It seems so simple: you click a button and your garage door opens for you, allowing you to be able to drive directly into your garage without having to get out in the elements and do the work for yourself. When garage door openers were invented, people definitely rejoiced, especially when it became affordable for everyone to have a garage opener. But most people aren’t sure how they work. There are actually two different ways that garage door openers can be told to open through a remote control link.
DIP Switch
A DIP switch is the first type of switch that was invented to work with garage door openers. Back in the 1950s, when garage doors were first created, all garage doors worked with the same radio signal, which meant that anyone could enter your home as long as they had a garage opener. This caused tons of security problems, and is why DIP switches were invented. A DIP switch is a series of tiny switches that are connected to a circuit board inside your remote control. Each switch can be positioned a number of ways in the remote, which creates a variety of different combinations, making it almost impossible for someone to guess your specific combination. In most DIP switch remotes, there are up to 256 possible combinations.
The switch is added to both the remote control that goes to the garage door opener, and the unit that goes into your garage, which is known as the receiver. Both switches have to be set to the same combination in order for the door to work correctly. Some say, however, that DIP switch garage openers are a thing of the past, as some thieves can use radio scanners to read the radio code that the remote control sends to the receiver, making it possible for them to get in through your garage door.
Rolling Code
A rolling code is computer technology that is designed to add more security to your home through your garage door opener. This type of opener works with a small computer chip that goes into both the receiver and the remote. When you click on the remote to open your door, it sends out a code to the receiver, which has the matching code. But it also does something else: it creates a new code for the next time the door will be opened and sends that information to the receiver. It then saves the code. This means that when you open your garage door the next time, it will use the code it created from the time before. It will have created a new code, making it virtually impossible for thieves to be able to figure out what the new code is.
Both types of garage door openers can be found on the market today, and both have their pros and cons, allowing consumers to select which garage opener they feel works best and that is the safest for their homes.