Sometimes a DIY project takes an unsuspected turn and goes poorly. The terms used for this phenomenon normally involve various forms of expletives, but I'll just term the situation as, "...going to hell."
Hot on the heels of my initial foray into the fantastical world of home automation, I began my quest to take it to the next level. Phase two involved the ability to monitor the status and and control my garage door via smartphone. I do these things for you dear reader, not because I have a serious gadget fetish.
Never fear, I am going to write the post about the garage door controller.
This post, however, about when the delightful project went from being a dashing success to one that rapidly began going to hell.
It's actually your fault.
You see, when an handy DIY blogger such as myself does a project, it involves the behind the scenes theatrical work of camera placement, a remote trigger, and if I'm feeling especially saucy, video. This time, I was indeed feeling saucy, and began shooting video of myself controlling the door from an iPad. It was unique, bad-ass stuff. The camera on the tripod was shooting over my shoulder at the screen, where the garage security camera was also steaming.
I struggled with my reflection, camera focus issues, and timing. I did a few takes (for you) trying to get it right. The video was crap, but I was slowly getting there. I figured, I'd do one last practice run, while everything was running smoothly. I pushed the open icon on screen, the door started to move, and from above me,... just off my right shoulder...
I swear, that's exactly what it looked like!
"BANG!" indeed. I don't how I gathered the Herculean level of intestinal fortitude required to refrain from soiling my pants. I'm man enough to admit, that loud explosion of sound scared the absolute hell out of me. It was the cold-chill, instant-sweat, heat-skips-a-couple-beats kind of scare. Damn. (Although "Damn" was probably not the word I used.)
After realizing I hadn't been shot by a rogue, garage-based ninja sniper, my heart sank even lower. I could see the thick, creamy-white coils of smoke billowing out of the the garage door opener. The formerly, perfectly-working-before-I-messed-with-it garage door opener. Then, came the odor' it was the sickeningly plastic / rubbery smell of fried electrical stuff. I knew that smell. It was the smell of expensive.
I glanced at the workbench to make sure I'd returned the fire extinguisher after my yard torching adventure and climbed up the ladder. The new. plug-in Insteon controller I had installed was fine. The smoke was coming from the Genie garage door opener. Crap. Just crap.
Did I mention that it had been working perfectly before I decided to start adding technological gizmos?
The automation stuff was fine. I'd managed to blow up a completely unrelated item.
The light bulbs were still on, but there was a steamy-brown juice running down the translucent cover.
For those of you without garage door openers, it's appropriate to share that steamy-brown juice is generally something you don't run into with these units. I added it to my mental list of bad signs, along with the explosion, smoke, and odor. I removed the plastic, back section that covered the motor. That's when I discovered the steaming black crust of vaporized, alien exoskeleton spattered against the back, wet with the brown mystery juice.
The juice tasted faintly like water-chestnuts and amaretto, with the woody aftertaste of,... OK, I didn't actually taste it, but wouldn't that been some damn good storytelling if I had?
With the motor compartment open, I found the culprit, The capacitor was blown. At least it wasn't the motor or a circuit board.
It was nearly too hot to touch. I assume my constant opening and closing, both in troubleshooting / programming the controller and in attempting to video the action had overloaded it. I guess 30 cycles or so, in about 15 minutes, falls outside the normal operating conditions.
I figured it would be a quick and easy fix. I figured wrong. Have you ever tried to find a Genie garage door opener capacitor at 5:45 on a Sunday evening? Ace Hardware = Strike One, The Home Depot = Strike Two, Lowe's = Strike Three.
At Lowe's, I wandered back to the opener section. I noticed Genie had redesigned the new models since the last one I had installed. Actually, back in 2008 I had purchased a a whole new kit, but only swapped out a burned out motor. It had been a perfect, swap, just swap the new with the old. I'd even put the box with the rest of unused parts up in the attic, just in case I needed,... spare,... parts...
Holy crap! Could there still be a trove of freaking spare parts in the attic?!!! I tore back home, grabbed the flashlight and crawled into the scuttle hole. There in the darkness, under an empty violin case, lay the box, the beautiful box, preserved just where it had been left, ages ago, back in 2008. It was gorgeous.
Sure enough, for some stupid reason, I had saved the old, original motor too. The thing was likely a relic from the 1980's, now a paperweight of wire, circuit-boards, and steel. I had placed it into the 2008 box and grunted it up into the attic for archival.
FYI - I prefer the term "well prepared" over "hoarder" or "pack-rat".
You may wonder what kind of moron saves a burned out old motor? I'm exactly that kind of moron. Score one for the pack rats. The capacitor was intact.
I carefully removed the leads and attached the ancient capacitor into the newer opener. It's a tricky business, handling capacitors. They can store a charge like a battery which can zap you pretty good if you're not careful.
I let it hang while I held my breath and hit the button.
It worked. Of course! Who was worried?
By then, it was pretty late on Sunday night, with work looming the next morning. I got the covers screwed back in place and proclaimed it fixed, pledging never again to open a garage door with such repeated exuberance.
There was only one thing left to do...
My name is John and I'm a Pack Rat.
