LED Light Bulb Interfering with Garage Door Opener?

[sabad66]

So the past few weeks my Chamberlain garage door opener has been quite finicky. Works intermittently, and most of the time i have to slide the opener button off the visor and move around in the car or even reverse back and forth until i can find a sweet spot to catch the signal. As you can imagine this is a major piss off when you back out of the garage trying to leave your house. I had it completely chalked up as a failed receiver logic board, so this morning was searching around where i could find a replacement receiver board instead of changing out the whole opener. As i was looking around, came across this youtube video:
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Then it dawned on me.... a few weeks ago the light burnt out, and i popped two new LED light bulbs in and that's right around when it started acting up. I did kind of correlate the timing, but i figured i might have bumped the board or something while i was changing the bulb. never would i have imagined the bulbs themselves interfering with the signal.

Tonight i'm going to try and find some incandescent lights to use in there instead of LEDs (hope i can find an old one or buy one somewhere) and crossing fingers this will fix the problem.

anyways, wanted to share this in case anyone else runs into this problem before they rip their hair out. also curious if this has actually happened to anyone else? Funny thing is there is nothing on Chamberlain's troubleshooting website that i could find about it... very lucky to have come across that youtube video otherwise i'd have wasted my time swapping out the receiver logic board.

[ExtraSlow]

Let us know if that fixes your issue. It's a good tip.

[lilmira]

Slightly related regarding the signal to control the garage door opener, it was chamberlain as well.

Last year when I was setting up the myq for my old garage door opener I couldn’t get them to pair for whatever reason. I was almost at the point to give up. Took the myq down from the ceiling and tried again one last time and it worked. Apparently I had the thing too close to the garage door opener. I did follow the instruction and it shows the recommended distance, it’s still too close I guess. Finally installed it may be a foot away and it’s good. If anyone runs into similar problem, that may be the cause.

[chongkee_]

The manual of my chamberlain specifically says do not use LED light bulbs as it can interfere with with signals.
Not a guarantee but it can happen.

[J-hop]

Very interesting, apparently the drivers on some LED bulbs emit electromagnetic interference. I would try going to a more expensive bulb if it’s a cheapo. I replaced mine with Feits I believe and haven’t had any issues.

[speedog]

Incandescents are still available, they're just called heavy duty or rough duty or such to get around the rules.

[JustinL]

I've had this happen. It's especially bad with dimmer LEDs. I replaced an incandescent bulb in a lamp with a dimmable LED right above the garage in the bonus room and had no end of trouble with the remotes until going back to a regular bulb. It seems especially bad when the dimmer is on the lowest setting and the light seems off, but it's still getting a small voltage.

[Swank]

I have a CFL bulb in mine, zero issues, but those are getting hard to find too. I was thinking of replacing it with an LED bulb but not anymore thanks to this :thumbsup:

[blownz]

Great post! One of the bulbs in my garage door just burnt out and I was planning on replacing both with LED. Looks like I will stay old school now. Thanks for saving a major headache! :thumbsup:

[sabad66]

Very interesting, apparently the drivers on some LED bulbs emit electromagnetic interference. I would try going to a more expensive bulb if it’s a cheapo. I replaced mine with Feits I believe and haven’t had any issues.

Brand is philips so would think they are decent quality.


Anyways, Home Depot has a very small collection of incandescents. Grabbed a 2 pack that is specifically marketed for garage door openers (vibration-resistant) for about $6 and threw em on. So far so good, remote button worked first try as it should.

[J-hop]

I double checked today, bulb I’m running in mine is a feit 60w equivalent (part number 280-16-28). Garage door opener is a linear, bulb is on the front antenna sticks up from the rear. Zero issues (been running it for a year)

[ZenOps]

They also still sell appliance rated bulbs. You can't put a LED or CFL in an oven.

[ExtraSlow]

You can't put a LED or CFL in an oven.don't tell me what I can't do!
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[CokerRat]

I recently had LED christmas lights put up and now my garage door openers only work at very close range -- i.e. 10-20' from the door, versus 150' away before. FWIW.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

I just installed 10 of the T8 LED bulbs in my shop and discovered the same issue - no door remotes work if the lights are on.

I consider this a feature, not a bug - now nobody can randomly open the door while I'm working and let the warm air out!

[Darell_n]

What I’m taking from this thread is never buy a POS Chamberlain door opener. Talk about a failure in engineering.

