Linear GD00Z (Garage Controller) and Wall Switch (with Motion Detector)

Devices & Integrations
1

Hopefully this post will save newbies (like myself) hours upon hours of troubleshooting!

Issue

With the GD00Z-4, clicking the garage door opener in the ST app would result in the following…

  • If door is open, app status changes from “Open” to “Closing”
  • If door is closed, app status changes from “Closed” to “Opening”
  • GD00Z-4 would then beep/flash for a few seconds
  • The garage door would not move, nothing would happen

As a little background, the GD00Z-4 installed successfully (wired tight in same terminals as wall switch), paired perfect with ST, and even synced up correctly in the ST app when doing the initial 2 cycle (open/close) with the wall switch.

Troubleshooting

With very little help available through ST or these forums (as no one else is experiencing this issue) and after spending hours upon hours searching the web, I found a tip mentioned by an Amazon customer’s review. He stated that his GD00Z-4 was having the same exact issues I was when he’s wall switch had a motion detector and temperature reading and etc. Upon switching to a basic wall switch with just a push button, his issues were resolved and everything worked. I started to get a sign of relief since, guess what, I have a similar wall switch like he does which contains a motion detector and etc.

Seeking Advice

So since I’m not a electrician and expert on the wiring and voltage for these devices I decided to contact Linear tech support as well as Chamberlain (my garage door manufacturer) support in regards to this issue.

What they “essentially” mentioned is that I have a premium wall switch (meaning its not a basic push button switch) and with features such as the motion detector, it requires the full 24v for the terminals in the garage door opener. So what this means of course is that regardless how many devices I connect in parallel to those terminals (with the wall switch) none of them will work since the voltage is already maxed out for those terminals preventing any signals from being received. I do realize it’s probably more technical than that but that’s what I got out of it haha!

Solution

I have to replace my existing wall switch which looks similar to the picture below…

With a basic wall switch like shown below…

Caveat

With replacing my existing wall switch I will miss out on a critical functioning part of my garage which is the motion detector which turns on the garage door opener lightbulbs on motion detection. Note that this is only a problem when the garage is already open or already closed as the garage door lightbulbs will still turn on and function as intended when opening/closing the garage door. A scenario where (without motion) the lightbulb would not turn on would be if you are taking trash to the garbage bin in the corner of the garage (since you aren’t opening or closing the garage door, just moving through the garage).

To overcome this new issue, essentially I would now need to purchase another z-wave motion detector, and either a z-wave lightbulb or z-wave wall switch (roughly $60 - $100 total) which I could then setup through ST to come on automatically when motion is detected but then in certain cases now I would have both the z-wave light turn on to motion and also the garage door opener lights turning on as well when opening the garage (causing waste of electricity but probably no issue for most people).

Questions

Before I head down this “more expensive” path, I was wondering if the community is able to answer a few questions so I can do a tiny bit more troubleshooting…

  1. Does anyone else use a Linear GD00Z controller wired in parellel with a wall switch that contains a motion sensor?
  2. Any cheaper options I’m not thinking of with still maintaining that motion detection since I lose it with the basic wall switch (without getting rid of the GD00Z)?
  3. How was I able to use a previous (Evolve LFM-20) relay configured with a “z-wave momentary relay” device type through the app without any issues to open/close the garage door if the full voltage was still taken (although when the relay was activated it turned off my wall switch for those 2 seconds before the relay was deactivated which wasn’t what I wanted at all)?
  4. Can the GD00Z issue possibly be fixed through ST with a device type configuration or code change similar to the “z-wave momentary relay” (but I doubt it since the voltage cannot be split)?

Thanks again everyone for taking the time to read this or provide suggestions!

I hope this post at least helps someone else out! :slight_smile:

5 Likes
2

I had this problem as well. I appreciate the post because I was banging my head against the wall. I had opened up the GD00Z and found a relay which had isolated contacts but when I measured resistance across the contacts there was resistance not an open. To me this meant that I either had a defective unit or they had additional circuitry after the relay (why?). I even found that if I measured resistance with a meter while activating the door the relay wouldn’t activate but if I activated the door while measuring continuity it would. Weird stuff. After seeing your post I did some further troubleshooting and discovered that when my “smart” garage door switch was connected the output voltage on the switch leads dropped from around 24v to 12v. Apparently the extra circuitry in the GD00Z that I discovered senses the voltage and won’t let the relay operate if its at 12v. Not sure why the voltage drops. I’m guessing that the opener is not supplying enough current to the switch but the switch has a high input voltage tolerance. Without schematics on either I’m at a loss for an explanation. I’m tempted to try an external 24v power supply to increase the voltage but not sure how that would affect the communication from the “smart” switch to the controller since I don’t know what it uses to communicate the “smart” commands such as turning on the light. If I figure out a fix I’ll post it.

