Garage Door Opener Technology

The same technology that powers garage door safety gadgets and garage door openers can also be used for a myriad of other purposes. These gadgets rely primarily on radio signals and electromagnetic pulses, and these technologies can be applied to all sorts of cool mechanisms, ranging from computer-disrupters to weapons and back again.
For example, one could potentially create an weapon that can deliver heat and electrical energy to a target, not unlike a taser, but more powerfully. It can cause neurons to malfunciton, causing localized pain. If turned up to a higher setting, the heat and electricity conduction can also damage tissue, even deep tissue below the level of the dermis.
Microwave radiation can also penetrate many materials, so it could be used form a distance or from outside a building. Such weapons are, of course, rare, and generally only used by the military.
However, damage to the mirrors in such a weapon that helps direct the beam of energy can cause the phenomenon known as "blooming", which causes heat and energy to disperse in the area immediately around the mechanism itself, becoming a danger to the wielder. Therefore, many of these weapons are not good in melee exchanges and cannot be used, for example, in hand-to-hand combat. Therefore, many peopel might prefer an old fashioned projectile weapon.
They also require extremely high-powered batteries that run on small amounts of fusion. These power packs are extremely dangerous, and if ruptured, are likely to leak radiation all over the user.
This is partly offset by high temperature superconductors such as some arsenide, which can help reduce overheating.
Much rarer is the use of electrolasers as weapons. Electrolasers actually use blooming to their advantage, sending a powerful electrical current along the "bloom", or the ionized track of plasma, which is highly conductive. It creates an effect like lightening, and can be used at up to twenty feet away.