I got tired of looking at my ugly 1990's faux-wood grain Genie Series II garage door opener control hanging on the wall, so I decided to "repackage" it into something that looks like it could belong in a sci-fi movie.
I was worried there was going to be IC's or a microcontroller in the control unit, but it turns out it was pretty "dumb". Wiring my new buttons was simple, I just mapped out the traces on the controller board and soldered wires directly to the solder pads on the other side of the buttons.
The light up buttons are powered via a small 12VDC wall wart. The large blue button opens my garage door, while the one of the two smaller buttons is for the light on the opener and the other connects to a wireless door-bell transmitter that I stuffed into the same box. I mounted 3.5mm headphone jacks and a DC barrel plug in the project box, so removing the control unit from the wall is as easy as unplugging those cables.
I built some custom wall plates for each safety sensor - it's a panel mounted 3.5mm mono headphone jack in the wall plate, and the sensor plugs in via a right angle 3.5mm plug.
I also dressed up the sensor and control wires where they come out of the ceiling by terminating them into a ceiling mounted CAT-5 jack and using a CAT-5 cable to make the final connections to the opener.
I was worried there was going to be IC's or a microcontroller in the control unit, but it turns out it was pretty "dumb". Wiring my new buttons was simple, I just mapped out the traces on the controller board and soldered wires directly to the solder pads on the other side of the buttons.
The light up buttons are powered via a small 12VDC wall wart. The large blue button opens my garage door, while the one of the two smaller buttons is for the light on the opener and the other connects to a wireless door-bell transmitter that I stuffed into the same box. I mounted 3.5mm headphone jacks and a DC barrel plug in the project box, so removing the control unit from the wall is as easy as unplugging those cables.
I built some custom wall plates for each safety sensor - it's a panel mounted 3.5mm mono headphone jack in the wall plate, and the sensor plugs in via a right angle 3.5mm plug.
I also dressed up the sensor and control wires where they come out of the ceiling by terminating them into a ceiling mounted CAT-5 jack and using a CAT-5 cable to make the final connections to the opener.
Looks like a nice clean solution though.
I've done a few custom setups myself, but that's really cool