3

Limited success but ultimately failure on first attempt. I was able to separate the voltage supply and the communications bus on the Liftmaster Controller (398LM). After connecting the serial bus to the door opener and connecting the power input to a 12vdc transformer I had high hopes. Unit came on and controlled the door as it should even though i had separated the power from the communications bus. I even read the approximate 24v on the communications bus that I thought the GD00Z was looking for. But when I tried to open or close the door from the GD00Z it did not activate the internal relay on the GD00Z.

On my next attempt I will try what another manufacturer suggested and wire the GD00Z output to the actual switch in the 398LM controller. I don’t have high hopes since I was able to get the relay to work with my meter on continuity check but not when measuring resistance. I’ll post when I get it tested and let everyone know.

4

Hello, I am new to smartthings and have installed the Linear GD00Z-4 Garage Controller. I am having exactly the same issues as @mxrugg. Sensor report correct status of open or close based on position of garage door. When I open or close from ST app GD00Z-4 beeps/flashes but door does not open or close. I also have a fancy wall switch with motion/temparature sensor etc. When trouble shooting I tried to totally disconnect the wall switch from the terminal but had the same problem. I thought I had a defective GD00Z-4 until I read this post. I was almost ready to return the GD00Z-4. Appreciate any updates. Thanks.

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5

Sorry about the delay but yea I haven’t tried anything yet and I know it’s been awhile. The problem is still the “caveat” I mentioned in my post above where if I replace my existing “advanced” wall switch with a basic push button wall switch then I lose the motion sensor aspect which is what I mainly use for the garage, I really don’t care about losing the temperature reading so yea haha.

Keep in mind that the motion sensor really only plays a role if your working or moving around in the garage a lot without triggering the opening/closing of the garage door, so if that is not a concern for you then I would try to go ahead and replace your existing wall switch with a basic one from a hardware store as I mentioned in my post above.

My plan of solving the issue which I hope to do shortly within the coming months or definitely less is to just simply purchase a zwave motion sensor which runs around $45 and either a few zwave lightbulbs (for about $30 total) or a zwave light switch to control the 2 regular lightbulbs (for about $45). In this case, the lights will still come on of course when the garage is opened or closed but also if I am sayyyy moving the trash to the garbage bin in the garage without opening the garage door.

Since I want to implement more zwave devices in other sections of my house, spending that roughly $90 extra to get just my garage door working (after already spending almost $100) is what has been stopping me for several months now haha but I should have an update soon!

Let me know if you have any updates yourself!

6

Thanks for the post guys! I thought I had a bad GDOOZ until I read this post.

Has anyone had any success with this issue? I have a Liftmaster and the the GDOOZ beeps when I open or close it through the SmartThings app but it doesn’t actually trigger my garage door opener.

7

So good news and bad news! Since the weather has started to get nice again I decided to look into this issue a bit more.

So as mentioned in my first post for this thread, I went ahead and replaced my existing wall switch (with motion detector, etc) with the basic wall switch and have noticed somewhat great results. The reason I state “somewhat” is that the GD00Z will now open and close my garage door from the SmartThings app HOWEVER the clicks in the app have to be “literally” 1 minute apart meaning I can’t close the garage door immediately after I open it. If I try to immediately close the door after opening then the app will simply state “Closing” and no beeps, no nothing, it doesn’t do anything at all.

Just to reiterate in case anyone has experienced this issue, I have to wait a full minute between toggling the opening/closing state of the garage door with the SmartThings app. So if I open the garage door with the app, I have to wait one minute before I can close it again through the app. If I close the garage door with the app, I have to wait one minute before the GD00Z will start beeping again and open the garage door.

Realistically however this situation seems to be quite rare however it can be outrageously frustrating when testing it out to see if it actually works as that’s most likely what your going to do right…close the door, ok check, now open the door, oh wait doesn’t work haha so yea.

I wish I knew the explanation for why you have to wait a FULL minute before you can toggle the state of the garage door after a current toggle which I could eventually look into but hopefully someone already knows the reason or someone at SmartThings perhaps knows as well as I didn’t get around to debugging it yet. Might even be a stupid restriction in the actual GD00Z that prevents toggling states until a minute has passed as I don’t see why SmartThings would put a restriction in there for that.

@MichaelY Try out what I mentioned above and see if that works for you if you wait a full minute. However if you temporarily removed the wall switch and only the GD00Z was wired and you still couldn’t get the garage door to open or close then that might be another issue though. I was at least able to get the garage door to open, but I just had to wait a full minute before I could close it again haha!

