Thanks for posting!
Question for you as I’m not a big yaml expert. Does this make a single button to open and close the gate, similar to a garage door opener?
Thanks!
The first half of the yaml creates two switches (open and close) and two sensors (open and closed), and those individual components are combined in the second half to make the gate cover object. In your dashboards, you’d just add the gate object and control it like any other cover.
If you only want a simple button that toggles the gate like a garage door remote, then you could just interface to the SBC connection on the main LA400 board.
Reading this thread, the RATGDO github issues thread and the above reddit thread and trying to gauge the status of using RATGDO with Liftmaster LA400 (the Gate).
Most of the threads predate the 2.5 TATGDO with Security 1.0 which might help in getting the RATGDO to work with the Gate
If look at the control panel on the Liftmaster LA400 I see the SBC connector which is used by iSmartgate whcih would be the connection for the red and black wire… BUT where to place the white wire?
If I ordere the expansion board, I would ask the same question.
Any ideas?**
someone who’s tried can confirm, but the way I understand, if using the SBC controller - seems like from various posts, you’d have to use the dry contact interface on the right side of the RATGDO - so it would only be 2 wires?
1 Like
I just received a 2.5 ratgdo and am trying to figure out how to wire it up to the LA400 now. Has anyone figured this out yet?
I have been looking into this.
I bought a RATGDO 2.5 and was disappointed to open my gate motor and see the contacts weren’t easily laid out. I have been digging. As stated above, the SBC seems to be the golden ticket for dry contacts.
(taken from manual)
The Expansion Board is seemingly the easiest option to get access to limiters for Open and Close but at $150 it’s not really my first choice. Model: LiftMaster Expansion Board (UL325)
The black box in the bottom right hand corner is what I think would be the easiest access to what you’d need for a dry contact RATGDO.
But this isn’t too feasible due to cost.
I want to dig into what the color wires on the arm do.
Now, I haven’t tested this yet but I stumbled across this video (https://youtu.be/T5quqEr5-_U?t=594) where a guy is repairing his LA400 opener and it gives a pretty good view of the limit switches on the inside of the arm. It looks like the Brown and White Wires are Limit switches and the Yellow might be the common line. In the next few days when I get a chance I am going to take a multimeter and see what the terminals on the gate board say at different positions.
I’m hoping we can get a reading out of these colored wires going to the operator.
My 3rd RATGDO is still on it’s way and I’m not willing to rip my other 2 out of the other doors to test this. If anyone makes progress, please update me!
1 Like
great find! are you thinking using the voltage differences the guy shows in those videos, the ratgdo ‘may’ be able to decipher whether the gate is open/close/moving? fingers crossed on this solution
Correct. I believe a RATGDO in dry contact mode would be able to use the voltage sensed as the fully open and fully closed limit switch. Voltage readings today look promising but I am waiting on my RATGDO to be delivered in approx 3 weeks.
Yellow and Brown Measurements
Gate Closed
Gate Opened
Yellow and White Measurements
Gate Closed
Gate Open
So they -seem- to read properly at the open and close but I’ll admit two things:
- I didn’t expect a negative reading for White measurement. Not sure what to make of that.
- The voltage measurements were not a static number while the gate opened and closed. The White and Yellow got to -5.72 while the gate was opening before settling on -1.41 at full open.
I feel like the RATGDO might be able to read despite this but I’ll need to compare to my other gate that is using dry contacts.
1 Like
So, if the expansion board uses 4 wires and has all that io, pretty obvious it’s some kind of communications bus, then if you could decipher that bus wouldn’t it give you all the info you needed and then some? You really just need to figure out where ground is, then look for your signal. I’d imagine based off the graphic you posted you have ground, power, TX and RX. Is it as simple as black ground, red power, then yellow and blue are your rx tx?
Unfortunately, I have no experience with deciphering a communication bus. I am hoping I can guess blindly at the wire colors and get the expected outcome.
I got really close today with a borrowed RATGDO, but it seems to spaz while opening and closing. I was reliably getting an Open read and Closed read using GREEN and YELLOW, with a WHITE ground. Not what I first had hoped.
My initial thoughts with Brown are invalid as they throw error code 32 (actuator issue, check wiring).
At this point, I can open and close the gate. But I no longer trust the open and closed readings. I wasn’t able to troubleshoot further before the sun went down.
Hope to have a final wiring diagram and companion youtube video soon.
1 Like
Video of how it looks when Opening & Closing. I am not sure how to limit this impact on my logs. It was reading correctly at the static open and static close but a few hours later is reading Closed when it is really Open.
I have the exact same gate and just got my ratdgo in the mail. I’m really looking forward to figuring this out. If you have anything you’d like me to confirm/test let me know.
I’m just looking for a way to read “open” I got it to read a few times on the Green actuator wire then it stopped. I don’t know the reason why.
Currently have the SBC wired with the + to the Red Ctrl to GDO and - to the White GND to GDO.
Close Dry Contact to Yellow. Ground to White.
It opens and closes. Reads closed when closed, just says “Opening” when opening, open, and closing.
If you figure out a good way to read Open, please let me know!
This is awesome! I will be ‘home free’ someone can get this to work. Would you mind sending pictures of how your wires are run?
Sure, the wires I used are taken from a CAT6 Solid core wire. The Green plug that goes to the actuator can be removed to make access to the screws easier to screw down the wires.
1 Like
You got further than I did. Hooked everything up the using the same pinouts you used. The door cover in homeassistant shows stop an close as available options regardless of whether the gate is opened or closed. Neither cover button responds. Looking at the entities for the device, I can see the gate open and close change states if I add/remove the green or yellow wire from the gate controller so I know it’s sending status to homeassistant. I also shorted out the SBC connection on the gate controller to make sure the gate is responsive to those ports (it is). The only explanations are:
-
The ratdgo board is bad (not likely since the dry contact trigger wires seem responsive, but maybe the “to gdo” ones aren’t?).
-
The ESPHome firmware I downloaded to the board is bad or had an error. Did you download the ESPHome firmware or the MQTT version?
Also, watching that youtube video you provided of the gate opener repair it looks like there are to contact switches, one that is pressed when the gate is open and another that shows when the gate is closed. Both use a white wire, the open one also has a brown wire and the close has a yellow. I know you were trying green for the open sensor and getting weird readings so I tried brown and at least on the HA entities page I could see it change states when connected to brown but not green. I’m assuming since you got it to work with green that it really doesn’t matter if the dry contact wires are connected at all, they’re just used to show the gate state of open or closed? I tried just connecting the SBC wires and the ground wire but I still couldn’t get it to open or close through HA.
1 Like
Thought I read on Paul’s website that dry contacts are only supported on the MQTT version, not on ESPHome yet. Maybe that’s the issue?
Well I feel dumb now. I double-checked the features matrix and realized the “X”=Yes and “+”=Not yet. 
. That’s what I get for not reading the key. I’ll re-flash with MQTT and report back.
Got it working with MQTT but still have the same problem reported here - no good way to consistently report when gate is open. Tried both the brown and green wire for dry contact Open but I’m still only seeing the gate reading closed regardless of whether it’s open or closed.
1 Like
Yep. MQTT is a must for the Dry Contact. Which is dumb because my gate has Security+ 2.0 printed on the door. I am keeping an eye on expansion boards on ebay. Holding out for someone to crack the communication bus as @Pauldy mentioned.