If you ET 500 Residential Sliding Gate Motor is not fully opening or closing then it is either due to a dead 12V battery or due to some sort of obstacle triggering the gates motors obstacle sensor.
A few weeks after adding a Sonoff wifi switch to my ET 500 Residential Sliding Gate Motor (read about it here), I suddenly started having issues with my gate not fully opening or closing.
I initially thought that the problem was caused by my installation of the Sonoff switch but after a bit of research, I discovered that the issue could either be due to obstacles causing the gates obstacle resistance sensor to trigger or due to a weak or dead 12V battery. So, if you are having similar issues then try the following:
Step 1: Remove any possible obstacles
The ET 500 Residential Sliding Gate Motor has a built in resistance sensor that is able to detect if something is preventing the gate from opening or closing. It does this to prevent things like a car being damaged or a person being injured by the gate. The mechanism also protects the gate motor from burning our should it meet an unusual amount of resistance.
This resistance sensor can be triggered by anything that may be obstructing the gate from opening or closing, so check that:
- nothing is on the metal track that the gate rolls on
- nothing is jammed in the gate wheels
- nothing is jammed in the gate motor cog
- nothing is stuck in the rail that is driven by the gate cog
Step 2: Replace the 12V battery
If there are no obstacles that are introducing resistance and the gate opens or closes when you give it gentle assistance, then it is probably the gate motors 12V battery that is too weak to drive the gate motor.
The ET 500 Residential Sliding Gate Motor is actually powered directly off its battery rather than the main electricity that charges the battery. Therefore, when the battery is old, it is unable to supply sufficient current to drive the gate motor. When the gate motor struggles to run due to low current from the battery, the voltage drops and causes the obstacle resistance trigger to stop the gate.
Another clear sign that the 12V battery is the problem is if the gate works fine on warm days but then won’t open on cold days. This is what happened to me and made me realise that is was the weak battery being impacted by the cold. Batteries rely on chemical reactions and it is these chemical reactions which are slowed down in the cold making the battery unable to deliver the current the motor needs.