@jrivera I can only think of two possible reasons as to why it’s not working on your end…

  1. Assuming you have wired the GD00Z in parallel with the wall switch, perhaps the wall switch is taking the full voltage to the garage door opener so the signal never gets sent even though the GD00Z beeps which was my problem.

  2. The Liftmaster might be incompatible with the GD00Z but I’m sure you probably already checked that one off your list and that’s not the issue.

It all of course depends on your setup and how you wired it so hopefully that helps out and wasn’t something which you probably already know haha!

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Thanks man! It definitely turned out that The GD00Z is just not compatible with any MyQ devices. From what i’ve read it uses a digital signal that completely shuts out the linear. I’ve installed it on other chamberlain garage door openers and I’ll be switching out my Garage Door opener this week for a non MyQ version.

I tried a single wall switch to replace my high flying motion detector/light/controller wall switch and that did nothing.

Moral of the story to anyone else that comes across this issue… simple is better and stay away from MyQ if you’re planning on using this device.

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I was able to get full functionality with the Linear GD00Z controller and a Smart LCD wall controller. It did take custom integration work.

Installation Overview

Instead of trying to trigger the opener directly, we’ll use the Linear GD00Z to close a relay which will close the button contacts on our smart controller and thus open our door.

Materials and Supplies

  • 4 wires (instead of the standard 2) from the opener to the smart controller. Alternatively you can mount the Linear GD00Z on the wall next to your smart controller. I used 18/5 thermostat wire.
  • A 12-volt automotive relay. The Linear GD00Z doesn’t produce enough voltage to trigger the smart controller. It will however close a relay.
  • An additional 12-volt DC power supply. I had an extra lying around from an old wireless router.

Step 1: Solder contacts to the smart lcd controller contact buttons

Since the smart controller multiplexes the signals to the opener rather than closing/opening a circuit like a dumb button, you need to use the smart controller to trigger the opener. Start by soldering two short leads to the “open” button on the smart controller.

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You are looking for the contacts for either of the blue buttons at the top.

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I added quick disconnects to the wires to make installation easier.

Wire the red and white thermostat wires to the standard controller contacts. Choose two other wires to connect to the newly soldered contacts. I used blue and yellow.

Step 2: Connect the wires to the relay.

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The wires running to your smart controller (blue and yellow for me) connect to two poles of the relay. Make sure you connect them to the output poles - not the poles which actually close the circuit. Mine were sized for the quick disconnects so wiring was easy. The negative wire from your 12V power supply hooks to one of the input poles on the relay. The positive wire from the power supply connects to one of the Linear GD00Z wires and the other wire connects to the last pole on the relay. In other words, the positive wire from the 12V power supply goes through the Linear GD00Z to connect to the relay.

Step 3: Connect the Smart Controller To Your Opener

The red and white wires connect to the opener as normal. Plug the opener, Linear GD00Z and the relay power supply in and test the whole system.

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My smart controller is fully functional and my Linear GD00Z is as well.

5 Likes
10

I got a GD00Z-4 working with a Liftmaster MyQ system as well. The trick was to get a universal wireless remote and solder some leads from the switch to the Linear’s Pushbutton terminals. I also wired in a 3v power adapter to the remote so I would never have to replace the battery. You can get these at radioshack for under $10. It all works … mostly. I noticed that it was intermittent until I came to this thread and read what mxrugg said:

“Just to reiterate in case anyone has experienced this issue, I
have to wait a full minute between toggling the opening/closing state of
the garage door with the SmartThings app. So if I open the
garage door with the app, I have to wait one minute before I can close
it again through the app. If I close the garage door with the app, I
have to wait one minute before the GD00Z will start beeping again and
open the garage door.”

I’m not hooked up to a SmartThings hub. I’m hooked up to a Honeywell Tuxedo Wifi (new firmware fully supports the Linear). I wasn’t sure why it would literally stop working… until I waited the “minute” before re-openining/closing. Voila… I got 100% when I waited.

This looks like its a thing in the Linear GD00Z. It may have to do with the communication between the tilt sensor and the unit before it allows it to recycle itself. I may experiment by pulling the tilt sensor completely and seeing if I get more consistent results.

This does not seem to be documented anywhere, but IMHO, its a serious problem. I may contact Linear to see if this is a bug or its by design.

Can anyone else have the ability to open/close the Linear under a minute consistently w/o having it force itself into manual mode?

