After gaining so much useful information from the Fitfreak community and being inspired by the DIY guides from people like koolkev and smeister, I decided to finally write up my own guide. This guide will show you how to integrate a garage door opener into the dash. Before we start, here is a disclaimer:
Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself, nor FITFREAK.NET take any responsibility for the outcome of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!
Why would one want to integrate a garage door opener into the dash? Because this will take you a step closer to having a James Bond car. Seriously, though. This serves to unclutter your car's interior. I used to keep the garage opener in the center console behind the cupholders. After doing this mod, I no longer had to reach around for the door opener and aim it when I was leaving or coming home. (Yes, I am that lazy!). Plus, now, the little storage bin is free for other goodies.
Materials:
1) Garage door opener – You will have to sacrifice one opener. It will have to reside within the dash. Extra garage door openers can be bought at a home improvement store. Not all openers are compatible with the style of garage door you own, so buy the appropriate one. This is also the biggest variable in this project because everyone has a different garage door opener.
2) Momentary switch – This is the button that you will be interacting with. It sticks out of the dash. When the button is pressed and held, the connected circuit is momentarily activated. When you let go of the button, the switch returns to the default the “closed” position. There are different styles and sizes out therer. I got mine from Radioshack for about $4.
3) Honda part #374588. - This is the lid next to the mirror control that I mounted the switch onto. It comes stock on all fits. For owners with the JDM coin holder or base fits with fog lights, you will have to find a different place to mount the switch. At first, I was thinking of mounting it in the center console, but I felt less guilty drilling into a 4$ part rather than a 55$ part.
4) 9 Volt battery Clip – My door opener runs off a 9 volt battery. Yours may vary.
5) Hookup wire – Almost any type of wire will do, I used 22 gauge.
6) Solder – To make electrical connections.
7) HeatShrink – Bare copper wires shorting = bad.
8) Electrical connectors (2) – We need a connection that can be easily connected and undone. I used some male and female pins.
Tools:
Soldering Iron
Multimeter
Dremel / Drill
I wrote this DIY and took photos after the project was finished. Thus the photos are not very instructive, but rather they are pictures of the finished parts.
First dissect open the sacrificial garage door opener. Pay close attention to where the switches in the circuit board are located. The large switch pushes on two switches (circled) on the circuit board.Here is mine opened up (front and back).
Now for the technicalish part:
The two switches on the circuit board creates 4 connections between eight nodes (circled) when the device is activated. Your device will probably have a different circuit design. The multimeter is used to confirm which nodes are joined by the switches. First measure the resistance between two nodes that you think are joined by the switch; the resistance should be infinite since the nodes are not currently connected. Measure again with the switch depressed; now the resistance should be zero. Find all of the connections associated with the switches. We want to bypass all of the switches, essentially creating a device that is always on. I soldered short wires onto the board to complete all of the switch connections.
Remove the fuse box cover by turning the knob that secures it and pulling outwards. Pop out the lid to the right of the mirror controls. Drill an appropriate sized hole in the lid so you can squeeze your momentary switch into the lid. Solder wires with power connectors onto the momentary switch. So it looks like this:
Next, we want to create a break in the normal circuit and splice in our custom button. The normal battery terminals are bypassed using the 9V battery clip. Solder the components together according to the following illustration (MS Paint ftw).
It is a good idea to plan out the wire run lengths before starting. Here are my components completed:
I now enclosed everything back into the garage door opener case. I had to do a little trimming of the plastic case and flip the battery because now I am using the 9V clip. The modded remote next to a normal one:
All thats left is to place the garage door opener behind the dash, install the new button, and connect the two units via the power connectors.
And the final product:
Now all thats left to do is to post a tread on Fitfreak to hype up the button by calling it mysterious!
Thanks for reading this DIY. All questions or comments are welcome.
j/k
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