Control garage lights with door opener?

You could run a wire from the bulb socket of the opener to the coil of a 110V relay, and wire the relay N.O. contact in parallel with the light switch.

Bob

a garage door opener? Use an X-10 Powerflash module with a magnetic switch and a wired-in X-10 switch module on the overheads. Mode 3 will turn the light on with the door is opened; off when it closes. I sense it with MrHouse so I can have it on when the door opens, and off 5 minutes after it closes.

-Brian

openers, when there are perfectly good lights

X-10 transmitter that would plug into a light

charge stored in a cap or something.

In applications where there is lots of vibration use a rough service bulb. The filaments in these bulbs are tougher and well supported.

I found one for drop lights at Home Depot that even has a silicone layer on the outside. I have not had any problems out of it. It cost about $5 but I was blowing bulbs in the drop light every other time it got banged or dropped.

As suggested by rtrandems use a magnetic switch and a X-10 X-10 Powerflash module in mode 3. I usually install the garage door contact at the top of the door to keep it out of the weather and make it "invisible".

These heavy duty light bulbs last a little longer (they are even marked as garage door opener lights) but not that much longer. I just buy the cheapie light bulbs. the opener has 2 lights (guess why ? because they fail often) so when 1 goes out I still have some light and time to replace it.Adding some rubber to the mounts will somewhat reduce vibration and help too.

My old opener burned out a lot of lights.

An easy answer is to use a socket adapter that allows you to plug an extension cord into the light socket so that a trouble light can be plugged in and the bulb no longer gets vibrated.

A more challenging answer was to install a relay in the opener so that it can be hardwired to a larger light in the garage. Using relay control allows you to do things like have the light controlled by both the opener and a light switch.

Yup, and it's nice no-tech solution. That and you can put the light (or lights) in a better location. Instead of just the one incandescent stuck inside the plastic housing you could put, say, a pair of florescent tube fixtures over the sides of the vehicles, trunk or where ever would work best. For the sake of safety though don't just dangle or staple up some extension cords. Take the time to do a nice job of it. Conduit or BX armored cable is cheap compared to burning down your house.

-Bill Kearney