Remote Locking...200miles away!

[miller]

Basically i got this sent on an email today and being the inquisitive type i tested it out with colleagues today at lunch. One guy had my car keys at other end of building upstairs in store room. i was stood beside my car talking to him on the mobile and sure enough it locks and unlocks!!!!!!!


Mike

Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.



Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to
drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
Editor's Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone!"

[orionn2o]

Never worked when I tried it!!

[Nick Mann]

I guess it depends on the frequency that your fob and alarm works on.

[orionn2o]

I'm bery surprised that mobile sound signals sent are anywhere near radio frequency. You would have thought they would just compress the sound and store everything between 20hz to 2khz (human voices etc..)

[pitslayer]

doesnt work.

[rees]

nah , not havin it

[Nick Mann]

So mobile phones don't ever interfere with speakers around them?

I can believe that it could work occaisonally, probably depending on the type of phones being used, the frequency of the network the phone is using, and the frequency of the fob being pressed.

I am not saying it does work, though. I have never seen it with my own eyes!

[Davezj]

i heard that story as well and being of an electrinic back groung i initally thought it would not work but maybe it would.
It could uses the mobile phone freq as a carrier. it does send the signal through the phone but as the connection is made from on phone to the next it latches on the the signal just like any other type of EMI radiation but that mean going to space and back i think doesn't sound that possible.
however so much money is spent on EMC shielding and surpression each year it is possible it might just be a case of EMI radiation being pick up and transmitted.
We should all try it tomorrow and report back

[orionn2o]

Dave i dont think many mobile signals go to space :)

[Eurospec]

Well i always thought this was one of those urban myths, but being as we had cars and i was smoking a ciggie......

We tried it on a cobra alarm and it worked a treat. Unlocked it from about 300 yards.

Cheers,

Ben.

[Louis]

is it possible that the phone is only amplifying the signal?, like when you press thhe fob against your skull and it works from farther away?

[Davezj]

Dave i dont think many mobile signals go to space :)

so are you saying all international mobile calls go through the under sea cables.

is it only satallite phones that use the telecoms satallites that litter the low orbits of space.

or are telecoms signal set via the massive array of dishes down at goonhilly in Cornwall. i might be wrong.


but that doesn't really matter, lets get more reports and see how far it works from. I will give a spare key fob to a mate of mine at work and see if works from town to town, like a frind of mine said,

he got locket out of his car miles away from home and got his wife to blip the spare fob over the phone and opened the car. now my mate is a bit of a comedian and has been known to tell the odd tall tail, lets try it.

[miller]

we are testing it again tomorrow with a mondeo that will be in Coventry whilst we sat in Nottingham....will let ya know!


Mike

[orionn2o]

so are you saying all international mobile calls go through the under sea cables.

is it only satallite phones that use the telecoms satallites that litter the low orbits of space.

or are telecoms signal set via the massive array of dishes down at goonhilly in Cornwall. i might be wrong.


but that doesn't really matter, lets get more reports and see how far it works from. I will give a spare key fob to a mate of mine at work and see if works from town to town, like a frind of mine said,

he got locket out of his car miles away from home and got his wife to blip the spare fob over the phone and opened the car. now my mate is a bit of a comedian and has been known to tell the odd tall tail, lets try it.

I see your point Dave, but I don't thing anyone has tested internationally! I guess if it works nationally then theres no real reason why it shouldn't.

Are we of the thought that the phone is receiving and retransmitting the signal OR is the signal somehow latching on to the phone to give it an extended range?

[Davezj]

I see your point Dave, but I don't thing anyone has tested internationally! I guess if it works nationally then theres no real reason why it shouldn't.

Are we of the thought that the phone is receiving and retransmitting the signal OR is the signal somehow latching on to the phone to give it an extended range?

i was thinking it was just latching and effectively modulating the 2.4 Ghz carrier, i think mobiles work in the 2.4Ghz range.

you can here the code of you key fob by holding it against the coiled wire of an old fashioed telephone you know the wire that goes between the phone and hand set. you have to move it up and down the wire to get the right point of the standing wave that is set up and this will make it louder.

[bernmc]

Load of cack. Urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cellphones.asp

[Nutter_John]

has also been discssued on here before

Most Alarms work on the 473mhz ranges as it is license excempt for low power devices , Mobile phones work on three bands in the uk 900, 1800 and 2.1ghz

[Zaid]

I guess it is possible, but is occurrence will be very limited these days. The remote fobs use radio-frequency (RF) to communicate (some car such as Peugeots use infra-red which is useless). These RF work at around 470KHz, and in the first generation of remote fobs, the signals used are sound-like signals. Now mobile operating frequencies are as Nutter_John said, around 900 MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.1GHz. Depending on the filters that your mobile has, the harmonic signals that are generated due to modulation that occurs by the mobile; the fob signal which around 470KHz can be similar to the one of those harmonics and infact it is almost half of 900 MHz and quarter of 1.8 GHz. If you have an old mobile, these may not be filtered well by your handset; in this case they can be transmitted and unlocks your car on the other side.
Most new mobiles will have sharper filters, and most new cars don’t use sound-like signals, therefore it might not work with many people.

[d i c k i e s]

there has been a post about this awhile ago. 2006 if i remember correctly.
Same thing, doesnt work. lol
Some claim it does... havent tried, and i wont.

[scc]

HAHA, I used to design mobile chipsets for a living. Sorry, it just wont work.

Scc

[orionn2o]

well you say that. But Ben said he tried it and it did... so how d'you explain that?

[miller]

right. ill go about setting up a video or something and mythbust it live for you all shall i?!!!!


Mike

[Turbo_Steve]

Tell you what I believe:
I believe some cars have really cheap-assed remote central locking systems.
I believe that those kind of cars, when presented with a 3watt blast of microwaves from a mobile phone, may simply cough up and reset, opening the doorlocks.

I believe that for those people who this has worked, it would work just as well phoning the speaking clock. Or sending a text message.




I could also belive that a really cheap-assed phone, with the keyfob pressed right against it's mic, might MIGHT possibly induce noise in the mic circuit when the keyfob button is pressed.

I also know that, presented with silence, GSM minimizes it's data flow...resulting in almost no signal.


IF there is induction in the mic circuit, and
IF the GSM signal gets switched high and low in sequence with this (extrodinarily slow) keyfob pulse, and
IF the car in question has rubbish electronics that can be interfered with by a GSM phone from a foot away,
THEN this is possible.

Note possible, but you're looking at almost lab-like conditions to get it to work: there would have to be no additional signalling going on over the network, no background noise and blah blah blah.

So whilst I believe you could make it work....I don't believe it happened, excepting that a mobile phone simply interferes with crappy analogue remote central locking.

[scc]

So whilst I believe you could make it work....I don't believe it happened, excepting that a mobile phone simply interferes with crappy analogue remote central locking.

I agree.

I remember parking GeorgeI near a mobile base-station, and it kept setting off the car alarm.

scc

[miller]

so i have cheap assed central locking with crappy analogue remote and a cheap assed phone to boot....hmmmm charming

:happy:


Mike

[Turbo_Steve]

LMFAO awh, it's okay I still love you!

I think it's just cheap-assed remote locking, I expect.
In fact, I'd wager it's probably the standard Mitsubishi equipment?

[miller]

:happy: Its an Auto Watch so there! Is that standard mitsi equipment?

oh and my mob is a 3 yr old nokia POS :happy: :happy: :happy:

[jayjay99]

I heard about this before and tried it, quite disapointed when it didn't work! :-(