Control Liftmaster LA400 Gate Opener via HA?

Hardware
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This is an LA400-CONT board. Ratgdo flashed with MQTT firmware and on dry contact (beta) config.

For the GDO red/white pair, on my board, there isn’t an SBC + and -, but rather an SBC and two COMM ports. I assume I connect to SBC and any one of the COMM ports. Is that right? That’s how I had my ismartgate hooked up, previously.

My issue is that I seem to have fried my ratgdo board as soon as I connect the red/white/black harness to the board. As soon as I connected the harness, the gate attempted to open, which I assume means the SBC temporarily shorted to COMM thus triggering the gate, but also killing the board.

Has anyone run into this before? I’m assuming I’m doing something silly here, but can’t seem to figure out where I’ve gone wrong!

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So after finally getting this all setup… my control board broke and I had to get it replaced.

I now reconnected the control board to the expansion board and the RATGDO and I can get the gate to open and close BUT the status of the gate is ALWAYS CLOSING.

My setup is wired exactly to @HamBandit setup except that his setup appears to have wires from the Aux 1 and Aux 2 going directly to the ‘WAGO connector’. I think this is my issue as I originally thought this was a ground connector but must be something else.

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In my diagram I have a single wire going from the middle connector of Aux Relay 1 to Aux Relay to like so:

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Maybe this is my wiring issue and thus why I cannot obtain the correct status of the gate. Any feedback would be appreciated.

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I am having a bear of a time figuring out where to connect to gate sbdc. I too have the RSL12UL. I purchased and installed the expansion board. I have most of the wiring ready as in the picture by HamBandit but can’t for the life of me figure out where to connect the Gate SBC + and -. We don’t have that on our board. Please help. I have the v 2.53 ratgdo.

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Question: Are you saying the gate works, but HA will not determine whether the gate is open or closed?

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Read the thread, to summarize where we are at this point:
MQTT works with dry contact firmware, but doesn’t say opening and closing without the accessory board
Esphome reads statuses but can’t open or close

So the current state of affairs is still that we have to use MQTT right? Just making sure I didn’t miss anything.

Now time for my noob questions…
The accessory board top two pins both read out 3.3 volts, can I use those to power the ratgdo? It stays pretty static through opens and closes (3.31v to 3.30v during movement).

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Also, I have the 2.53i version… Just snip the exposed tips off the wire harness for the wires I don’t need for now?

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Update, Did MQTT. On my 2018 board in the post above, I hooked everything up and my rate limit wires were different, for me yellow is opened and white is constant ground. I don’t have one at closed so debating my path forward. It seems to read ok except when power is reset. If the gate is closed it goes log crazy until it cycles once to know what position the gate is in. Debating on putting a cheap reed switch in vs getting the expansion board, unless anyone else has a creative suggestion!

Also in case anyone else is new to MQTT, I followed some guides online and getting the broker set up was easy but the ratgdo config field I think says “address” and host name does NOT work there, it has to be IP address. That was probably my biggest struggle.

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And last update. I thought it was working with only the open sensor but it started log spamming after a bit when it didnt get the confirmation on the close. I caved and bought the expansion board.

One other thought though… Is it possible to use one of the other sensor wires for on-battery status? Thinking about leaving the open sensor I have on the lift arm, using one daughter board relay for closed and the other relay for battery status. The daughter board can do it but looks like the dry contact config only has the open and closed sensors.

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I have a CSL24UL. Did you have 2 separate wires coming out of GND to each common aux relay? Or did you chain them?

I had ESPHome dry contact working with just the Red Ctrl to SBC and Wht GND going to COM- for the door toggle action. When I added Open/Close and separate grounds, the gate started freaking and i saw some smoke coming off the main board and cut power immediately. Seems like everything is fine, but that was worrisome.

I should mention that I think when I turned the unit back on, it was trying to open when it was already open, and that’s what was causing the strain.

I have open wired to relay 1 NC in off/off/on and closed wired to relay 2 in off/on/off.

Maybe I need to have it closed first.

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Y’all, I need some help please!! I am very frustrated :rage:

I have a Liftmaster LA500 with expansion board. Got it going with Ratgdo using this thread as my guide (thank you everyone!) It worked great for about a week.

