HomeLink won't work with certain Chamberlain garage openers
I have three Chamberlain garage door openers. One works fine with the HomeLink mirror. The other two refused to pair no matter what I tried. New batteries, removed light bulbs, pressed the learn button correctly, tried it dozens of times. Nothing. I can get the Homelink to connect to the remote (solid green light when pressing Homelink buttons), but I cannot get it to communicate with the other 2 openers.
To prove it wasn't a me problem, I bought a $10 Chamberlain universal remote. It paired with all three doors instantly. So the openers work fine, it's specifically HomeLink that can't talk to them.
After a lot of digging I found out those two other door openers use a completely different wireless signal than what HomeLink transmits. They literally cannot communicate with each other. It's not a user error, they just don't speak the same language.
Here's what makes this extra frustrating; it's that one opener was made in 2012 and the other in 2017. To get the Homelink button to work on the other 2 doors, I need to spend $50 on an add-on just to make 8-13 year old openers work with a brand new $45,000 car.
The fix is a device called the HomeLink Compatibility Bridge (~$50 on Amazon, model 855LM). You plug it in near your opener and it acts as a translator between the two systems. One bridge works for multiple doors.
Just as I refuse to pay for the app to start my car and unlock my doors, I also refuse to buy a $50 compatibility device to make my garage door openers all work with my Homelink mirror. I'll just keep the universal remote on the visor.
Hope this saves someone the headache and hours of frustration that I went through.