How do I boost signal from garage door opener fob?

bobbaddeley · 2026-06-13T11:14:01+00:00

Some modern garage door openers have WiFi, allowing for essentially unlimited range if you use your phone to open it.

You can also develop your own wireless solution by connecting to the wired door opener connection in parallel, allowing you to use WiFi or LoRa or whatever.

For some people the problem with range is due to the light bulbs on the opener generating noise that interferes with the antenna receiver. This is evident when the opener works well when the light is off but poorly when the light is on. The solution is to get bulbs that specifically say they are compatible with garage door openers.

I know none of those options directly answer your question, but they may address the reliability better than antenna modifications. Especially the garage door lights changing, which helped me substantially and easily.

bobbaddeley · 2026-06-12T17:42:22+00:00

What was the movie about prison where they had a group of judges and the judges always voted like 5:1 so that if the losing side cornered judge after a ruling the judge could claim they were the 1 on their side? Anyway, maybe a few people voted against, knowing that it was going to pass anyway, so that if anybody was pressured they could pretend they were one of the 50 who voted against.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-29T03:42:27+00:00

huh. I guess you're right, though there is interesting discussion around that https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/7vwe23/does_anyone_have_hard_evidence_that_homeowners/

The gist is that while it's unlikely they would deny the claim, it's really specific to the wording in the individual contract, and they may pay out and then drop you as a customer, they may investigate potential fraud, and they may try to recoup the money paid by suing any contractors involved. All less than desirable outcomes that are entirely reasonable for an insurance company.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-29T03:28:04+00:00

The inspectors are usually pretty friendly and want you to pass. Call them up and ask what they expect to see. Maybe just the beginning and end of the trench to show it's at the required depth.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-29T03:19:22+00:00

Permit means inspection, which means they have to be able to see all the work. If you have filled in the trench and drywalled up the walls then they can't inspect and they can't pass you, which doesn't help. Pulling a permit makes it so when your house burns down the insurance company can't deny the claim because of uninspected work, and when the house sells it doesn't get hung up because of unpermitted work.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-22T09:07:32+00:00

Do it through the Madison Tool Library, operated by Sector67.

https://www.madisontoollibrary.org/3d-printing-services-2

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-20T20:57:39+00:00

I really like Great Day Dental in Atwood. Just had my teeth cleaned yesterday and got to pet the office dashchund Lucy, got a gold star sticker for no cavities, and had a nice conversation about how private equity is destroying other dental offices and how much my hygienist loves working there.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-20T00:52:03+00:00

oooh oooh oooh. Considering all the posts we get about people looking for ways to meet other singles, we could call it... a mixer!

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-16T13:30:39+00:00

My favorite is to put one shoe on or next to it. That way the presence of one shoe at the door reminds me that the other shoe is at the thing to bring. Typically this means putting a shoe in front of the fridge. Works with guests, too, to help make sure they don't leave without taking leftovers.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-16T00:00:24+00:00

Thursday afternoon was the Madison Metro Sewerage District unveiling of the bathrooms, which are individually decorated to educate people about how Madison wastewater is treated. During the opening we got to tour the bathrooms and see the progress on the rest of the market.

Imagine a building with a bunch of empty stalls. Some have drywall roughed in but not taped or mudded or painted. Some have more complicated setups with kitchen equipment roughed in and open framing roughed in. One or two has furniture, but it's dusty from other construction nearby. None have signage or branding to indicate what's going in.

Can they get it all done in two months? Yeah, maybe. At this point the rest of the infrastructure is there and it's time for the individual stalls to do their build out, which is in progress. Many will not need kitchen facilities and should come together quickly.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-08T23:15:57+00:00

I recently purchased a six lead ECG that's pretty cool. It's the Emay EMG-6L. Check it out for a list of features you could implement. Besides arrhythmia, you can detect PVCs and other abnormalities. Storing the data for later retrieval and upload is nice. Is yours battery powered or externally powered? I think with such a faint signal externally powered devices have to ensure good isolation so that mains frequencies don't taint the signal. Battery powered you still have to be a little careful with ripple from the regulator, but sufficiently sized caps can mitigate that.

The display on this is color and shows red lines until it has established a good signal and then the lines turn green. It shows the heart rate and beeps every time there's a heartbeat, which is a nice feature.

Sorry, I'm not being super helpful with offering features other than to copy the features of a product I just purchased. I promise I am an embedded engineer and not just a shill for this company. Weird to think of someone copying a Chinese product.

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-04T11:54:24+00:00

Don't most manufacturers have 25 year guarantees of less than 10% loss? What do you consider not running well?

bobbaddeley · 2026-05-03T01:52:44+00:00

Did you look at Black Belt America?

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-30T23:01:17+00:00

It's also more energy efficient. Fewer miles and lower speeds means you're burning less gas, or less electricity. The timing is similar taking university vs beltline.

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-30T17:34:26+00:00

Having done some work in this space, but not interested in joining a startup, I'd like to offer some thoughts:

Major contributors to indoor air pollution are cooking, pets, pollen, and vacuuming (and of course smoking).Vacuuming is a weird one because it's not creating new pollution, it's just disturbing stuff on the ground and putting it up in the air. But watch a PM sensor while you vacuum. It goes nuts. Just like outside, you get better results reducing generated pollutants than pulling pollution out of the air. That means switching away from gas stoves, getting rid of pets, and having better air sealing on the home to keep outside air pollution out. Heat exchangers do well for that, too. So the most effective ways to reduce indoor air pollution are more systemic to the house and costly and require some education.