[Ariakas]

I also had issue with my garage opener range as well, did a bunch of research on it as I literally had to be on the pad to open garage door. Also had LED bulb, I flipped back to CFL but didn't notice much difference so kept LED. I thought maybe my neighbours had some wifi device interfering with signals. I checked my wifi device but nothing changed. I even had my homelink replaced on my Mercedes thinking it was faulty (they swapped the whole mirror). I found a youtube vid of extending the garage opener antenna https://youtu.be/ZrIMhHTW0kk

I decided to try that myself and it made a huge difference. I had some spare speaker wire so used that instead as extension. You can see in my pic I looped it around in the front of garage above garage door.

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I installed the Chamberlain MyQ garage opener after my wire extension. I was a little apprehensive initially about purchasing it as it might mess with my range again but my paranoia of not closing the garage door at night or driving away got the better of me.. so far range has not been affected. I never did find the root cause of why my range suck but just glad it's resolved as it drove me nuts when the issue occurred.

[Maxt]

What I’m taking from this thread is never buy a POS Chamberlain door opener. Talk about a failure in engineering.
Unfortunately they make a lot of the different door openers. I have the commercial grade liftmasters in my garage, and even they fell victim to LED interference. I was up on my extension ladder for 2 hours one night trying to get the remotes tied to the openers with no luck. The next day I went out to try again, and it all worked, the only difference was all the lighting was turned off in the garage.

Here is a list of approved bulbs.


https://www.garaga.com/ca/blog/which-led-bulbs-can-i-use-in-my-garage-door-opener

[J-hop]

I just installed 10 of the T8 LED bulbs in my shop and discovered the same issue - no door remotes work if the lights are on.

I consider this a feature, not a bug - now nobody can randomly open the door while I'm working and let the warm air out!

I have 4 LED bars pretty close to my opener and no issues?



What I’m taking from this thread is never buy a POS Chamberlain door opener. Talk about a failure in engineering.

^this, I was going to ‘upgrade’ to a chamberlain smart opener. Guess not!! I’ll stick with my linear

[BerserkerCatSplat]

I have 4 LED bars pretty close to my opener and no issues?



I have a Chamberlain opener, and they seem to be more affected by LEDs than other openers. Your non-Chamberlain opener may not be affected the same way.

[rage2]

I've had no interference issues at all, and my lights are always on. 8 LEDs on the ceiling between 2 fixtures, and one LED bulb on the opener itself. All Philips LEDs if it matters. Chamberlain here too.

[sabad66]

I've had no interference issues at all, and my lights are always on. 8 LEDs on the ceiling between 2 fixtures, and one LED bulb on the opener itself. All Philips LEDs if it matters. Chamberlain here too.

Weird... it was Phillips LEDs that caused issues on mine. Is your bulb on the side of the receiver board or on the other side? In my case i put an LED on both sides so maybe that's why it affected me.


But anyways after almost a week using incandescents, things are working much better. It always works first try as it should. My outdoor keypad also works more reliably too.

[J-hop]

I wonder if it might be worth trying an antenna extender and move the antenna away from the lights?

[rage2]

I only have 1 bulb on my opener.

I was contemplating upgrading my opener to a belt drive unit, but now I'm having second thoughts with the problems you guys are seeing with LEDs.

[redevil]

Used LED bulbs for my Chamberlain as well for over 6 months before I started to notice interference and not responding to my Homelink on my Ram 1500. It worked fine on the Acura RDX homelink but just wouldn't respond to the one in my Ram. Changed it back out to the regular bulbs and works better now. Going to try that antenna extension as well.

[J-hop]

Used LED bulbs for my Chamberlain as well for over 6 months before I started to notice interference and not responding to my Homelink on my Ram 1500. It worked fine on the Acura RDX homelink but just wouldn't respond to the one in my Ram. Changed it back out to the regular bulbs and works better now. Going to try that antenna extension as well.

I also watched a few YouTube videos of guys using coax cable to extend the antennas to provide shielding from the EM radiation. Might be a cheap option. I don’t know the mechanics behind doing that, I think in some cases you might have to solder to the board. My linear has an external antenna wire I could easily solder/connect to but looking at some openers, especially the dual light ones I don’t see external antennas so might be a bit more difficult

[JustinL]

I did another test the other night. I had my basement led lights dimmed about half way and my wife called from outside the garage saying that the door wouldn't open. Instead of turning off the lights, I cranked them up to full brightness and then she was able to open the door no problem. There must be something about being dimmed that causes extra interference.

[AndyL]

It's not the Chamberlain that's the issue, it's doing as intended - ignoring the EM radiation being put out by the cheap LEDs.

Probably why rage2 has no issue.

Not exactly a new issue - goes back to CFL era - the chepa ones also caused range issues. Since Homeland took back that frequency (what was it 315mhz?) From the gdo world, and they had to go higher - you've had more issues with interference - same reason why wind/freedom/shaw whatever they are now get worse reception inside buildings than the legacy carriers who have access to the lower frequencies.