Back of garage door LED strips??

bryank930 · Jun 27, 2018

Anyone here have any experience with these??

https://www.garagedoorlighting.com/

I've seen a few posts from them on Instagram, so I checked out their site. They seem WAY overpriced for what I think they are.

I want to DIY my own setup like this, but I can't figure out how they get them to turn on when the door is fully raised. I don't want mine to be on any time the door is up, I want to control that with a switch.

They just don't give enough details or pictures of their kits for me to see what's going on or if there's a cord dangling somewhere.

The only part I'm really hung up on is how to get power to the door without having a cord hanging off somewhere, or manually plugging it in when I need it (honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to that).

purplezr2 · Jun 27, 2018

Assuming they are Low voltage(12v) you could bring power to one side of the garage door rails and have spring contacts when the door was at the fully up position.

bryank930 · Jun 27, 2018

purplezr2 said:
Assuming they are Low voltage(12v) you could bring power to one side of the garage door rails and have spring contacts when the door was at the fully up position.

I thought of that, but for some reason I thought it wouldn't work. I may just have to try it and see what happens.

Platonic Solid · Jun 27, 2018

Well that's a remarkably uninformative website. You can order the $299 product, but you can't see it. :wtf:

cybrdyke · Jun 27, 2018

Send me $299.00 . I'll send you some lights for your garage door.
CD

Lelandwelds · Jun 28, 2018

What an odd way to light a shop! Wish I had thought of it. There might be some good uses of Arduino stuff like that board with the accelerometer from a cell phone. Beats a mercury switch.

openwheelracing88 · Jun 28, 2018

LOL I feel so stupid right now. When I was installing lighting for my garage, I kept thinking that stupid garage door blocking half of the lighting.

jdm5 · Jun 28, 2018

I actually think it's a clever idea, but not $299 worth. I have a ton of LED's in my garage bays, but some get blocked when the door is rolled up.

I am going to think how I could build something like that myself.

Anyone have any immediate thoughts?

LifeLongWNYer · Jun 28, 2018

As far as the cord, ( I haven't done this ) but how about using a cord reel from one of those retractable work lights? I imagine you might have to take it apart and remove the pawl, or whatever holds the reel in position when the cord and light are extended. You want it to work like a retractable tape measure.

A thought on the switching concept.... There used to me a company which made thousands of switches, primarily for industrial use, called Microswitch, don't know if they are still in business, but if they are..... They used to make a switch, a little bigger than a box of wooden matches, that had a coiled wire spring which protruded. At rest, the wire placed the switch in the "normal" condition, moving the wire in any direction "made" the switch and it changed states. It would be pretty easy to fabricate a bracket so that the door moves the wire when it is fully up. Those switches were rated pretty good, so they should carry the load of a few lights. They also had both a normally open and a normally closed contact. Nice, but I have no idea what they would cost today. Certainly not 299.00

.

techieman33 · Jun 28, 2018

I would build a track next to my existing garage door track. Put a few wheels in it with some chain attached to them. Then attach an extension cord to those chains. Then make a well strain relieved attachment to the garage door. When the door goes down it pulls the cable along the track with the door. Same thing when it goes back up. You could use a piece of aircraft cable for all the hard attachments. The extension cord it attached to that cable with a little extra slack so the aircraft cable is taking all the load, the extension cord is just going along for the ride. You should be able to get an extra garage door track and the wheels for next to nothing if you can find someone replacing their old one. Then it's just a matter of wiring up the doors which should be pretty straight forward. Then do whatever you want for a switch. I've attached a quick ms paint drawing to help explain what I'm talking about.

Platonic Solid · Jun 28, 2018

Mounting lights to a garage door is a gimmicky solution that's doomed to fail. If the garage doors cover the light fixtures, then move the light fixtures next to and between the garage doors. Problem solved - easy, cheap and safe.

Edit - I can see an issue with longer garage doors in which case I'd sooner mount a bracket below the door for fixture mounting than mount directly to the door.

I have to question how much of an issue this really is. If you have the garage door open at night every bug in the neighborhood will be in there. During the day it depends on how much daylight you get.

