LFM-20 Evolve for garage door

Here is what I did for installing these guys in my 3 car garage

I got the largest/deepest 3 gang box that home depot sold:

Crammed the 3 evolve relays into it


took a blank wall plate cover and drilled a big hole in it carefully and slowly with a keyhole saw

drilled pilot holes for screws and then mounted the original wall switches for the garage door opener to the wall plate

put on wall

Recommendations based on this experience:

  1. Get an even bigger box. the relays are big. You HAVE to get one of the really deep boxes or you stand no chance, BUT, I think it would be worth going with a 4 gang box if you have 3, a 3 gang if you have 2, etc. That will leave more room for the wires
  2. Shorten the wires on the evolves so that there is less to stuff into the box. Just a couple inches off would make it a little easier.

I face a weird issues these days with my garage door.

  • Some times my garage door doesn’t close fully and left partially opened but still says as closed in smart things. I thought it is related to limit switch with garage sensors but it is not because when used with garage door remote, it works properly and it only happens if the close command goes from smart thing and again this is a random occurrence.
    My gut feeling is that when two person leaves at the same time, two of them send the close command because of the time delay between two, one closes and the other one stop the close command so that leads to partial open.

  • some times my garage door says it is open even though it is closed. so now since the new version given the control arming the home, this really gives a headache with message.

If anybody can help on this, It will be really useful.

Thanks.

Hector
did you ever get this resolved? I am having the same issue

FYI, for those who are using the newer Liftmaster (myQ ready) you can solder the 2 blue wires from the relay switch to the garage opener remote and make it work that way. When I hooked the relay directly to the Liftmaster motor, it did not work.

I’m having an issue with the wall button not working. On the app it says: garage door/ Evolve OFF. The relay is wired to the motor. The relay has a green light which I understand that the relay is in the off position. The wall button is illuminated red. The button works fine with these settings.

The problem comes when I use the app to open/close the door. The evolve light goes out, the door opens but the wall button light goes out and is inoperable. Should I try switching the blue wires around?

Did you switch the device type to “Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch”?

How do you switch the device type to “Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch”?

  • Log in to https://graph.api.smartthings.com
  • Click on “My Devices”
  • Click on your LFM-20’s device name
  • Click “Edit”
  • Select “Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch” from the “Type” drop-down.
  • Click “Update”

How do you switch the device type to “Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch”?

See above.

(20 chars)

That fixed it!!! Thank you.

Any idea on resetting the LFM-20? I migrated from hub v1 to v2, I couldn’t get the v1 hub to exclude the device so I forced it to drop it so I can move on with my migration and now I can’t get the v2 hub to exclude it either using the z-wave utilities. Any ideas on how to just do a hard reset of the relay?

Both of mine had to be excluded with a very fast tap-tap-tap-hold of the button. It took a few dozen attempts to get the two of them excluded and then re-included. Keep at it!

The instructions say “tap 3x then press and hold” for exclusion

I’ve done the three types and hold. I will try the three types a little faster to see if that helps. How long did you have to hold it for? I tried it for 30 seconds and nothing happened.

15 seconds tops, and that’s just to see the app refresh the exclusion page.

Like I said, it was extremely picky and took (literally) dozens of attempts to get two of them excluded. It helps if you have a laptop handy and logged in to the IDE to watch your hub logs while you’re doing this.

Thanks. I’ll give this a try this weekend.

Does someone encountered this issue before. Please let me know if you got any solution for this issue.

Thanks in advance.

Hi guys, here is my version of the garage door opener using the Evolve LFM-20 dry switch. Not the cheapest or easiest of the solutions, but I like the fact that I did not have to touch my walls and garage opener, and that the whole solution can be located anywhere in the house.

Any idea what would be keeping the relay from toggling the garage door? I had to shave the wires down some to fit them into the holes where the push button wires lead to (into the opener), but I wouldn’t think that would be the issue.

the power end is correct and the hub found it with no issues. I changed it to a z wave virtual momentary contact switch. It triggers and I can hear the relay click, but I don’t believe it’s sending power since the door wont open.