pfishwacker

Homelink range suddenly reduced. Previously effective 150 ft range. Now operates in garage but will not open garage door when on apron with garage door closed. No changes made garage door opener. Homelink lights and flashes yellow then transitions to solid yellow. Garage door does not open. Seems to happen when vehicle has been driven and warm. Local outside temp 40 deg F. Any ideas?

Max Blast

New windshield?

pfishwacker

No, nothing new. It just stopped working a few weeks ago from any distance with the garage door closed, car running or off. Used to work from 150 ft. It does work inside the garage with the garage door open or closed. If the Homelink in my 2007 GL450 were battery operated I'd assume weak batteries. It's not the garage door opener as the Homelink works when the car is in the garage and when the vehicle is on the apron when I close the garage door. I suspect a weak transmission from the Homelink but have no way to prove it. Since the antenna is embedded in the rear view mirror I discount that as a problem. Stumped!

Max Blast

Any new RF jammers in your neighborhood?

Describe your environment, please. Rural? Urban?

loooots of probable causes here to eliminate before going to troubleshooting your car.

eric_in_sd

Poor guy is probably going to figure out he has fallen under surveillance.

Max Blast

Haha yeah, it usually isn’t that onerous.

It’s usually a new radiated frequency emitter being installed by an unsuspecting neighbor or the op themselves, without full understanding of how cluttered the rf spectrum is in the range that these garage door systems operate (288-433Mhz). What else is there here you say?

https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/O...pwp38chart.pdf

have some light reading. It could be a neighbor’s gate or door interfering in his frequency, effectively jamming the signal so that op has to get to within burn-through range for his signal to be effective. Again, lots of things operate in that spectrum.

Max Blast

Surveillance is passive, silly.

eric_in_sd

That's just what they want you to think.

Max Blast

Well if it’s done right you wouldn’t have triggers like cell phone service and garage door openers all of the sudden acting weird. These must be amateurs.

or someone in the neighborhood’s garage door opener is stuck in transmit or learn mode, drowning out his signal.

OP, have you tried to re-learn/re-sync the signal?

pfishwacker

Tried the re-learn on original "button" and 2 other buttons. No other interference (no neighbors within range) and no new construction locally. HOWEVER, I did find an interesting situation. I have a handicap mirror hang-tag and recently it renewed (every 4 years). Along with the renewal date sticker came a new mirror hang-tag, which looked just like the old one. Since the Homelink worked in the garage with the new tag in pace, I assumed the problem when outside the closed garage was transmission range. After trying all the above solutions, in desperation I tried repositioning the hang-tag away from the front of the mirror, and the Homelink worked outside the closed garage. If this continues to work I assume the new tag has some metallic component in the plastic acting acted as a Faraday cage. If this doesn't hold true I will be back to update. In any event, Thanks to all for your great suggestions!

tbirdvet

Test the distance using the garage door remote that came with the garage door opener and see if that makes a difference.