Today we are going to be look over infrared safety beams on your garage door. Those are the cameras down there on the bottom left and right of the garage floor usually located four to six inches off the ground. They are responsible for the safety of children and pets who may be in the way of a closing door. They can also be responsible for your garage door not closing properly when you want it to. We’ll look at how you can troubleshoot this on your own before needing to call in a professional garage door repair company and save yourself a lot of money.

Now this is typically what happens when you have one of them out of alignment.

I’m going to go ahead and raise the door and the eye beams have no effect on the machine when it’s going up… Only going down.

Now if you take a look at the machine here, the opener, I’m going to hit the button. It won’t go down on the lift master series. That blinking light means your infrared safety beams are out of alignment or something’s wrong.

So now let’s head on down to this corner and I’ll show you what we got and how to fix it.

Okay, I’ve taken this camera completely off the bracket just to show you how it’s done. We’re going to be starting from scratch.

This is the sending unit, so it’s always lit even if it’s not lined up with the other one, but let’s just say you notice it out of alignment. I’m going to put it back here in the bracket that it goes in.

When I’m in the general vicinity of being lined up, I’m going to take a look at the other beam. That’s the receiving beam, that’s the most important one. Now if you look on the other side over there you’ll see that that light’s not lit. That means I’m not lined up. So I’m going to wiggle the camera a little bit till it starts to come in alignment watching that light. Now when that light goes solid green, I know I’m lined up, the machine work.

Now on this other set, this is a newer Lift Master setup. The one you just saw was an older set up. The amber light on this one is always going to be on. That’s the sending side. The receiving side over here is the important one. Now if I loosen this up, and take it out of alignment you’ll see that it blinks. Now to get it in alignment, I want to make sure that I’m pointing directly at the other camera before I tighten the wing nut down. Now I’m going to tighten it down, and to check to make sure it’s centered gonna flex the camera in, I’m going to flex the camera out. Now both of those times neither one cause the green light to flicker or go out. That means vibration from the door is not going to affect this camera. This one is lined up. Very simple.

Now let’s go over here and focus on the Genies since they’re a little bit different.

This is a display model so you’ve got red light green light. When the eye beams are out of alignment, the receiver will blink. It’s real simple. You take it on the bracket, put it back when one sees the other your door will go down. If they’re ever so slightly off, a little bit of vibration could cause it to be misaligned again, and then it’s back to blinking. So you have to point it in the direction and they have to be centered in order for the machine to work.

So generally speaking that’s how you line up your safety beams. There’s several different makes and models of machines, but they all generally do the same thing. Ones going to light up, the other one’s going to blink when it’s out of alignment. Line them back up whether it’s a bent bracket, a camera pointing down, whatever the case… Look at it, line the two up, tighten them down make sure the lights solid, whatever color that might be it could be red, could be green, and your back up and running.

Now if you notice a pinched wire or the  eye beam is pulled out of the back of the camera like on the genies, if you look at this, they wire indirectly to the back. These are prone to corrosion problems, they’re prone to wires being able to be pulled out of there very easily. Take a look at that. Lift master eye beams are wired directly into the camera, there’s a rubber boot that goes uh wire out of the camera all the way up to the machine. So you don’t have that problem. But if there’s no obvious problems, and your eye beams are still not lining up, for whatever reason at that point, you probably want to call a professional garage door repair company.

Another common problem, is simply having something blocking your eye beams. Keep it in mind that it is a garage and there are all kinds of items in the garage that can end up in the way – people move things around in the garage… If something like a box or a rake gets in the way of the beam, it means it’s not going to go down. It’s going to go down a certain distance stop and go back up. All you have to do is see what’s blocking the beam’s path and scoot it out of the way. The light goes solid that means I’m free and clear door goes down. The key is to check the light. The light has to be solid and it has to be able to vibrate and stay solid for things to work the way they’re designed on your garage door.

For those in the Tucson area, if you need help with you garage door, John’s Garage Doors is my recommendation without a doubt.  Great guy, great work, great prices!