The last project I finished today was inspired by a very cold walk 5 blocks back to my car because I couldn’t remember if I had locked it or not.
I got a Particle Electron (cellular development board) from Kickstarter and had no idea what I would do with it until I realized I HATE walking in the cold for no reason.
So I picked up a spare keyfob on ebay programmed it removed the key and soldered wires to all the buttons.
the keyfob is powered by the Electron and I am currently using relays to “press” the buttons. I will add a temperature sensor, feedback as to lock state, feedback as to running state, and just for the hell of it and because I have the asset tracker board I will add gps tracking as well. but for now it is just a 1 way remote.
the project will be put in a project box and hidden inside the dash or centre console.
My wife already thinks I should do this with the other car as well, and it’s not even installed yet!
I was wondering for a moment what the point was as. Thought it would only work when in wireless range of your home until I realised it was an electron board. Very well done
This is very cool! One of my dreams is to say, “Alexa, Turn on the Car.” I don’t even need to go as far as you did. I would just keep something like this in my home, within range of the car so it could be started and locked/unlocked.
The hardest part by far is the soldering they are very small pins but if you (or a friend) can do that the rest is super easy! if you (or anyone else) decides to give it a try and wants more info I’m happy to post a lot more detail and help out anywhere you get stuck!
I do plan on replacing the relays with transistors before it goes in the car just to reduce the size a bit. but relays would be easy (and cheap from ebay) for leaving in the house! the most expensive part is the sacrificial key. I got it refurbished off ebay for $19 but it cost me $60 to cut it in order to program it to the car. if you just want wifi (in the home) then a $19 Particle Photon would do the job and run fine off the same code.
The key I bought was of course blank so I had to take it to a locksmith to get it cut and because its a laser key it cost $60 to cut. luckily my car (gmc terrain) allows the keys to be user programmed to the car after they are cut.
Never new about the ESP8266…very intriguing. I see there are some hits on the forums here on the device…does anyone know of a compilation of smartthings-compatible projects using the board?
Very cool. Did you happen to get to the point of having your app report what the state of the alarm is (i.e., armed or disarmed)? I am curious to see how one can pull that off. I was thinking of maybe tapping into the LED of the car’s alarm to get the state.
Sadly I have never got any info to get “pushed” from a particle device to smart things due to a lack of https built into the devices. It wouldnt be hard to do if you used poolster to update the device though
