Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Stopping the Liftmaster 888LM MyQ Control Panel's Warning Beep

So I have this cool garage door opener, a Liftmaster 8500 with a MyQ 828LM Internet gateway, that can be controlled remotely over the Internet.
But it the 888LM MyQ Control Panel makes a horrendous warning beep when you close the door via Internet app:



It is just like a fire alarm! Really loud. I guess the idea is that if you are not home and you close the door remotely, they want to warn anyone nearby the door is going to close. So it blasts this warning beep for a full 10 seconds before closing and then continues to beep until the door is closed. I did it once at night and I was concerned I would wake the neighbors! (Note the beep doesn't happen if you use the regular garage door remote or the wall button.)
Personally, I figure the other safeties that are built into the garage door (like the photo eyes) are enough protection. But you must decide about the risk of disabling the beep yourself! The garage door is potentially dangerous, and you should keep every safety device. Make any changes at your own risk!
I decided to find a way to disable the beeping. A bit of googling and I found many people complaining about the problem and I must thank Philbin Adamsworthy for the inspiration for this project.

On my door the warning beep comes from the wall mounted button, the 888LM, that operates the door from inside the garage:

There is a screw under the flip up button, I removed that and then you have to slide up the unit to remove it from a second screw that is hidden underneath:

There are wires attached to the back that need to be removed to to take the LM888 off of the wall:

There is a thin black cardboard insulating back on the unit, that is held in place by two posts on the back of the unit.

I lifted the cardboard from the bottom and then carefully pried the cardboard free from those posts with a small screwdriver:


Even after you remove the two screws for the wires, the circuit board is held in place at four points along the side of the plastic housing. I used a large screwdriver to lever the housing away from the circuit board at each of the four points and popped it free:


Next I lifted the top of the circuit board and carefully wiggled it free and slid it toward the top and up to remove it:


Flipping the circuit board over you can see the buttons that fit carefully into the cover. Note there are rubber buttons and a guide that can fall out of the housing. I was careful to note their original positions.


Here is the delicate part. I used a small screwdriver to carefully lever the top off of the speaker housing. If you put the screwdriver too far under the housing you will damage the speaker's internal board; the screwdriver needs to just barely go under the edge.

Underneath are two fine wires to the speaker. I snipped those.

And then I removed the speaker and discarded it!

When installing the board back into the housing I was careful the sensor fit into the plastic guide properly. This guide does come out of the housing, so you do want it positioned correctly:

The circuit board slides back into the housing and snaps back in. I was careful the LEDs and buttons lined up.

And then I replaced the cardboard, pushing it down over the two posts to attach it. And I replaced the screws, leaving them loose enough to reinstall the wires on the wall. Note the screws are marked for the wires, Red and White.

And that was that. I put it back up on the wall and the annoying warning beep was gone!

21 comments:

  1. Awesome instructions. Exactly what I needed to stop the beeping on both my openers. Took about 15 min total after reading your post. Thank you!

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  2. Awesomeeeeee... I just bought two of these 888LM's a few weeks ago and went looking for how to disable it today and voila you have a perfect guide for how to do it. Will attempt this tonight. Thanks!

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  3. Hope it works well for you! Be safe.

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  4. Worked amazing. Did it this past weekend, took 10 minutes to get two of them done. Thanks again!

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  5. That is great! I'm always happy when these posts are useful to someone!

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  6. Thanks so much! This was fantastically useful. The whole thing took me about 10 minutes and worked beautifully.

    For posterity you could mention that the danger of breaking the circuit board comes from detaching the dime-sized piece under the black plastic speaker protector, and that the best approach to removing it is going in tangentially rather than straight in as you depict. Now that I've disassembled this thing I wonder whether just rotating that black plastic housing with a pair of pliers would be the best way... or whether that would move the piece underneath as well. What do you think?

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    1. I'm not sure on the rotation, it has been too long since I've done it to remember!

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    2. Reviewing my pictures, if you could rotate the speaker, I think it would just twist the wires; so I don't think that would work. And again, you could damage the circuit board underneath. I'd stick with the original post's method.

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  7. Filling the hole with glue quiets it down 50%

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  8. Thank you for making this guide. The beep is horrendously loud, and there's no way I'm going to subject my neighbors to that crap every time I close the door since I primarily use the app.

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  9. You, my friend, are awesome... Just got the garage door and opener installed today, and after I got this all set up, I hit "Close" on my phone, only to hear this annoyingly loud beeping coming from the garage. Of course, my initial reaction is that the dang thing is broken! Go outside to investigate, and there's my neighbor across the street looking at me with a "What the heck is that noise?!" look on his face. 10 minutes after reading your post here, I am now completely beepless! Thanks again!

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  10. Having a hard time removing the black speaker housing. It seems very "attached" to the circuit board. Can't manage to get even the smaller screwdriver tip under there. I can try the pliars method, but am weary of breaking the circuit board. Any ideas? Think they reinforced attachment of the speaker cover to the board?

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    1. It is a delicate procedure... I don't have any particular advice except to be careful!

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    2. I did hafta pry off the cap. was pretty stuck on there! on my other one I just desoldered the pins on the back & lifted it off the board!
      https://imgur.com/ItdtmGF

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  11. I just followed your process & it was simple! I did notice that rather than lift off the actual speaker one could simply unsolder the speaker terminals to lift the whole set right off!( I will do that for the other 4 that I have in my garage! ) https://imgur.com/a/fGsVNn5
    I will say that when I plugged it back together and wired it all up it blinked the red & yellow death lights! I was a little panicked, and tried the reset of taking it back ogg and holding down the open button until it died,but it still was blinking & wouldn't open! So I resigned that I would hafta get another one & left it for 10 min and then checked on it & it reset itself!

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  12. So the link provided in the thread is for an older model of the Garage door where the speaker module is housed in the control unit on the wall. I pulled my wall unit and the speaker wasn't there because I have a newer MyQ Garage door where the speaker is located in the ceiling unit.

    I found this video that shows where the board is located once you remove the few screws to remove the shell (power screw driver is perfect for this). I no longer have that obnoxious beeping now when using my phone app to close the garage. My neighbors don't have to hear an announcement that I'm closing my garage.

    Here is the video:
    youtube.com/watch?v=jXgfLcxjjYw&t=215s

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    1. Not quite accurate. All of the current wall mount jackshaft openers still use wall control panels that beep. Your cheaper ceiling mount unit is different. But glad you "fixed" it!

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  13. Thank you!!
    I was able to twist and pull the black speaker housing with pliers since I was having a hard time with a small screwdriver.

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  14. If you have the newer version of the opener (889LM) there are no wires to cut. You just need to remove the thin gold metal “coin-like” piece which acts as the speaker.

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  15. If you disable the speaker, are there any lights that still flash? I’m about to do this for the 889LM

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