Lelandwelds · Jun 29, 2018

techieman33 said:
I would build a track next to my existing garage door track. Put a few wheels in it with some chain attached to them. Then attach an extension cord to those chains. Then make a well strain relieved attachment to the garage door. When the door goes down it pulls the cable along the track with the door. Same thing when it goes back up. You could use a piece of aircraft cable for all the hard attachments. The extension cord it attached to that cable with a little extra slack so the aircraft cable is taking all the load, the extension cord is just going along for the ride. You should be able to get an extra garage door track and the wheels for next to nothing if you can find someone replacing their old one. Then it's just a matter of wiring up the doors which should be pretty straight forward. Then do whatever you want for a switch. I've attached a quick ms paint drawing to help explain what I'm talking about.

Easier yet:

Attach a taught cable beside the door. Bend some brass rod around some round stock. Cut each ring loose and braze. String on cable with spacing. Feed your cord through each ring. Bend the cord and tape both sides so ring can't move along extension cord. Brass wears well.

ard · Jul 1, 2018

jdm5 said:
Anyone have any immediate thoughts?

Glass garage doors?

DCarr2 · Jul 1, 2018

In my old shop, my dad got around this issue by installing 8' flourescent lights on all 3 sides of the overhead doors. the sprillage of light under the door while it was up was enough that you could perform open heart surgery lol

Falcon67 · Jul 2, 2018

Gee, another content-free Wordpress web site selling over priced items. How unusual. No way paying $300 bucks for that. I'd just mount a couple of single or dual LED fixtures to the lower part of the door tracks.

Lelandwelds · Jul 2, 2018

ard said:
Glass garage doors?

Those are cool. Maybe use polygal?

One of the house plans we considered had a house, garage, and guest house with a triangular space between that had glass garage doors. The pool area bordered it too. You could drive on it.

It was cooler than it sounds especially if you are active or like indoor outdoor living.

Dave in Mass · Jul 3, 2018

I just put a 10 4' LED in my garage. I have 5 doors. Despite it making me OCD twitchy, I didn't put them the same distance from the back wall as the front.

The front ones line up with my top section windows when the doors are open.

Full brightness whether doors are open or shut.

CJ7VFR · Jul 5, 2018

Platonic Solid said:
….I have to question how much of an issue this really is. If you have the garage door open at night every bug in the neighborhood will be in there. During the day it depends on how much daylight you get.

I agree.

If I am in the garage during the day, with the doors open, the doors will cover a few of the lights. But because it is daytime, the amount of natural light coming in is more than enough to make up the difference of the covered lights.

At night, like you said, I keep the doors closed because of bugs. If I want air in the garage at night while working, I open the windows and the man door and let air come thru the screen door behind it.

When I put my lights up in the garage, I put them on two different switches so that when the garage doors are open, the lights that get covered up by the doors can be shut off and not waste electricity.

On a side note, there are a few threads in this forum that show what some guys have done to mount 4 foot shop lights "under" the garage door. Some made brackets to attach the lights to the garage door tracks, and others used some angle iron to make a "beam" across the tracks to mount the lights under the doors.

And others mounted LED shop lights directly to the inside surface of the garage door on one of the door panels. Then they installed receptacles on the ceiling and the wall so that they can plug in the lights using the electrical cords on the fixtures into the receptacles when the doors are open or when they are closed.

Of the ones I have seen that did this, they made sure that the electrical cords were long enough that when plugged into the receptacles the cord would not get ripped out of the receptacle if the door was opened or closed by accident while the lights were on.

Jim

Holt · Aug 27, 2018

You could always just mount the leds to the door and when you need them just run a extension cord to them. Keeps it simple and no moving parts to fail.

bryank930 · Aug 27, 2018

Holt said:
You could always just mount the leds to the door and when you need them just run a extension cord to them. Keeps it simple and no moving parts to fail.

I think that's the best option, and what I'll most likely be doing whenever I get around to it. :thumbup:

Marctrees · Aug 27, 2018

Holt said:
You could always just mount the leds to the door and when you need them just run a extension cord to them. Keeps it simple and no moving parts to fail.

Gee, I dunno.... seems to me a guy should work some Arduino, Blutooth, Alexa, RADAR, AND infrared, into it... at the very least I would say.

O Ya, and Siri.

Marc

GTO · Aug 27, 2018

Just because it's an an idea,it doesn't necessarily make it a good one.
I myself would pass.

I could mount some pretty bright LED light fixtures underneath my garage door header on the outside that would accomplish the same.

Back of garage door LED strips??

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