11/20/2008   English German
  Edition # 77  
San Francisco, 11-20-2008

Top Product: Garage Door Opener
Figure [1]: Magically, the garage door opens when Michael enters with his Integra.

Michael In San Francisco, parking spots are scarce and therefore spots in underground garages can cost up to $400 a month. Expensive, yes! But driving home and breezing into an underground garage in the middle of the entertainment and shopping district we live in, while others fight for parking spots is priceless. But getting out of the car to open the garage door is obviously extremely uncool.

If you have a multicode garage opener in your car, you can quickly press a button on the remote and the garage door will slowly move aside while the car rolls casually over the sidewalk edge onto the heavy iron gate. Passersby wonder: which multimillionaire is coming home here? The founder of Oracle? The dictator of Microsoft? But no, it's just little Michael with his 170 horsepower Acura Integra. 80s music is blasting from the radio, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD), Call my Name.

Suddenly the scene is swarming with sunglass-wearing security guards in Armani suits, who politely but firmly shoo away the passers-by and wave the car in. Headlights come on, the engine roars, Michael has the habit of accelerating quickly in the garage on more in! Everyone laughs! Brake lights come on. Quickly and almost silently the heavy steel gate closes again. From the outside it looks as if nothing has happened.

Figure [2]: The Multicode garage opener with exposed dip switch to adjust the code.

Okay, now my imagination has run wild, but this garage door opener is really practical. You can order it for $10 on the internet at aaaremotes.com and just have to adjust the internally set code to the receiver on the garage door, which rolls the iron gate aside with a motor. With the multicode transmitter, this is a so-called dip switch with 10 different switches, which either stand on 0 (down) or 1 (up), so everyone can program their own garage code. Of course, that's not secure, because there are only about 1000 possibilities, but it scares off most thieves. If you get such a thing from the landlord, you can just order a second one on the internet and set the number of the first one in the second one. Of course, I also have a remote control in the side pocket of my backpack, so I can open the garage door with an unmistakably cool hand movement at the push of a button when I come home from work by bike. Passers-by are always dazzled in amazement on how this works!

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