How The Large Selection Of Garage Door Remotes Will Decrease Dramatically In The Future

Garage door openers first came to us as a result from World War II technology. The first remote controls simply beamed a radio frequency signal at a garage door receiver and the door was opened. This wasn't thought of as very safe as garage door remotes were able to open other garage doors. Manufacturers solved this problem by created a dip switch for the openers that would allow them to set up to 256 different codes. In most cases that eliminated the problem of dueling remote access, but it still wasn't as secure as most homeowners wanted. Thieves could still drive through neighborhoods and find a home with the same type of opener duplicate code. In some rare instances it was even possible for a thief with something called a code grabber to stand near you as you remotely opened your garage door and record the code to use later.

By 1990, the next and current generation of openers was introduced to use transmitters and receivers relying on rolling code technology. A new code is randomly generated each time the door is opened creating millions of possible codes. So if you have a remote and receiver over 15 years old, it's time to update your system for your own safety and security.

It is still advised to not leave your garage door remote in your vehicle which still makes you vulnerable to someone willing to break in and steel the remote for access to your garage. As an added measure of security, consider unplugging your opener and locking your garage door with a keyed lock when you leave for extended lengths of time such as vacation. In the future, garage door remotes will be replaced by even greater technology that will ensure the safety of your home more reliably. For example, by connecting a radio transmitter directly to a residential router, Liftmaster makes it possible to use an iOS device such as a smartphone or tablet as remote controls for your garage and houselights.

How does this technology work you ask? The garage door opener does in fact need to be connected to your home network. But instead of trying to find a way to configure the garage door opener for a WiFi or hard-wired Ethernet Connection, a radio transmitter is used to connect directly to a residential router over hard-wired Ethernet. That transmitter then wirelessly exchanges signals with the garage door opener, on it's own radio. It's not significantly different than the way most visor-mounted garage door opener remotes work over a wireless frequency. The difference is that the remote is mounted to a home router instead of a car visor. The the app that runs on your smartphone or a tablet communicates directly with that home router mounted remote.

Unlike today's simple visor mounted remotes that can open and close the garage door or toggle the opener's lights from a short distance, the smartphone and apps can work from anywhere as long as they have a connection to the Internet and they can detect the current state of a garage door be it open or closed and how long it has been in either state. In addition to supporting iOS, Blackberry and Android with custom written apps, there is also a mobile web application that makes it possible to remotely access all the controls through a web browser. This may come in handy if you have a Windows phone because there isn't an app for that on the Windows phone platform as of yet though anticipated in the near future. Once again, Apple is leading the way introducing new computer technologies to change the way we live.