You know what I mean? One of those things that just drive you crazy, you know?
So a few weeks ago, one of my garage door sensors stopped working. I’m talking about those little electric eye sensors that stop you from intentionally crushing the neighbor’s cat as you lure it into your garage. The sensors that detect small children or objects that are in the path of the closing door. When the beam is broken, the door will not come down any further until the path is cleared and the button pressed again. Anyway, it stopped working. The likely cause is the number of times its been banged or bumped as one of us moved the garbage cans out to the curb. The inconvenience that followed prompted me to take advantage of our war
mer weather today to try to fix it.
Now, I pride myself on my problem solving and analytical skills, especially with mechanical devices. Since I have a two-car garage, I was able to disconnect the offending sensor and try it on the other side. It worked. I also yanked loose the wiring and tried it on the other side’s sensor. It worked. So, the sensor is good and the wiring is good. What could it be? The transmitter.
Oddly enough, when the receiver sensor is plugged in, the “active” light is on even if the transmitter and receiver are not inline. But when the transmitter is unplugged, the “active” light on the receiver goes off. Not the way they should behave unless they are inline. What I found was that with the “active” light on, the receiver would allow the door to close even if not mounted or inline. I made a choice and remounted the sensor. Better to have the door close by the remote and just be CAREFUL with the neighbor’s cat–especially since I sometimes leave very early in the morning and cannot get someone to close the door from inside for me.
Now what do you imagine happened the first time I pressed the remote button to close the door? Wrong! It closed. I went off to pick up my daughter from work, drove back home, pressed the button, opened the door, drove in, and with a sense of some accomplishment, once again, pressed the button.
The opener light flashed to let me know something was wrong and the door refused to close. I checked the path–clear! I checked the sensor–no light!!! AARRGH! This garage must hate me. Well, this means that when I leave tomorrow at 5:30 a.m., someone else gets to be up early to close it for me. It also means the neighbor’s cat is safe–for now!
(No cats were harmed in the writing of this post or in the testing of the garage door. And fact is, the neighbors don’t have a cat. But if they did…)
More:
Part 2: http://trebord.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/its-one-of-those-things-part-2/
Part 3: http://trebord.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/its-one-of-those-things-part-3/
