Iron cores aren't conductive, they're normally made of ferrite which is an insulator.

Iron cores are not the same as ferrite cores. The iron cores that you are refering to, that LOOK like ferrite cores, are made of powdered iron suspended in an insulating binder material. This binder material reduces eddy currents, and allows powdered iron, slug tuned inductors into the VHF region.

Originally Posted by HiTech

page 3!

boy oh boy .... people the world over are dying, starving, homeless, bed-ridden, and divorcing and here we spend an afternoon trying to get a garage door opener to respond to a signal further than 10 or 20 feet!!! LOLOL!

A distance of a mere 10' for a transmitted signal is not an improvement IMHO. Those things should be functioning easily at 100' so as you approach your home the garage door is already up. By the time I pull up to within 10' of a door and wait for it to open, I could get out and manually lift it faster!

I know what you're thinking: if the receiver has gone out of tune, then perhaps I can retune the xmttrs to the receiver. However there's one small problem... chances are your receiver may have drifted slightly offside and that coil in your xmttr is nothing more than a peaking coil of which is likely to already be peaked for max output, not freq. adjustment.

Does the coil act as the antenna in this transmitter? I don't see any other PCB trace or wire that would act as the transmitter antenna.

Originally Posted by poopeater

Does the coil act as the antenna in this transmitter? I don't see any other PCB trace or wire that would act as the transmitter antenna.

It must, I have never seen anything else on small hand held devices like remote doorbells and garage door openers. And I have been inside some of them.

Try to remove the 9V battery and clean up the terminals. There might be high resistance between the 9V and the remote.

Originally Posted by HiTech

OK so tell us what is the outcome of all this.... is the contraption performing better or are you faced with getting a new receiver or perhaps an entire new opener?

Well, I went with the simplest solutions first. I simply spliced a long piece of wire (~30") onto the existing antenna. It works a little better now, and it's good enough that I can open the door from within my car.

Problem solved.

would that be on the transmitter or receiver?

Originally Posted by Marks256

Don't you mean "Problem temporarily solved"? There has to be a reason it failed in the first place. If you don't find that problem, then the problem will just keep getting worse and worse. If you just plan on using this as a "Quick Fix" until you can afford a new one, then that should be fine. But if you plan on using this for another 5 years, then i would doubt it will make it.

so then when it breaks, I'll fix it again. I don't care if I solved the 'real problem'. My door opens, end of story. Maybe you have time to waste fixing up the receiver for a 15 year old garage door opener. My time is more valuable than that, and it makes little sense to sink hours upon hours of time and a good chunk of money to fix an outdated, very used garage door opener. I'll stick to my 5 minute quick fixes until the thing totally gives out, then go buy a new unit. Thankfully "Burger King" pays me well enough that I can afford such luxuries

HiTech, my original idea was to boost the output power of the transmitters which would have basically been the same thing.

Philba, the wire I put is on the receiver.

Uh, who said anything about an amp??? sheesh... try again.

As to why I asked, if you recall, earlier he was quite resistant to looking at the receiver to solve the problem saying

Wow....no offense, but are you people idiots? It literally will take me 5 minutes to muck with the transmitter.

that's why I asked. hmmm, roast crow. delish...

Phil