11

I have a Tuxedo Touch, a number of Cooper Aspire wireless switches, Vista 21IP security, Yale Real Living Garage door lock, and Linear GD00Z-4 garage door command. My garage door openers are Liftmaster 3800-PLD, but I only wanted to control one of them with the GD00Z-4. My Liftmasters use the smart control with temperature and motion sensor, and I did not want top lose that functionality or anything else for that matter. So I was interested to stumble across your post. I just got through installing it and it works perfectly - everything works. I can run and and monitor the garage door from the Tuxedo Touch, from my car’s button, from the switch, and from the Honeywell Total Connect 2 app on my computer and iphone. Right now it is set up somewhat temporary for testing purposes, but I will clean-up the install this week and it will look and operate perfect.
Thanks fo rthe post and hopefully I will be able to add something to this later.

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Hey there, awesome troubleshooting! Just curious if you ever got around to contacting Linear for their confirmation on indeed if it’s intended behavior or an actual bug. I’m hoping the second but knowing lawsuits now days I can only imagine it’s intended behavior so no one will come after them for someone triggering it rapidly in a short period of time breaking the gears or whatever with the garage door or somehow injuring someone, who knowsssss but yea haha!

Hey sorry if I misunderstood but did you mention you actually got everything working with a GD00Z-4 hooked into the same terminals as your premium wall switches (aka includes temperature and motion sensor)?

If so, then that’s great as you got the best of all worlds and perhaps your garage door opener allows more customization so that’s why it worked?

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I believe everything is working fine on my unit - The temperature reads fine, lights turn on when it senses walking or when the door goes up. I have attached a couple pictures showing which door-opener button I have and the GD00Z-4 installed on wall above garage door. I used the 12V power supply from the Linear GD00Z-4 transformer to drive the Radio Shack (YH185B) relay and the GD00Z-4 - and it works fine. Inside the door-opener button, I soldered the wire across both of the switches just to be sure there was no questioning this interface. After all was hooked up and powered on, everything works as it was designed.

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@mxrugg in the installation instructions it states

“Once the GD00Z-4 has initiated the movement of the garage door, another
command cannot be sent for 30 seconds. This eliminates the chance of “bouncing”
the garage door and possibly damaging the garage door opener.”

They state 30 seconds, not a minute, but since it seems like a common issue it is likely an intentional feature in the GDOOZ.

16

The 30 seconds is a UL listing requirement for garage door controllers that can be operated out of sight. But it’s 30 seconds, not a minute.

2 Likes
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Well at this point I rarely use my garage door controller hooked up to SmartThings due to security concerns of the hub possibly malfunctioning and just opening the garage even though chances of that happening are probably unlikely, I just had bad luck with SmartThings so will take a while to gain my trust back slowely haha!

Also the largest issue I have with the system is that the “smallest” radius we can select in the phone app is still way to large for me as where I’m located there are windy roads all around so chances are you can be driving on the road near the “back” of the house but by the time you reach the front, the garage would’ve already been opened for 45 seconds or more which is unacceptable to me. Even while leaving the house, I want the garage to automatically close after 5 seconds of physically leaving the garage where I can still see it physically close instead of turning down a street and now I lost sight with the front of the house so yea!

Everyone has their use for this controller but to me, it’s just a simple fancy gadget I show friends and family and is really of no use unless SmartThings lets me create a smaller presense location radius in the app. I mean not everybody lives on a straight street with a farm field in the back right? :smile:

18

Thank you for posting this. I believe I have the same garage system. How did you use the same power supply to run the gd00z and RadioShack relay? Thanks!
J

19

It has been a little while since I did this, but I believe I ran the positive lead from the GD00Z’s transformer down to the relay, where I cut the wire, and tied the positive wire from the GD00Z to the other connection on the relay.
I followed the basic format as presented by Chadkillingsworth earlier - I just cleaned up the install. It has been running now for a couple months now and all is good.
I will get a few more close-up photos and post them; Those would show the wiring details at the relay.
Paul

20

Okay, I just got one of these and I’m in the wonderful situation (despite none of the exclusion manuals listing my model) of having the same opener / wall remote that chadkillingsworth does. Why they don’t say “any smart LCD temperature displays are excluded from compatibility” as well is beyond me.

All my wiring was done pre-build and is inside the walls and ceiling, so I have no interest in exposed wire from my wall pushbutton up and over to my opener.

That said, can I still use the solution of buying a cheap wireless remote, jumping 2 wires to the red/white inputs of the opener, and the other 2 white wire leads from the zwave device, and just having the remote up there? I don’t care about the remote battery dying – If it happens I’ll climb up once a year or whatever and put in a new battery. I am crap at soldering and electronics.

This was supposed to be easy. Frustrated. The opener chad and I have IS Craftsman but not MyQ technology so I am a little irate that it wasn’t clearly listed on the exclusions list. Pretty popular unit.