Control Liftmaster LA400 Gate Opener via HA?

Hardware
160

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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168

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.

176

Hi all,

I was able to get my LA500 setup with v2.53i but it acts like a single control button and gets stuck with “opening” after each use.

Using a v2.53i board with dry contact from the wiring diagram ESPHome ratgdo, could someone please help me confirm that the first black wire from the top is the ground that goes to the commons of both relay and that
5th wire goes to NC on relay 2
6th wire goes to NO on relay 1

177

Thanks to everyone above! Just got it all working with my LA400 using the K1D8387-1CC expansion board & 2.53i RATGDO using the ESPHome firmware.

At first, my gate was always showing open but after stripping a bit more off the black wires attached to the RATGDO harness, everything worked as expected.

@kirkrove I’m probably way too late but that’s how I have mine wired.

1 Like
178

These instructions worked for me as well. Thank you HamBandit for putting them together. My set up is as follows:

  • LA400 opener system with Dual Actuators.
  • Main Board: 001D9040-1CC REV D (2024 model)
  • Expansion Board: K1D8387-1CC

Using ESPHome dry contacts firmware. Works perfectly in Home Assistant.

Expansion Board with Ratgdo
Expansion Board with Ratgdo1920×1440 336 KB

179

Here I am with a gen 1 K001A6039 board. Prior gen so it doesn’t have the expansion board capability. Before I order my ratgdo and follow most of this thread… anyone have any thoughts for wiring the board?

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180

I finally got around to purchasing an Expansion Board on eBay.

My open and close indicators with my previous method were not always reliable. Maybe 75% of the time it was accurate.

I asked ChatGPT which model expansion board was the best for my current board, looked it up, and found some cheaper ones on eBay that weren’t labeled by model. Saved a bunch by taking the time to compare photos against a stock photo to make sure I got the right one. Got a 2 pack of “unknown condition” for $100, both boards ended up working so I’ll probably sell the extra.

Because someone above asked for model specifics:
Liftmaster Mainboard 001D8052-1CC Rev A
LiftMaster Expansion board K1D8387-1CC UL325

Slightly out of focus wiring diagram:

image
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Worst part was needing to extend the wiring harness to reach the port on my board, not too terrible.

Works great. Relay Dip Switch chart was printed on the inside of the box lid, I can confirm it matched Ham Bandit’s diagram.