Automating a driveway gate

I have a driveway gate that has operators on it, I would like to have the ability to open/close the gate via my ADC setup. It seems that the options are to treat it like a garage door, and it appears the two options are to use a Z-wave garage controller or the LiftMaster MyQ setup. I currently have a MyQ Smart Garage Hub setup to control my garage door.

It seems that my best option is likely to use a magnetic reed switch and solder that to bypass the tilt ball switch in the MyQ second door sensor, and then to just extend the wire such that the I can store the sensor in my weatherproof gate control enclosure and then just work through the hoops to add it in as a 2nd garage door.

Am I correct in thinking this is the most straight forward route? I realize some of the safety implications of remotely operated gates, the gate does have lockout sensors that should prevent it from ever closing on someone/something. It would just be handy to have the option of remotely opening the gate for guests and deliveries, we will soon have remote live visual coverage via cameras.

If I go this route, what is the process to add a second garage door to a MyQ Smart Garage Hub that is already integrated to ADC? IF I just manually add it via the Hub itself, will ADC detect that there is a 2nd garage door present and allow control of it? Or would I need to work with customer service to remove and re-enroll the hub entirely?

There are some prior threads regarding this which may assist here, and here.

There is no accepted or official retrofit option for Gate controls through Liftmaster that I know of. The way to gain MyQ Gate control would be to swap the opener for a MyQ enabled opener.

What model of gate control do you have currently?

My gate has a Linear receiver on it that is HomeLink compatible and should work with the existing MyQ that I have, the issue is that there is no “sensor” that is made for gates that works with this. My thought is to modify the sensor, remove the existing tilt switch and replace it with a magnetic NO/NC switch that matches what the sensor expects. I would then place the sensor in my gate controller enclosure and extend a wire to the leading edge of the gate to allow the magnetic switch to function so that the MyQ can read the gate status.

I think it will take me 10 minutes to hack the sensor, I just need to get info as to how to add a 2nd “Garage” to my existing ADC enrolled MyQ :slight_smile:

LiftMaster’s gate operators were not an option for my installation, however I have seen gate/operator vendors selling pre-hacked kits as I describe.

I strongly discourage physically hacking or modifying a sensor meant to detect the position of a heavy moving object reliant on strict safety features. I cannot recommend this solution.

You can add a new garage door through the Alarm.com website. Settings -> Devices -> LiftMaster Installation

Yes you can make a tilt sensor rotator and myq works well with sliding gate.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1KTNW2BGEKWTJ?ref=va_cr_lb

Did you do this? I would love more info!

Yes, I did it and it works great. The list of parts is listed on the Amazon review.

I saw, just not sure how you installed everything lol!

First I counted how many rotation the worm screw rotates for the full travel of the gate. Mine was 52 rotations. So to get a quarter rotation of the titl sensor I used 200:1 gear box. Gives me 52/200 rotation for the sensor, close to a quarter turn I needed.

All the toy gears use 2mm shafts. I epoxied an 2mm shaft i used a copper shaft since it was easier to cut.

I had to cut part of the motor housing to exposed a little bit of the 2mm motor shaft and extended with a coupler and a copper shaft.

I figured out the motor rotation wrt worm gear rotation so the sensor will tilt the correct direction.

I mounted the motor on a wood plate and wood plate on the opener case with L clamps.

I used sames size plastic 2mm pulleys and a rubber band to connect the shaft I epoxied to the worm gear shaft and one I extended from the gear box. I used the plastic toy frame that has holes to align the two pulleys.

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thank you!

I haven’t installed mine, I just bypassed the tilt based switch and soldered a jumper in that I can connect to a magnetic reed switch instead, I know the magnetic reed switch works and is far simpler than some complex mechanical item just to “tilt” the sensor.

My issue currently is that my gate opener requires the “button” to be pressed twice for it to open, I need to find out if I can change this setting as I doubt the Hub can be set to send a “double press” (e.g. sending the code two times) in order to program my gate in.

Hi Russel, How did you do it? Can you please show some pics or diagram?

I have a temporary solution where I just put the sensor in a ziplock bag, and duct-taped it to the lever, very close to the operator box. When its open, the sensor is resting on the box, and when close, the bag is hanging…lol
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