[Discuss] Off Topic and Proud of It: Untraceable Garage Door Openers: No Alexa, No Siri, no nothing

[ethanms at bu.edu (Ethan Schwartz)]

> On Oct 17, 2021, at 13:25, Daniel Barrett <dbarrett at blazemonger.com> wrote:
> 
> ?On October 15, 2021, Kent Borg wrote:
>> I'd start with being worried about not being able to open my garage in a 
>> power outage.
> 
> No worries - every powered garage door I've ever seen can also be
> opened manually from the inside. Just pull a ripcord and lift the
> door.


In addition to the manual release option many of today's DC motor openers (often marketed as "ultra quiet" or "soft open/close") also incorporate a ~7Ah 12V SLA battery which can raise and lower the door several times when activated by RF remote.

A few months ago I pulled up to my house on a lovely sunny day and wondered why my garage door was opening more slowly than usual, I was in the house a minute or two before I realized the power was out -- someone had hit a street-side transformer a mile or two away and power was out for 14 hours.

Really a great feature if accessing the interior using a people-door is problematic (my mother's condo has _only_ the garage door, so the backup battery is great peace of mind).

To stay on topic a bit: I found WiFi was not powered by the DC battery in my Chamberlain opener, just the RF for the remote and power for the wall mounted control.

-Ethan