E8 400MM Stainless Automatic Gate Opener for Gates up to 26 Feet Long and 1200 Pounds for Dual Swing Gate

These things are awesome. I bought these because of the good reviews and they sure don't disappoint. I had a couple issues with installation because the instructions aren't the clearest, but once I figured out the wiring on the control board, these things have worked flawlessly. My gate barely stresses them and they move a bit quicker than I expected. Word to the wise, if you use these in a blacktop driveway, do yourself a favor and just bury the cable. Blacktop refuses to grip concrete anchors for more than a couple of days of driving over them, so a cable concealing speed bump won't work. I found out the hard way. Just bury some conduit and be done with it. I found that low voltage landscape cable works nicely to extend the wiring on these.Customer service was very helpful and the rep told me they would probably change the installation instructions per my difficulties, so that was nice to hear. I always enjoy working with companies that are continuously improving their products.The screws themselves are nice and beefy, and as I said, they barely grunt to get the gates moving and sound as if they have no load the rest of the way. The entire assembly is not stainless though. Some of the pieces look like polished aluminum (gate end eyes) and galvanized (post end shackles), but they look nice and I doubt I'll see any significant corrosion on them for the amount of time I expect these to last. With the horror stories I've heard about the other consumer grade openers, if these last 5 years, I'll be more than happy.The best part is the price. You get more here for less money than the name brands. Can't go wrong with that.Update: After two and a half years, still working just fine. Had to replace the backup battery a few months ago. Didn't work when we had a brief power outage. Checked the battery, found it was dead, replaced it, working like new.

First of all let me say the supplier JSJ Industries is really responsive and was quite helpful with the project. I say project because I needed to adapt the unit for my installation. Our gate is 800 feet from our house and there is no easy or cheap way to get power there. I had a pair of unbelievable expensive Elite gate openers that I was running on solar. One of the mother boards went south, and replacing the pair (they need to be matched) would have cost far more than the E8 system. Plus they were a pain to maintain. So out they came, and after some serious modification of my rock pillars to mount the E8-400 bars all looked good. A side note, I have 2 large solar panels and 2 deep cycle batteries that with about 80 amp-hours of capacity. The little battery they ship would be ok for emergency back up, but forget about using it for a solar application. It is handy during the install to get the bar positioned correctly though.Ok, back to the installation. I started up the system and it worked exactly as expected with one issue: The time for the gate to open was 30 seconds. My old gate operators would do it in about 12. A call to JSJ confirmed that running on 12V slows the opener way down, and using the 16VAC transformer was much faster. Seeing that getting AC to that location was not going to happen, I started looking for a plan B. The first version of this used a sine wave inverter. So the batteries hooked to the inverter hooked to the AC transformer. Another side note - the plastic case they supply is marginal. Search AMZ and get a nice BUD NEMA enclosure that has hinges and latches.Plan B worked great with one problem - the inverter and 16VAC power supply and control board drew about 1.1A continuously. My solar panels put out 7A in full sun, and the batteries have a lot of capacity, but not enough to make it through 5 cloudy winter days. The batteries died. I recharged them, and the sun came out and all was ok for awhile, but I needed a plan C.That was when my EE friend visited. After chatting about it, and a couple more questions to JSJ, he came up with the idea of switching back to battery power, but stepping the DC voltage up a bit. We measured the motor voltage in operation and it hovered just under 18V, so back on AMZ I found a nice 12VDC to 18VDC converter module. Taking out the transformer and the inverter, I hooked the DC converter module up. I powered up the system and went through the initial gate setup. It worked great, and it only drew 0.3A which I can handle easily with the solar system. The gate speed is 15 seconds from closed to open - the same as with the AC transformer.Caveat: I have not heard from JSJ that this is OK to do, and I probably voided any warranty on the system with this hack, but it saved me from trenching 800 feet through solid rock to get power down to the gate.One other note, I have an aftermarket exit loop controller, wireless opener, a wired keypad, and a fire department knox box. All of them were easy to integrate with the system and work well.2/11/17 UpdateThere turns out to be another issue and workaround with Solar if you are using a solar controller. The way the gate works is the motors will create a current spike when they reach the end of their swing. Thats how the control board knows that they are in the correct position and cuts power to the motors. This is a nice feature as it doesn't require limit switch which were a maintenance issue with my last pair of gate openers. So if you use a solar controller, there is a panel connection, a battery connection, and a load connection. Typically you would connect the load connection to whatever you are powering - in this case the gate. This problem I ran into is that the solar controllers see the (significant) current spike and decide that there is a short circuit. They kill the power to the gate and restore it after a few seconds. If you aren't around watching this you can still tell because the next time you open the gate it will be in its slow initialization mode.The workaround for this is to forget the load connections on the solar controller and run the gate straight from the battery. This works fine and since I am using the up converter voltage regulator the board doesn't even notice. The only downside is that the solar controllers use the information from the battery connection to shut off the load if the batteries get too low. So you need to make sure you have lots of battery capacity or you will shorten their life. You also lose information like current and power being used by the gate. Those are fine tradeoffs in my case.Update April 2021:In 2019 after running out of power again (heavy gate, lots of traffic) I upgraded the batteries to 2x100AH and the panels to 2x190W. I also added an upgraded solar controller. No problems at all since then. I did have the control board fail a few years back and Jason sent me a new one for about a tenth of the price of a Roboswing board, and it has been working fine ever since.

I purchased this automatic gate opener to replace the unit I have had installed for over 10 years. It has worked pretty flawlessly over those years which just an electrical gremlin here and there which was easily fixable with replacement of corroded connectors. Just regular maintenance in my book.So, I found the sole US vendor here, JSJ ProTech LLC and ordered the entire system even though I only needed a control board. I bought the whole unit to get new actuator arms and remotes because the control board alone was not cheap.It arrived on March 19th and I installed the new control board that day. I also decided to put the new control arms in place as well since the original ones were 10 years old. Boy, am I glad I did!The left actuator arm worked for about 10 days and then started making horrible grinding noise and it wouldn't move the gate at all. That was April 25th.On April 25th, I called their customer support, they said to email them in order to request warranty support.On April 26th, I emailed the customer support address they gave me. I heard nothing for over a week.On May 3rd, I emailed again (on the same email address) asking if they were going to acknowledge my request for a replacement. They answered and said, "They didn't get my first email". Oh, the dog ate my homework too.......So now we have reconnected and they are asking for photos of everything and videos of the gate in operation. Might be a delay tactic or maybe its legit. My daughter helped me upload pictures and videos to the vendor today, May 6th. I will keep the review updated depending on the level of service received.For right now, I would AVOID this manufacturer since:- the entire new system had an actuator die in 10 days of light use- the customer support has been pretty slow and difficult to this point.Maybe they can make it right. If they do, I will update this review for sure and we will see how long the replacement actuator works.