Suddenly, the commands from HA to open/close the gate do not work. HA sees the gate status as perpetually closed, no matter what state it’s in. And controls from the Ratgdo are not doing anything to the gate. Gate still operates fine with our remote control.

First I thought “it’s gotta be a loose wire”. I double-checked and tugged on everything, and it’s all solid.

I noticed there is an orange light on the “SBC” input of the expansion board (where the red Ctrl wire of the Ratgdo goes). Is that normal?

I tried moving the red Ctrl wire from the Ratgdo to one of the other inputs on the expansion board (Open), and the orange light on the SBC input went away, and the orange light on the Open input lit up. Is that normal?

I measured the voltage between the red Ctrl wire and common and got 0 V. Is that normal? I would think this should change to 24 V when I tell the Ratgdo to open, right? If it’s not getting any voltage, how is that orange light on the SBC input turning on?

I have a multimeter ready to go, just not sure what to check or what normal looks like. I am afraid something might be fried, but I’m not sure why or how to verify, especially because everything was working for a week! Could someone please assist?? I would be super grateful!!

My wiring is as follows:
Ratgdo > Gate add-on board
Red Ctrl > SBC+
White GND > COM-
Open > Aux Relay 1 NO
Close > Aux Relay 2 NC
Gnd > Aux Relay 1 & 2 commons

Aux Relay 1: OFF, OFF, ON
Aux Relay 2: OFF, ON, OFF

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Replying to this in case anyone has the above issue. I was using MQTT to integrate the ratgdo. Apparently we should all be using ESPhome. I found that several other folks had the same “suddenly stop working” situation happen with the MQTT integration.

I re-flashed to ESPhome and the gate has been running solid ever since.

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I used the options in the top right with a Zooz Zen 17. I can reliably open and close the gate (Liftmaster CSL24UL), but this setup has no status.

I have two RATGDO but I cannot get them setup to work with Homeseer. The process is getting stuck during the rebooting phase after I setup the MQTT.

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How did you connect the wires to the Aux Relay terminals? I tried for an hour, but the relay was in the way of the wire input on the terminal.

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Mine weren’t…do you have a picture? Here’s what my expansion board looks like. Relay terminals are the green blocks there at the bottom.

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To echo another poster here, I have ratgdo working with my CSL24UL (w/ expansion board) via the mqtt firmware. The only issue is that sometimes state detection gets messed up and the door thinks it’s closed when it’s actually open, and vice versa. I heard that the ESPHome firmware supported dry contacts and tried that, but could not get it working. It seems that the ESPHome’s dry contact implementation requires obstruction sensors to be wired directly into the ratgdo to be able to use the discrete open and close terminals. I could avoid that and use the SBC control instead, but I couldn’t get that predictably working well enough to warrant switching over.

I do have the open and close state coming over from AUX relays on the expansion board, so I was hoping that by moving to the ESPHome firmware, the door state detection might be less buggy, but that wasn’t the case at all…

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Just a heads up, I’m following your posts. I also have a CSL24UL and reluctantly used the gateway and the MyQ integration to interact with home assistant. I’m not great with this stuff, so trying to follow to find or create my own a step by step guide before I get started.

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I got my system set up with a ratgdo 2.53i and an expansion board following the instructions provided by @hambandit. I’m using the ESPHome implementation. I initially had the SBC wires reversed so nothing worked on the first try but once I swapped them, I was able to open the gates successfully.

Issue is that I have HA has no indication of whether the gate is opened or closed. what do i need to do next?

edit: I answered my own question. I needed to toggle on the 3rd dipswitch for each aux relay because i have two actuators.

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Thanks to all that contrtibuted to this excellent thread. Following along made this modification much easier than it otherwise would have been.

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See by post. I have an open source hardware design for this.

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This works almost perfectly for me, the only problem is the gate status and commands appear reversed. it shows closed when open, and open when closed. I’ll fix this with a custom cover card unless there is a fix with the wiring.

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Im getting the same system for mine, did you get this working?

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no, the setup I needed never worked. The extent of the functionality is I got the Open and Close info from the door.
No control and no way to read an external wall switch.

So I ended up creating my own using an ESP32 and some soldering, and works great.