Toyota Yaris DIY

So, I was tired of keeping up with my garage door opener. I had stashed it in my driver’s side glove box for the last year with some velcro, but i’m too lazy to keep opening up the glove box to open the garage. So, I dismantled my garage door opener to see how it works and see if I can rig up a nice, stock looking button on my door to use. It was easier than I thought it would be…

Here is my garage door opener dismantled. Although openers vary, almost all of them use the same basic topology: a momentary switch closes a circuit which triggers the signal sent to the opener to open/close the door. As a bonus, the board for the opener switch has pads for more switches right on the board. The pictures were taken after I had already soldered wires to the switch pads:


I then wired up the switch:

A quick test…. SUCCESS!
so then i started to decide where to mount the switch. The optimal place IMHO is in the push-button start button cover. But I had already mounted my cruise control switches there, so I opted for another good location, the forward most door sill trim piece:

Works like a charm! I used the same popular black momentary switch we all seem to be buying from radio shack. I drilled the hole just slightly too big, so I used a thin nylon washer I had lying around (after painting it flat black) to mount the switch, and i think it looks COOL…

I tucked the board for the opener down in between the factory door panel pad and the door panel.