Over-sensitive garage door remote control

[Blaze]

We've recently found one of our garage doors open when we hadn't deliberately done anything.
How can you reduce the sensitivity/range of the bipper ?
It's possible that something touched one of the tiny buttons, perhaps when hanging it up in the house ? What can we put it in to make sure it can't transmit once we've shut the door ?

There's another, worse scenario .... OH dropped a bipper in the garden one day and we simply cannot find it .... could it be activated by a passing insect, or can ? That said, it was a few weeks ago and it's rained like hell since....

[RobertArthur]

@ Blaze, for infrared (IR) and radiofrequency (RF) controls one thing helps: storage in a metal enclosure. Impossible for the IR signal to do anything useful and the metal shielding will weaken or stop the RF signal.

Thanks to the rain the tiny contacts inside this bipper hiding somewhere in your garden will corrode and the little coin battery will auto-discharge. Or will indicate its position with a metal detector.

[Blaze]

Thank you RA - I wondered about keeping them in a tin. They're attached to our car keys so it's possible to inadvertently touch one of the little buttons - they seem to be very sensitive and work from several meters away.
And thank you for the reassurance that the lost bip will die a slow death. A metal detector sounds a good idea !

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[L Austin France]

I once found our barn's garage up & over door open when I know it was previously closed.
The remotes were in the cars so nobody had touched 'em.
They work on radio signals from a good 50m so I've always assumed a passing vehicle had something on the same frequency.
I'ts never happened again.

[Spectrum]

I have the garage door on its own circuit so I turn it off after it closes, but only when we are coming inside, so when in, no one can open the door, with a cloned key.

[MAD87]

We keep our remote in the car - that's a tin box.

[Blaze]

We keep our remote in the car - that's a tin box.

Ours is only in the car when we go out and when we returned the other day, the door (which was definitely closed when we left) was wide open.
We're hoping it's just a coincidence that it's happened twice recently but it' s little worrying as it's at least the third time and it's always been the same door. We could disconnect it inside - we'd certainly do that now if we went away - but it would be nice to know why it happens.

[Lori]

This happened to my mother (garage door opened while she was home and she didn't do it). She was told that other garage door openers can be on the same frequency and somehow open a door other than the one intended.

It has never happened to me, but it did several times to Mom.

[exile]

There have been rare cases in the US where such occurrences have happened and it was eventually tracked down to a neighbours IR remote control of the TV or ancillary equipment.

[L Austin France]

There have been rare cases in the US where such occurrences have happened and it was eventually tracked down to a neighbours IR remote control of the TV or ancillary equipment.

That's interesting as I always understood that IR needed line of sight to operate anything.