Miata Genie Garage Door Opener Button Mod

While out shopping for yet another strange battery for my Genie garage door opener, I realized that it was a 12 volt battery.  Not wanting to waste money on one of those expensive batteries when my car provides lots of 12v power, I decided to hardwire it to my car.  While doing that I realized I could also hard wire the button itself so I don't have to have to search for the remote in some cubby hole in my car.

I first opened up the remote and soldered wires into onto the PC board.  Here you can see the two black wires connected to the main open/close switch, the black single wire connected to the negative, and the red conected to the positive.  After soldering these in place I cloased things back up and screwed the single screw in place on the back.

After doing this, I checked in the car and found a fuse for an always-on circuit.  I believe it is the stereo circuit, according to a forum posting I saw.  I have not been able to find out what fuses are what in the fuse box.

This picture shows the add-a-circuit system I installed to get the power for the circuit.

The next picture shows the point where I got the negative connection using a splice connector (is that what they are called?).  The splice connecter is red and connected to one of the black wires going together with all the other black wires that are ground wires.

I removed one of the plastic place holders for a DSC switch or some other option that I didn't get in my car.  There are three spots for switches to the left of the steering wheel.  One has the passenger air-bag disable switch, and the others are blank in my car.  I remove the left most one by prying it out with a screw driver from below.  Not exactly elegant, but I am not sure if there is a better way to remove it.

I then drilled a hole in it and reamed it out with a rasp till my pushbutton switch would mount inside the hole.  All in all it came out looking pretty good for a switch I happened to have around the house.  I soldered a wire and some connectors so I can disconnect things if I need to.

I mounted the switch plate back into the dash and connected everything up.  I checked to see if it worked again.

Then I stuffed the remote up in with all the other wires in the panel.  Not sure yet if the reception will be good where it is since all my tests so far have been inside the garage.