Garage Door Integration On Handlebars

Hi all,

I wanted to share a success story, something that I've finally achieved after much time and faff. I hope this will be useful to someone, but due to garage doors all being different, I guess it will only apply to some users.

History:
1) I've always found that the remote I have for my garage door has such a small button that requires depressing so hard, that it's nearly impossible to operate with any motorcycle gloves on.
2) The remote is attached to my keys, and the ignition is down on the same side of the rear brake. So even if I take my gloves off, it's hard to reach down to operate the remote with my foot on the brake (which is needed since my drive is slanted).
3) My Thunderbird Commander has a switch on the handlebars for aux lights ... but the aux light kit for the Thunderbird is NOT compatible with the Commander derivative, hence this switch is useless ... and this always irritated me.

I decided to solve all three of these issues in one hit. My garage door receiver is made by a company called Ansa. I called them, and the guy I spoke to happened to be a motorcyclist and wanted to help solve my problem. He designed me a custom unit (for £60) which when it receives 12V, self levels/stabilises, broadcasts a signal to the garage, then shuts down. Since the aux light switch is a live switch, when it's on, it supplies 12V ... So if I could hook this up to that switch on my handlebars, then all my garage woes would be resolved.

I took the bike to Race Engineering in Dunmow, Essex, and they managed to fit it, charging me (a pretty reasonable) £75 for the job, and once they got the tank off, they found a perfect recess to slot it into. It's completely out of site, you can't even see it when looking for it.

And voila:

I can now just rock up on my drive, flick a switch to open the garage door (flick it off when it starts opening) roll in, and flick the switch on (and off) again to close it. And best of all, no battery (and therefore changing of batteries) is required, so long as the ignition is on, it works. Perfect.

Cheers,
Dave