Category: Home Improvement & Remodeling

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The Wayne-Dalton iDrive

Let me start off with a rant. To those marketing monkeys setting around trying to find names for new products: For the love of God leave the “i” off the front of your product. Yeah yeah, it was cute to have Macintosh related products with an “i” on it when the iMac first came out. But even that got old fast. It might make sense if your product had something to do with the Internet but even then your pushing it.

My point being that iDrive isn’t really a unique name and it’s mostly associated to computer related things. Yet Wayne-Dalton choose this name for there garage door opener. Yes people I’m talking about a garage door opener here.

Despite the stupid name it’s a very innovative product. It’s about as high tech as you can get for a garage door opener. It mounts directly above the garage door and therefore has no chains or other devices to run along the celling of the garage. It’s self contained in a small one small unit.

In the box comes 1 iDrive motor unit, 2 key chain remotes, 1 wall mount remote, 1 outside keypad remote, a light fixture and assorted screws and hardware. What doesn’t come with it is a wired wall mount remote. That means it’s completely wireless.

The wall remote has a “interlock” button on it that prevents it from working when it’s not in the case. Basically the case pushes the button and it works. Or as far as I can figure that’s what it’s purpose is. Maybe it’s a reset button or something but I couldn’t tell. All I know is that this button had come off the circuit board and that the wall remote showed no sign of life. I already had the main unit mounted on the garage door and didn’t want to pull it down to take it back to the store or worse: call Wayne-Dalton tech support. I whipped out my 15-watt soldering iron and soldered this surface mount button back on. The remote worked.

That was just the start of my problems. For some reason this thing did not want to receive signals from the remotes, or so it seemed. I went through the wall remote programming instructions (which are the same for the key chains) about a hundred times before I could get it to operate the garage door properly. Even then it was hit or miss if it would operate the garage door. It was completely random if it would open or not when you pushed the button. What was really strange was it would work better with the front cover off and would work consistently in the morning but not in the afternoon. This points to some sort of overheat situation, a sensor or something that thinks 70 degrees is too hot. Since we use our garage for the main entry into our house getting this thing to operate reliably started to become a big issue. So I broke down and called tech support.

I hate calling tech support for anything, particularly for consumer devices. Mainly because I get some person on the phone who doesn’t understand that I’m more technically inclined then most and don’t need to get the instructions for pushing the button. In this case it took 4 separate calls to tech support to get this thing replaced. In all 3 cases the first thing they made me do was go through the process of programming the remotes.

First call to tech support was after they closed (there on eastern time, I’m on mountain. Yesh!). They called back a few days later (phone message said 24 hours). It was at work so not much I could do. Guy said the reason the cover was a problem was because it was interfering with the programming button. Said that I should “adjust that”.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=gregssite-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000KKVHVG&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrOK, that wasn’t the case. Next call to tech support. Guy makes me go through the programming of all the remotes. Jump through a bunch of other hoops. Still no resolution. He gets his next level tech support on the phone. Makes me go through programming the remotes. Blah! It’s not a programming issue already. Guy makes me take the wall remote out of it’s housing to get closer to the main unit with it. But wait a minute this this has some interlock button that prevents it’s from operating when it’s out side of it’s case. I told that to the guy twice, but he just didn’t get it. (Why do I know more about this thing them him?) Ok clearly it doesn’t work for sure now. He thinks the fuse is bad. I really was hoping the fuse was bad but when I pop it out it doesn’t appear to be bad. He suggests that I replace the fuse anyway and if that doesn’t work to call them back and he will make sure I get a new motherboard for this thing. I agree. I should have got his name. Oh and the wall remote didn’t work at all after that.

“Look”, I said to the 4th tech support person, “I’ve already been through this with the last 3 people. Not only do I know how to program the remotes because it’s in your manual and I’ve done it a hundred times, not to mention that the last 2 tech support people walked me through it and it didn’t help.”

“Sir, to me it sounds like the wall station isn’t programmed correctly.”

GRRRRR!!!! I’m a pretty calm person, but this set me off. I nearly yelled at the girl that A) The 3rd tech support person I talked to said that if I had to call back that the main unit would get replaced (which he put in his computer file, he promised me he would put it in the my file) b) I already told her that I went through this procedure a gazillion times and I am not doing it again.

“Well, I will have to send this through engineering and the warranty department since I cannot replace it because I couldn’t verify the proper operation”.

Fine, whatever. Just get me a new part. (I should mention that she did send me a wall remote)

A week later I get a call from Wayne-Dalton. They basically were sending me everything, a new main unit, wall remote, key chain remote. Yahoo!!! Finally some good news from these people, I thought for sure that they were going to give me a hard time about this and the eventually result was going to be me returning it to Lowes. Frustrated even more that a great idea didn’t work out.

A few days later the parts arrive. I installed the main unit the next weekend. What a relief, it works just as expected at any time of the day. One noticeable difference is the light control. WIth the old unit I could turn the light on from the wall remote but I could never get it to turn off. But it’s still not totally without problems. There’s a “detent” setting that controls how the motor arm thingy drops down. Right now it’s set in such a way that the motor never drops down into it’s locked position. I’ve only been able to get it to go down before the garage closes
or not at all. There’s som
e fine tuning to do with i
t but I never had to do that with the old one. I’m just happy the darned thing works.

Next step, getting the computer to control it.

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A ECM for Barking Dogs

Lucky me. I have two neighbors with dogs. All of those dogs are kept primarly in their back yard with nothing else better to do than to bark at me when I’m in my back yard. Short of reporting them to the city I have tried this device call “Bark Free”.

One one side of out house is two dogs. They are still young and appear to be golden retrivers. Behind us is are 3 dogs. I can only see one of them and it appears to be the leader. In other words when it barks the other follows. It also is the one that can climb up on the fence and stick its head over. I have talked to both of these neighbors both of which took action after the complaint and slowly slacked off. I have investigated making a formal complaint to the city, but it may require going to court. I’m not prepared to do that just yet. So I have been investigating alternatives.

In steps the Bark Free by Lentek. It claims that it “has a specially designed audible sound selector that lets you choose high ultrasonic frequencies, which can only be heard by dogs, or lower sound tones audible to human ears. Both sounds have been proven to assist in controlling dogs from incessant barking.” So the idea is that when ever a dog begins to bark a sensor will recognize it and emit the irritating noise that only dogs can hear. Thus the dogs will stop barking so they wont hear the noise any more.

This is what you get in the package. (sorry for the fuzzy picture)

One thing I always look for in the packaging is if they put enough time an effort into the design of the product so it will work. Or did they just through it together to sell it. In this case they seemed to including everything. A 50 foot extension cord for the power brick and a water resistant cover are two examples.

I installed this thing on the back of my house under a eve of the roof. I first set the sensitivity to max for a while. Just about any noise will set this thing off at max sensitive. And I can tell when it goes on and off because the speakers will make a clicking noise. I did this so that the dogs would be aware that the noise is there. I left it at this level for a week and then set it an normal sensitivity.

Unfortunately this thing only has a 25 foot range in front of it for about 180 degrees. Which means the dogs on the side of our house don’t always get the benefits of it. And it doest quite reach all the way into the neighbors yard behind us. But it does react to the dogs that get near the fence.

Having had it up for about a month now I can say I have noticed reduced barking from the dogs. They still bark at me when I’m out there, but they seem to bark for only a short time then leave. I have also noticed that 2 of the 3 dogs behind us don’t come right up to the fence, they stay some distance when they start barking. The dogs on the side of our house I have not heard barking at me when I’m in the back yard for some time. The bottom line is I think it does modify behavior but depending on the dog it does not eliminate barking all together.