I hate the look of garage door openers, so I wanted to do something slick that went well with my MINI. I wanted a button somewhere in my MINI that did the same thing as a garage door opener, but without the brick hanging on my visor.

I've had the idea to do this for a while, but wasn't sure how to execute everything cheaply (under $5). This was my solution:

First the remote. I had to figure out a way to add an extension to the switch on the remote. DotBob on the Metroplex MINI site gave me the solution with his post about Ian's MINI Circuit.

Basically, I closed the remote's switch by soldering the contact points for the button that activates the remote. Then I soldered the contact points for the battery to two wire leads (see pic below from DotBob's post).


I completed the circuit by bringing one of the wire leads to an always open, push button switch (from Radio Shack). The switch is always off until the button is pressed.

From the switch, I brought a wire to a battery holder (from Radio Shack, too) holding the original battery from the remote. ALSO, I've notice the battery likes to slip out of the holder every once in a while. I fixed this with a twisty tie (not pictured)

Be aware of the direction the battery is facing. The positive end must be connected to the correct post in the remote.

From there I linked a wire back to the remote. I've essentially created an extension to the remote's switch. (see pics below)

Please notice the extra connectors between the switch and the rest of the circuit. I did this because I soldered all of my connections and needed a way to tread the wire through the hole that will be in the panel on my MINI.




Then came the hard part, mounting it in the MINI. On my first MINI, I installed it on the panel that resides under the center switch board.

On my new MINI I installed the switch on the switch panel next to the e-brake and the actual control unit under the dash.



Here is the actual garage door opener tucked away under the switch panel. I went ahead and velcro'd it to the panel to reduce rattle.



Everything works great and now I have a nice little garage door opener button tucked away.