I set out on a seemingly simple task this last weekend to add a remote keypad to our garage door opener. We'd not gotten them installed when we bought our house, and it seemed like a much better solution than having to walk around with a spare remote control unit all the time. The installation seemed to be fairly simple and I knew programming wasn't more than a 2 minute operation.

Yes, I was right, installation was a snap. What I didn't anticipate was how many iterations it would take me to get the right keypad unit. In short, the color of the programming (or "learn") button on your garage door opener apparently matters. At least for our opener (made by Chamberlain who also, by the way, makes the ones for Sears)

There is a widely available, popular, remote keypad unit that claims to work on all openers made since 1987. "Perfect!" I thought. Picked one up at Home Depot while on a light bulb/air filter/sanded caulk/etc run on Friday (remember, I'm into optimization so I hate going to Home Depot for just one thing).

Ahem, no. When I got home, I read the fine print which said it didn't support those with the billions of rolling garage door codes. Rats. Rolling garage door codes became popular I think in the late 1990s when it was discovered it was almost trivially easy to sit in a neighborhood with a radio receiver and listen for the remote codes of garage door openers and then to reprogram any generic opener to mimic that code. Specifically, it only referred to openers with red and yellow "learn" buttons. And our opener has a purple button meaning "315MHz, 10-billion rolling codes opener". Which, by the way, is the latest and greatest for Chamberlain.

To top that all off, looking on their website, it seemed like only Chamberlain sold those, and then through mail order. I was frustrated.

Anyways, fortunately, had to pass by Home Depot on the way back from lunch on Saturday. So I returned the unit I had purchased the day before.

Later that afternoon, I stopped into Sears. Had to pick up a new water filter for the fridge. Walking to the refrigerator section, I happened to walk through the hardware section and remembered that Sears' units were made by Chamberlain. Hey, maybe they had the right unit.

Sure enough, there's a shelf of remote keypads. I looked at the openers, and found an open package which said, "Supports 315MHz openers with 10-billion rolling codes and purple learn buttons." Hey, that sounds like mine. Perfect! Except this package is open - let me grab the next one on the shelf because I don't like open packages. Paid the clerk for the keypad and the filter and went on my way. Got home and went right to work programming the thing up.

Except it didn't work. Could not for the life of me figure out why. Spent 30 minutes pushing buttons, following and re-reading programming instructions, and then it hit me. The instructions referred to an orange "learn" button. Walk back into the house, punch up Sears on the web, and discover that when I had picked up the next one off the shelf, I had picked up the "390MHz, 10-billion rolling codes opener" keypad by mistake. ARRRRGGGGHHHH!!

So Sunday after lunch, made one more trip back to Sears. Found the package I had been looking at the day before. Confirmed 3 times it read "315MHz, 10-billion rolling codes opener", noted the part number, and started looking for another unopened one. To find that that was apparently the last one in the store. At that point, I decided I'd had enough, checked the package for all the parts (yup, had keypad, battery, instructions, and 2 mounting screws) and got an exchange for the part. Drove home, did the by now well-known programming dance, and voila. It worked. Mounted it up on the framing outside. It's now installed and happy. And it did take only 5 minutes to program and install.

Too bad it only took me 3 tries to get the right opener.

Now to the rant - the guys who put the built-in garage door openers into my wife's Volvo and my Mini Cooper were able to design an "all-in-one" unit. Why can't they make one for your home? Even if doing so makes it cost a little more? I would have bought one! Hello! Marketing! Are you listening?

But, the moral of the story - when getting a garage door remote, make sure you know the color of your "learn" button and realize that all openers/keypads are not the same....the color of the button matters.