One remote control for two gate motors?

Excess remotes to control the gate

You never know when an unexpected thing may happen to you. Often, when something happens suddenly and it is urgent, we get stressed, forget about other things and become a little distracted.

For example, imagine that you need to urgently go somewhere, e.g. to an office. Your car is in the garage. You rush headlong, take out a bunch of remotes for multiple things from your jacket, and in your mind you curse yourself that you could have bought everything from one seller and have peace of mind …

You forget the basic thing out of nervousness – which remote control was for the garage, which for the gate, and which was controlling the damper actuator to the basement? Which one was it ?! Oh, it’s this one… No, it’s the other one. After a while you are on your way, stressed as heck. However, you do remember one more important thing. The wallet and the phone were left on the kitchen counter! You come back quickly because you know that without any documents you can as well stay home. The lady at the office will send you back. Full of frustration you drive up to the gate and the same problem again … Out of anger, you want to throw the bunch of remote controls over the horizon and you wonder if this situation could be avoided somehow…

Controlling several devices with one remote control?

In life, we sometimes buy equipment from different manufacturers and as long as you do not need to control it somehow, there is no problem with it. However, in the case of remote gate motors, you have to initiate the work with something, and in this case, they are usually remote controls. As a rule, each manufacturer has its own coding for remotes transmitting at 433.92 MHz. If we have a garage door and a swing gate from one of the manufacturers, in most cases it will be possible to control them with one remote control. As long as the number of channels available in the remote control allows it. The problem occurs when you have two or more machines from different suppliers. Carrying a bunch of remotes is not very comfortable. However, thanks to the radio link, you can have one remote control for two gate motors.
A radio receiver or radio link is useful in order to gain access to the gate with a remote control from another manufacturer that uses a different code.

We can also use it when the machine has a damaged internal receiver. The second thing is increasing the number of uploaded remotes when the drive controller memory is full.

Such switchboards usually take up little space, so they can be safely installed inside the machine. Lamps equipped with a radio are an interesting alternative, thanks to which we additionally provide a better operating range for the remotes.

Let’s assume that we have an ETM-01 LIGHT

swing gate motor purchased from us and a second gate, powered by a third-party sliding motor. In this case, we can either use two remote controls or install an additional remote control.

You can mount the control unit of the manufacturer of the sliding motor to the ETM or our radio receiver dto the second machine. Of course, special care must be taken during all activities, and all electrical work must be performed with the equipment disconnected from the power supply.

Connecting the receiver to the gate operator

At the beginning, you need to carefully review the technical specifications of the equipment. It must have outputs for external control. An additional advantage is the possibility of powering the radio link directly from the board. Therefore, it is good to have an output for powering additional accessories. Particular attention must be paid here, not only to the voltage level, but also whether it is stabilized or not. For example, connecting 24 V AC to the 12-24 DC control unit may damage it and the controller.

If there is no place to power the radio, you can use a different, external power supply. If everything is already checked, you can start connecting the control unit to the motor. Each control unit and motor has a different connection scheme, so we will not provide a universal manual, but we can use an example of connecting a 2-channel remote control to the KSE drive.

In the picture we can see 2 power cables, one black and one red. They go to the power output, which is dedicated to the photocells, but the control unit can be powered from this output. The green and blue wires are the control wires that transmit information from the control unit to the motor.

After connecting, we can proceed to turn on the power. If we have connected everything, you can proceed to the procedure of uploading the remotes. So, we upload (to the receiver) remotes from the manufacturer’s device of the central unit and the device that is controlled without a radio link. After completing this step, we will be able to control two or more motors using one type of remote. However, important information at this point will be to make sure how many channels are reserved by the machine and how many are operated by the control panel and the remote control. This information will help you choose the proper control unit with remote controls and will allow you to estimate how many machines will be controlled with one remote.

One remote control for two gate operators

The discussed steps will allow us to easily control the operation of two or more machines with one remote control. You can, of course, try various combinations. You can always try to connect a radio link from one manufacturer to 2 drives from other manufacturers, and then you will just have to buy one receiver for each drive. There are many roads. In many cases, this will save us time and space. So, you can walk with a bunch of remotes in your pockets or connect everything into one remote and have peace of mind. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Maybe you have to rush to a store before people buy out a really good bargain? ;)