can’t close it with remote or key pad.
Then I found out when you open it up with either remote or keypad if you turn off the light on wall unit it will close.
So to let down with either remote or key pad you have to push the light button on the wall unit then it will go down or wait till the light goes out which is about 4 1/2 minutes.
Why is this happening?
Can anyone help!
Why is the light on preventing the door from going down?
The light on is preventing the door from going down until we hit the off button on the wall unit, then it goes down.
I’ve tried everything can’t get it to go down with the light on, none of the remotes or keypad will work until we hit the off light on wall Unit.
Thank you for the quick response, the Liftmaster is nearly 19 years old, I don’t see an on-off switch, I think you may think that I have a more recent model, the wall mount opener is just a button. Thank you.
Ken,
The lock button on the door control may be activated.
Press the button to turn this feature off.
The light bulb will blink two times.
This feature is designed to prompt you that the lock button is activated.
When the lock button is ON the garage door opener will work from the door control but the remote controls are locked out.
Is this a problem that just started to happen with your Liftmaster Professional garage door opener?
Or has this been an issue since the garage door opener was installed?
Did someone wire up the light switch on the same circuit as the garage door opener?
Was the opener professionally installed?
Did you recently change the light fixture or bulb?
Does the light flash on the garage door opener?
-RR
I have an older model Liftmaster Professional.
When the garage light is on my remotes don’t work.
As soon as the light turns off, the remotes work fine, any ideas?
Have a liftmaster garage door opener, remote does not work inside or outside. Batteries are new. wall mount works and getting tired of running over safety sensors to close door after switching to close:)
Tried sinking remote to closer, but recently read may need to open up closer to get to circuit board and the Learn button?
Will restting this affect wall mount? or just frequency related. There is no military base around, but interesting thing occurred a while ago when activated remote a neighbours garage door opened? Cross frequencied?
Thanks
Sue
Garage door opened in the early morning but would not close! The SUN was shining directly on the Safety Beam Reciever (the one with 2 mini-indicators). When I stood in the driveway, blocking the sunlight, the door closed normally. Discovered this trick after reading the owners manual. {this unit “should be located on the shady side of the door to prevent direct sunlight from shining directly into the receiver’s lens.”}