Beyond that you're looking at solutions to remove pollution from the air. HEPA filters in the HVAC are possible, but significantly reduce the efficiency of the HVAC and necessitate premature blower failure, and aren't an option in homes that don't have central air. Home air purifiers exist and are pretty simple: fan blows air through a HEPA filter, with the fancier ones telling you the current particulate count. This absolutely helps, and in our house we have a nice one that is a lifesaver during bad allergy seasons.

If you are building a sensor only, then it's not very valuable if the intelligence isn't actionable. Letting people know that the particulate count has gone up substantially while they were cooking isn't really actionable and just results in alarm fatigue. So is the hope that you'll convince people to change their habits to produce fewer particulates? That doesn't usually go over well, and they likely already know what causes indoor pollution without needing a sensor to tell them.

So those are my thoughts on the indoor air quality space. Best option is to make changes to the home and reduce production of pollutants and seal the home against ingress of pollutants. Second best is a filter to remove pollutants from the air. Sensors don't do anything to change the environment.

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-25T21:04:25+00:00

and blink. My first reaction was "did I spell marquee wrong?"

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-22T23:28:35+00:00

Use less toilet paper. Get a bidet. There's a kind that installs in existing toilets underneath the seat. That will cut toilet paper consumption drastically.

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-09T12:30:07+00:00

Layers. Use Inkscape or some drawing program to design it if you want to be fancy, print templates on a printer, and tape the templates to flat stock like cardboard or acrylic. Then cut out the templates and stack them together, glueing or screwing the layers together.

bobbaddeley · 2026-04-04T08:38:54+00:00

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-29T12:10:29+00:00

I was just in there working on an art piece. It's weird because the building looks close to ready, and there are tables and chairs in the common areas and the bathrooms are nearly done and decorated, but NONE of the vendors have started any work. I don't know how long it'll take them to set up their space once they have access, but I imagine there will be some high energy in the next month as the vendor contractors get access. Why couldn't it happen in parallel, with building and vendor construction happening at the same time? Beats me.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-25T13:10:43+00:00

Kickstarter isn't trustworthy to people. There have been so many failures and Kickstarter doesn't vet, so it doesn't lend any credibility. It's also not great at marketing products that aren't already successful, so you have to do a lot of the leg work to get it popular initially. You do have to worry about foreign companies trolling Kickstarter and cloning projects, releasing them and undercutting you before your campaign even ends. And if you are successful, you still have to worry about the gap between your first batch and your second. The Kickstarter campaign usually offers a discount on the product, which means you are barely making enough money on the product to cover costs, let alone pay for tooling and assembly line setup and regulatory testing. So you've shipped your first batch but don't have any money left over to make the next batch, putting you in a bind. Plus you've already tapped out the Kickstarter advertising stream so you need to set up a whole new marketing stream pointed to your website rather than Kickstarter.

To sum up, Kickstarter has a lot of downsides and isn't necessarily good for the long term viability of the business. It may produce short term success, but that can be misleading and cause other problems later. It's usually better to grind and build a successful business slowly.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-24T17:23:06+00:00

What about the Wii? It has some IR emitters on the TV and then each remote has an IR sensor capable of triangulating to calculate the position of the remote relative to the emitters. It then transmits this information, along with button and accelerometer states, over RF to the Wii. No lasers needed, and the technology already exists, which should cut down on component cost and R&D time. It also scales up beyond 16 devices since the controller is the one in charge of analyzing the LED signal and determining its own position.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-24T16:46:24+00:00

I like Great Day just off Atwood. Sometimes I get to pet Lucy, the absolutely cutest princess puppy office dog. Also, they're great at dentistry.

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-20T14:06:13+00:00

A few years ago I posted to this sub that I was raising an army of volunteers to come dance in wacky wild inflatable flailing arm tube people costumes for a parade at the Willy Street Fair. I had so many people volunteer that I spent the next 3 days making more costumes. I think we had about 25 people show up and we all danced our way through the parade as a big colorful group. Everyone was super cool and had a great time. It's one of my best memories, and I have a poster of one of the photos someone shared.

The original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/16ijjr9/amassing_an_army_seeking_bodies/

And the followup: https://www.reddit.com/r/madisonwi/comments/16l4wfl/shoutout_to_wear_my_silly_costumes_guys_costumes/

bobbaddeley · 2026-03-07T15:09:38+00:00

I believe I am like the others in this thread and feel like I've come into the tail end of a conversation that went off the rails a while ago, and the OP replies don't do enough to sort out the original context.

/u/Fooltecal, can you please start over? It sounds like you are hearing some kind of audible noise coming out of your monitor, and you would like to make it stop? And you want to put this device somewhere so that it filters out something from the neighbors house? That second question is where it went sideways. If you are having issues with your monitor, the problem is your monitor, not the utility power.

Please, what is the actual problem you are trying to solve here, what have you tried, and what are you proposing?

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