Magnet strip needs to be taller/longer
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Official comment
Noted. Will see what we can come up with for this.
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I have a similar issue to Alex. Not ice under the door but movement of the garage slab. I installed the unit in 80 degree weather and the magnet and sensor were exactly aligned with about a quarter inch gap between the sensor and magnet. Fast forward to -20 degrees and I discovered that the gap was still perfect but the vertical alignment of the magnet and sensor were now off by about one quarter to one half an inch. This was unexpected and inconvenient. I do have annual movement of the slab in my garage with the seasonal changes in temperature. The gap between the magnet and sensor can be easily changed but the vertical alignment does not have an easy adjustment. I now have a second set of holes for the magnet which I may need to shift back to the original holes when the weather gets warmer. I wholeheartedly agree that the magnet needs to be longer than the sensor to accommodate seasonal changes in the temperature that might cause movement of the slab or differences in expansion or contraction of the door and garage tracks. Maybe offer an optional magnet that is longer. I can't be the only person to have experienced this kind of issue. Will be looking for a longer magnet to substitute.
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Here is what I have tried. It seems to work. I purchased this off of Amazon. The magnet and contact set both have a plastic strap so that I simply removed the Tailwind magnet from the bracket and strapped the new magnet in it's place. There should be plenty of extra magnet coverage to take care of any shift in the floor or door. No more lockouts. I used the widgit on my phone to make sure that Tailwind thought the door was closed when it actually was. If it is out of sync, take the magnet away and put it back to simulate an open or close operation. If this works, I might make a bigger bracket to hold the longer magnet. It shouldn't be that hard to do...
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I'm having the same issue, it's causing all kinds of problems. It would also be nice if we could override the lockout remotely. I'm sitting here at work right now with "LOCKOUT" showing, I can see my garage door is open via my Wyze cam, and there's nothing I can do about it. I even tried changing Night Mode settings to be within the current time, so that the door would try to close after five minutes. It didn't.
Question--that Seco-Larm magnetic contact looks like it'd work great--what is it, exactly? Is it just a question of having something magnetic in that area? Like any magnetic strip of anything?
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It's just a big magnet, about 4" long and otherwise the same thickness as the original Tailwind magnet. The first commenter gave me the idea. In my case, there was seasonal movement that caused my magnet and switch to be about a 1/4"-1/2" misaligned, vertically. When that happened, my door started locking out. I found the magnet in the photo by searching for other options online. I wanted something that would give additional magnetic coverage in the event of movement or ice under the door. The photo above has a contact switch and magnet in the set. I only used the magnet from the set and it seems to work great! I think it is a bit stronger than the one that comes with the Tailwind. You can search Amazon or elsewhere for Seco-Larm SM-216Q if you want to find the same magnet. It was about $9 but I needed something that worked better than the original magnetic switch and this just strapped right on the bracket with no tools other than a screwdriver.
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https://www.amazon.com/Seco-Larm-SM-216Q-GY-Magnetic-Contact/dp/B002ZOQ0RQ
I'm on Amazon.com and there is a single grey unit for $8.99. There may be other places to get it cheaper. I tried to find just the magnet but stopped looking because I just wanted it to work.
I found one on eBay also:
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Jeff, quick question--with the longer magnet, have you noticed (or do you think there may be a danger of) the garage door not fully closing? I'm just wondering...if the magnet is longer, meaning that the bottom of it is "entering the detection zone" of the Tailwind door switch about "an inch sooner" than normal, would that possibly cause the door to stop closing maybe an inch short of actually being closed, if you know what I mean?
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That won't be any issue. Your garage door opener unit is what closes the door. The fact that the sensor for the Tailwind will trigger as "closed" a little early won't have any impact on it. However it could have an impact for the door opening process. If it does we can deal with that in a firmware update.
The Tailwind controller will try to open the door. If it does not see that the magnet has moved away from the sensor within 5 seconds of sending the pulse to open the door, it will try again. If the magnet is so large that it takes too long to register as "open", the second pulse of the Tailwind will occur and stop the door just a couple inches open. We can extend that 5 second retry limit if this becomes an issue.
Also - please make sure the magnet is not so strong that it magnetizes the bracket that the sensor mounts to. If it is a strong magnet and magnetizes that support bracket, the magnetization could become so strong that the sensor still thinks the magnet is present even when it moves away.
One final note - you CAN remove the lockout remotely! Just tap the gear icon beside your Tailwind device in the app. That brings you to the device settings menu. You can reboot the controller in that menu. That reboot will clear the lockout.
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Also, since your door seems to be moving you might want to try an alternate mounting method that some customers use when their door tracks are non-standard and they can't mount the sensor the regular way. With a slight bit of modifying (bending) the bracket you can actually mount the magnet and sensor as shown in this picture - mounting it above the door. This may or may not help, but I wanted to offer it as an alternative - and it doesn't require any additional parts.
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