Garage door open indicator


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

There are battery powered wireless systems on the market, but the ones I found would signal that the door was open even if you left it open just a few inches for ventilation. I wanted a system that would alert me if we`d just plain forgotten that the door was in the fully raised position. Also, if possible, I wanted the indicator to be as discreet as possible.


Garage door open indicator
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.

We don`t need any more electronic gizmos sitting around the house and certainly not in the master bedroom, where my wife even objects to the (fairly small) ooma Scout on her night stand. I did find an article on a DIY system I`ll link to it a bit later in this post but the type of garage door in that article was different from mine. The article did give me a wiring schematic that I could work from, so with that in mind I began inspecting my garage door for options for a switch of some sort. What I discovered was that the top edge of the door, when in the fully open position, was right near the angle iron that supports the rails for the door. As a bonus, there was a bolt that I could mount a simple bracket from. So I headed to the local Radio Shack and bought $6 worth of components, stopped at the home center and picked up a doorbell transformer, 120 feet of two strand bell wire, and a couple of L  or corner brackets, and was set. My total outlay was about $40. I started by reaming out a couple of the mounting holes on the larger of the two L brackets, installed a normally open/momentary on  push button switch on the side facing the top of the door, and bolted the bracket to the angle iron support. Here`s the installed switch, with the door stopped just short of being fully open: When the door is fully opened, the switch is depressed, closing the circuit. The bracket can be bent to ensure that the switch is fully...




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