USAutomatic 020320 Sentry 300 Commercial Grade Automatic Gate Opener

I bought this to replace my 1 year old double gate Lockmaster opener that was purchased from Wholesale Gates. The Lockmaster was junk from the begining. I bought this unit with the 300 D opener and the 5 watt solar panel. I spent over $1200.00 for the package but it is well worth it. The USAutomatic Sentry is heavy and heavy duty. I am only using them on a pair of aluminum driveway swing gates so its certainly no chore for the openers. I had to modify a few things to get the openers to fit since the Sentry is a little longer than the Lockmaster.The control box is different than pictured, for the better. Plenty of room to work for wiring everything. Programing was easy - that includes the programing of the remotes.I used a different battery than they recommended. I purchased a sealed small tractor battery. Only problem with that is that it needs more amps to charge and the intelligent charger (solar or DC transformer) trips on error. It seems that if the battery doesn't "top off" in voltage in a calculated time, the intelligent charger attempts to protect itself by shutting the charge circuit off. It took a while to figure why I was having this problem. The Sentry manual gives a formula for the battery charging cycle. Once I read this I figured there was a reason for this to be in the manual and then realized my battery amp size was a bit higher than the scale of the chart. I fixed the problem by using a trickle charger to the battery directly. This defeats having the solar panel but I do often allow the solar to do the charging by just disconnecting the trickle charger power. I already had AC power at the gate for the Lockmaster gates so I plug the trickle charger into the old gate power supply. I got about 6 weeks off the battery and solar charging before the gate opening speed changed dramatically slower. I found the battery at 10 volts and the charge controller with all lights blinking (when I used the included DC transformer for charging). Its been over 8 weeks since I change to the direct battery trickle charger and everything is working great.The range of the remote is great. Opening and closing speed is pretty fast. The motors are a little more noisey than the Lockmaster but my neighbors garage door opener is even louder than my two Sentry gate openers.It was a good bit more money but I was throwing money away with the Lockmaster and from what I found, I would be doing the same with the Mighty Mule (which I heavily considered). I am very happy with the USAutomatic Sentry. A very durable opener.

I was a little apprehensive about taking this DIY project on, especially since the existing gates were badly installed and I really did not want to have to rip out the gate posts and install new ones. However, I was able to replace the two 5' chain link gates with a single 10' meshed farm gate and shimmed it so that the gate itself was completely level (the post was a bit off kilter). Yes, it would have been better to set a new gate post, but I figured that was going to be a huge amount of effort (the old gate post was set at the end of a concrete kneewall.Installation of the gate opener went without a hitch (I did view the CD and read the installation instructions twice before proceeding). The manual was good and in less than 2hrs it was all up and running. Adjustment was easy. The gate opens very consistently (within an inch) and the remotes have a long range (I can click the opener at the start of the driveway which is some 250' from the inner driveway gate. It has been operating flawlessly for a week and given the quality of construction I expect it should run for some time. I did get a silicon sealant to ensure the control panel was well sealed (I have had issues before with ants getting into control units like that). I am glad I opted for a neighbor's advice to avoid an inexpensive unit and thereby avoid the problems he had (he gave up trying to install it and finally paid a gate company to fix it). Assuming it continues to operate well into the future, I will rate this as a very fine purchase.UPDATE: the range of the remote is quite surprising: I can consistently open and close the gate from the corner of my property which lies over 600' away from the Control box on the gate. And this is not direct line of sight either - at least 200' of the property is covered with oak trees and small shrubs! I especially like the fact that I can sit at my desk inside the house, some 150' from the control box (again going through trees and three walls of the house) and still reliably open and close the gate (which is useful since this is an inside gate, and I have a driveway sensor at the outer entrance which gives me plenty of time to see who is coming and open the gate for them). The driveway gate itself continues to operate flawlessly without a single hiccough - in fact I purchased another remote and also got the wireless keypad and plan to tie in a remote relay so that I can open and close the gate over the internet.2nd update: has worked flawlessly now for 4+ years.3rd update: worked flawlessly for 5+ years now. When AC power failed during recent ICEmageddon, the gate was one of the few things that continued to work on battery power.4th update: 8 years, still working flawlessly, did have to clean corrosion on battery terminals, but original battery still seems ok (probably need to replace it soon though).

I'm extremely disappointed with my Sentry 300 automatic gate opener. The opener was installed and worked fine for the first few weeks. Then, slowly, the gate would get "stuck" and would not fully close because it was sensing that it was hitting something. I checked the gate operation without the opener and the gate opened very easily with a push or pull with my pinky finger. The gate operator continued to act up, and was especially temperamental on colder/wetter days. The open limit also never seemed to be the same, which caused issues navigating around the gate when it decided it didn't want to open a full 90 degrees. I've only had this unit for about 10 months, and it now no longer works. I contacted a local gate installer and he indicated that the unt has a lot of issues.For the amount of money, I'm pretty frustrated with this product. I'm hoping US Automatic will replace my unit, and if they do, I will gladly revise my review, but until then, I hesitate to recommend this opener.