Remote unlock using phone?

Call her friend and get the sspare key? Sounds plausible to me.

Sorry, should have been a *little* clearer!

Apparently, if the friend many miles away blipped the key fob into the phone, and my colleague held her phone near her car, the car would unlock. I don't follow how the signal can work over a phone line. But then I barely understand shoelaces.

Rob

Your plonker is being pulled or someone is whistling out of their arse. Keys are rf operated not ultrasonic.

If she's blonde, yes ...

Well, she was certainly convinced, unless this is some kind of office conspiracy to stitch me up.

She was told this when she went in to get a spare key - £57 against £120 at another Skoda garage. The car's a 2010 Skoda Fabia.

Michael gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Some older ones are IR.

Either way, there's an easy way to (dis)prove it, isn't there?

As for "the dealer told her"... A housemate got a job as a service receptionist at a dealer (not Skoda - considerably north of there in the market). His previous job? Door-to-door office equipment sales. No clue about cars at all.

Which certainly will not work over a telephone connection.

What happens when the AA get called out to a member with one of these modern all electronic cars who has lost their keys or had them pinched?

Rob wrote in news:4c0955ac$0$2271$c3e8da3 @news.astraweb.com:

I've heard this story before. Seems to crop up every so often. Modern myth as far as I'm concerned, like the one about putting the key to your head to increase the range of an RF key.

Michael gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

They'll work just as well as an RF one will...

[...]

Only thing is, that's true!

Holding the fob to the side of my nose will double the range of the various Ford remotes I've tried it with, and if the battery is almost flat, may still allow the remote to work.

Chris

[...]

If the member lives reasonably close and has a spare key, the patrol will take them to get it. If not, they will either tow to a dealer, or arrange a mobile locksmith at the member's expense.

If the keys are merely locked in the car, the AA has a technique for getting in to every car on the road bar one ;-)

Chris

Some old keys were IR - as mentioned they are mostly radio now.

The phone+IR may have been a spin off of a trick that did work with learning universal tv remotes. The earlier cars had cheap and algorithmically deficient locking systems. The IR transmitter would send a unique but invariant code. Happened some of the more universal remotes were able to record this (not hard - pretend you are unlocking the next car and point the remote behind you when the victim unlocks their car).

Later IR and most (I hope *all*) modern radio fobs do not send the same code.

They generate a pseudo random number. The car is programmed with the same algorithm and seed and thus knows what to expect from its fob. Further, the car will accept a window of code (20 is a guess) of numbers in front and including the next code. This is to avoid you locking yourself out when the kids play with your keys, or you are out of range on the first attempt. As soon as you unlock it, the car resets its position in the number sequence so that such errors do not become cumulative.

So the remote control trick shouldn;t work anymore even on IR fobs and it would be hard to crack the system even if you made up a radio device of your own.

What's the "one"?

[...]

BMW E65, although they might have cracked that one by now.

Chris

I saw the AA get into a BMW or Merc once (cant remember which) which had the keys locked in the boot. A hole was drilled behind the number plate. I was very impressed.

Either,

1) Helmholtz resonator effect inside the cranial cavity increases the effective radiated power...

or

2) It's just an effect of holding the key further from the ground...

I prefer the second explanation, but if you've got the gaze of a suitable blonde at a party ...

;-)

In message , Chris Whelan writes

So have I, bar none. Don't ask a cop to help you, he'll just smash a window with his baton. ;-)

In message , Chris Whelan writes

The only explanation for that is if pressing it to your nose provides the RF transmitter with a better Ground Plane effect than just gripping it in your hand.

Resting it on a neighbouring car roof should be even more effective if that is the case. :-)