With KDFI My 27 In Dallas Showing Xfiles, I became inspired for this blog post about the mysterious of garage door transmitters.
Imagine your garage opener remote suddenly not working, at the same time many of your Dallas / Fort Worth neighbors are standing outside complaining of the same mysterious trouble!
A few years ago, automatic garage doors openers near naval bases in areas of the U.S.
mysteriously stopped working. It seemed like an X Files episode as it became evident that dead
garage door remotes were happening in areas with large naval military activity…
The Over Head Door Opener Culprit?
No, not extraterrestrial interference with our NORAD bases: apparently certain communications
signals emitted from naval base’s radio-communication systems shared a frequency with many
garage-door opener systems and the most probable theory was that the more powerful military
signal drowned out the information garage door remotes were trying to transmit.
Annoying as it may have been, there was nothing sinister behind this pattern. Rather, it was simply a
side effect of the way all remote entry garage door systems are now designed. Each time you open
or close a garage door, the remote and the receiver inside have a brief conversation in code—a
conversation that happens to be conducted via radio signals over the airwaves.
Brief History: garage door transmitter codes emitted by remotes have come a long way over time.
Criminals (as well as mischievous kids) learned to use homemade scanners or “code grabbers” to
pick up the code when the homeowner opened the garage door; they could then re-transmit the
code to gain entry themselves. In response, most remotes today use rolling codes, or ‘security
codes’ that can generate billions of combinations. This is possible because each time a message is
sent between the remote and the receiver, each part of the system also selects and stores a new
code. Those codes will always be in sync because each has been programmed with the same
pseudo-random number generator—that is, a formula that produces a sequence of numbers that
would appear random to anyone not possessing the formula. Be careful, however: it is possible to
desynchronize the system by pressing the remote button out of range of the opener more times than
the system’s built-in tolerance for error will permit.
Garage Door Openers My-Q Technology
The newest technology by Chamberlain Liftmaster corporation, known as My-Q technology, adds
additional security by alerting the homeowner via a smartphone app when the garage door opens or
closes. An additional safety feature of the My-Q system allows homeowners to control of the door via
the app, meaning you can actually open or close the door using the app, via the internet, from
anywhere your smartphone works. In conclusion, the ability to know when the garage door is
open/closed (for example when you or a family member forgot to close it), and the ability to remotely
operate the door using a phone app is a feature that we believe even Fox Mulder and Dana Scully
would appreciate! Bookmark 365 Over Head Doors & Gates in Dallas for more exciting blog post.