So last night it was just after midnight, and fortunately I was still up because I heard the sound of the garage door opening. I went to investigate, assuming the worst. I found no one and couldn't explain why the door had randomly opened on its own after being closed for hours. My only reasonable explanations for why it opened are:

• Somebody punched in the right code on the outdoor keypad
  
• Somebody was playing with their new Flipper Zero and hacked my opener
  
• I have the door set to close just too tightly and whatever sensor reverses the door when it closes on something has been sitting right at that threshold for months...until last night when it went over the limit due to temperature of the helper springs, electrical noise, etc.
  

My money's on the last option, but I really have no way of knowing. It sure freaked me out to have to open my safe, grab my brightest flashlight, and make sure Santa's helper wasn't in my garage helping themselves to tools, bikes, and cars. I'll be re-doing the door opener's closed position set procedure again this morning. Merry Christmas and be safe!

I recently bought a replacement remote for my opener. It’s a tiny thing. The damn button gets pushed by accident in my shirt pocket a lot. I keep finding the garage door open.

(Don’t want to leave the remote in my vehicle, which is parked in the driveway, because I let my sister use my usual spot in the garage)

While I was programming my new car to open the garage door, my neighbor happened to press his to open the door.

We didn’t realize that that had happened and I had no idea why our garage door kept opening.

Then we figured it out. Whenever he would press his button, it would not only open his garage, but mine, too

Is that a possibility for you?

Same thing happened to our garage door. Happened multiple times before I realized it was opening on its own. Something on the circuit board had aged or worn so I replaced the opener.

quote:

Originally posted by h2oys:
While I was programming my new car to open the garage door, my neighbor happened to press his to open the door.

We didn’t realize that that had happened and I had no idea why our garage door kept opening.

Then we figured it out. Whenever he would press his button, it would not only open his garage, but mine, too

Is that a possibility for you?

That happened to me in SoCal

Shortly after we bought our current house I replaced the 30 year old door openers.

After several years, the wife wanted me to program each remote to open each door and install and program them into MyQ app. Immediately after that, we start getting unwanted movements. Could be any of the three doors any time of day or night. At first I thought it was the app, but it’s simply notifying of the movement, not initiating it. I figure with nine outstanding codes, I have that many more opportunities for undesired access, so last weekend reprogrammed each opener only to single door. So far, so good.

Happened to me years ago. I ended up resetting the opener and reprogramming the openers and it didn’t happen again.

I installed MyQ on each of my doors and programmed them to close at 10:00 pm if they are open. At least that's some reduction in risk.

Openers and remotes come with a default code, like 1-2-3-4. A LOT of people, and installers, never change it. So, a dude coming down the street hits the button on his remote, and might open a couple more doors.

Chimney must’ve been blocked…

Santa has a universal remote.

^^^^^^

One of my doors busted a spring. My wife heard the bang in the house. I was walking the dog in the park. I hope they can get to us soon as a new car is sitting in the drive.

You know, after a certain age, it becomes much easier to saunter in through the garage door than to skinny down that narrow chimney!

The capacitors in my liftmaster button went bad and that caused the door to go up.

We had that problem years ago and I adjusted the force and travel (thinking over travel like above) and cleaned the cobwebs and leaves from near the safety sensor. That did nothing, though it is good maintenance.

I put a sensor on the door that activated a beeper to alert us when it was open. After rushing out of bed in the wee hours when it opened several times over about 10 days), I deduced it was someone coming home late whose opener must have landed at the same frequency somehow (despite the 'rolling code'). I'm pretty sure that I was wrong.

I tried a reset and reprogramming as well and it still happened.

At some point it lessened and stopped altogether about 7-8 years now, I think.

I read somewhere that LED bulbs in your opener could cause this problem, but I don't think I ever had one in there. More on that here.

I also found out that every manufacturer used an industry standard of 390 mhz up to about 2005 then it switched to 315 MHz, in response to the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security use of the 390 Mhz frequency to operate their nationwide Land Mobile Radio (LMR) system.

Mine is a Chamberlain from about 2003 that originally operated on 390 mhz. The receiver it self has been replaced with a 315 Mhz unit that then sends a hardwired signal to the opener. If you still have an antenna wire for the 390 mhz system, it might occasionally get tripped by the DoD/DHS radio system I suppose.

I also have had intermittent problems getting mine to open from outside, I am thinking of extending the antenna wire. I'll post if the phantom openings reappear.

quote:

Originally posted by maxwayne:
One of my doors busted a spring. My wife heard the bang in the house. I was walking the dog in the park. I hope they can get to us soon as a new car is sitting in the drive.

Disconnect the opener by pulling the big red handle. Then manually lift the door until fully open and settled in place horizontally, drive your new car inside, and manually close it. (This works on most, but there are some garage doors out there that are too heavy to lift manually.)

You store your flashlight in your safe ???

Bob

what is the make / model of the opener, how old is it, and does it use rolling codes?

This just happened to me. I tried changing the batteries in the remote but the solution was resetting the code.
Not sure what changed but I had just returned from a trip and I'm glad the door wasn't open all week.