PSA: Check your limit switch magnets before assuming it's a board issue

Spent three hours troubleshooting an intermittent door reopening problem at a 12-story apartment building in Austin last Tuesday. Turns out a weak magnet on the car door limit switch was the culprit, not the controller. Has anyone else wasted a day chasing ghosts like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

val22322d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree here. In 2019 I replaced three boards on a high rise in Dallas before someone finally checked the wiring and found a loose ground. Bad boards are way more common than weak magnets in my experience. Those magnets either work or they don't, but boards can glitch out and give you all sorts of intermittent nonsense.

james66122d ago

So what kind of magnet was it - the round ceramic ones or the little square ones? I've seen those round ones lose strength after a few years in the heat, especially on an outside car door at a 12 story. @val223 I get what you're saying about bad boards being more common, but I've had three weak magnets in the last two years myself that acted exactly like a controller issue. Next time you're chasing an intermittent on a door limit, just swap the magnet out first, takes two minutes and saves pulling a board you might not need.