Keeping up with the Jones's

[ThermalRunaway]

I've been having some trouble with my Land Rover starting from warm, especially on hot days, and I've found that it's not the starter motor. My suspicion is that the fault lies with the switching relay for the starter motor solenoid, but I decided the other day to stick a seperate starter button in which I connected directly to the solenoid itself, so that I can put the ignition on, press the button - and she starts!

I did the job using some spare bits and pieces in my workshop, and I was really quite chuffed with it. Anyway, I was telling my mate about it the other day (he's into Electronics too) and I showed him the pristine job I'd done in mounting the button to my dash and making it look really good. I put the keys in the ignition, pressed the button, and she started up perfectly. It's only two wires and a switch, nothing complicated, but for some reason I was extremely chuffed with it.

So my mate looks at me and laughs. "That's nothing", he said. "Watch this!"

With that he took a weird looking home-made device out of his pocket, and pressed a button. His car, which was the other side of the road, started up on it's own!!!
Apparently he'd been messing around making an alarm for his car and had decided to make a transmitter that he could use to start the car with. The doors still stay locked, and the alarm still stays on, until he presses another button on his home-made gadget which clears the alarm and pops the central locking. He said it's great in the Winter because he can start the car from his bed, get ready for work and then when he gets in it's lovely and toasty warm!

He's always got to be one better, honestly. Time for me to cook up a gadget I think!

Brian

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Hmmm, I wonder how secure that device of his is. There's no way he's included an encryption algorithm to do some maths on the code so that it's never the same twice. If I built a receiver and sampled the data he's sending out, maybe I could duplicate his device. That'd teach him, when he wakes up in the morning and finds his car's gone! (I'd park it a bit further down, I'm not that horrible)

Brian

 

[philba]

or even better, create a device the listens for his signal and 5 seconds later turns the car off or randomly arms his alarm or some such. He will spend HOURS tracking that one down.