Ideas for a garage door opener?

[pokey]

I just replaced my garage door opener (chain driven) with a belt driven unit.  It's mostly functional, though it could no longer lift my heavy door.  Any ideas of what I might use this for before I throw it away?

[therealbigjim]

Hoist a ghost or skeleton up a tree....

[tbone321]

The door should not be all that heavy.  I would look into the rollers and counter balance springs for the problem or you may be replacing this new opener sooner than you think.

[vairmoose]

Hoisting the megatree hub.   Moving a train.

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Vairmoose

[CaptainMurdoch]

I picked up one for free at a garage sale last year that I intend to use to make a wireframe snowman stand up and fall down.  He's in a snowball fight with another snowman across the driveway.

[drlucas]

Wow captain - I gotta see that in action

[duane.mosley]

i have thought about using one to make my blow mold santa and reindeer fly across the yard during santa claus is coming to town.

[CaptainMurdoch]

Wow captain - I gotta see that in action

It was one of the things I wanted to get done last year but only got halfway through, so I need to finish it this summer.  I made each wireframe snowman out of a tomato cage, with multiple arms so I could simulate waving arms and tossing snowballs.  I have 100mm 24V WS2811 'pixels' for the snowballs themselves.  One snowman is welded to a 12" bicycle wheel mounted in the back-half of a bicycle frame to give it a pivot point.  I used a piece of the bicycle chain wrapped around the wheel with the other end attached to the garage door opener trolley.  Adjust the limits on the garage door opener to make it stand up straight and lay down horizontal.  I still need to figure out how to hook it up to a controller, I'm still tossing around a few ideas on that.  The snowmen have 12V LED rope light on them and 12V LED ribbon for their colored top-hats.  The idea was that they're having a friendly snowball fight when occasionally the one snowman knocks the hat off the other one (this one has 2 hat positions).  The one with the knocked-over hat then 'retaliates' by throwing a colored or flashing snowball back which knocks the other snowman over.  I need to build a sturdier over-the-driveway arch also.  I underestimated the impact of the 12 or 14 snowballs on the arch I was making out of PVC with the winds we sometimes get, so I need to get a larger pipe and different config.

[tbone321]

Wouldn't it be easier just to build an arch with multiple snowballs on it and just light them sequentially to make ti look like the snowball is flying thru the air?

[CaptainMurdoch]

Wouldn't it be easier just to build an arch with multiple snowballs on it and just light them sequentially to make ti look like the snowball is flying thru the air?

Ahhh, yeahhhh.   That's exactly what I'm doing.  The garage door opener is for the snowman, not the snowballs.  One of the snowmen can fall down in a sweeping motion rather than having 3-4 outlines of snowmen and turning channels on/off to make it look like he's falling.  this snowman will actually fall (well "lay") down when I'm done.

[taybrynn]

There used to be a house in Highlands Ranch with a very nice 'ski lift' and also a choir that moved back and forth on the roof ... I wonder what kind of motor he used for those display items.  In later year he also had a santa roller coaster that actually worked.  All of that in a very small front yard.

[typoagain]

I actually have an old opener that I have held on to for 6 years trying to come up with a good use for.

[taybrynn]

Freecycle