Adding smartkey door handle (rear or pass side)

Hello. I'm very interested about this mod.

What about a solution like this: buy the handle assembly, and tie the new wires to the driver side handle ones?

 

Interesting idea... and having the 5th wheel is potentially more useful than the original 4 wheels... theoretically people would be alert enough to notice a low tire, but a lot of people just forget about the spare. My wife and I were driving to her parents a few days before Christmas one year and we had a blowout about halfway through a 3 hour trip at about 11PM. We put on the spare, but immediately realized that no one had touched it in 6 or 7 years and it was completely flat. We attempted to make it to the next exit to try to find a way to inflate it, but we quickly destroyed both the spare tire and rim and wound up needing to be towed to the next exit. We had to stay overnight in a hotel and then try to find a tire place that was open on Christmas Eve to get us going the next day.

Sounds like fun to me Of course, I'll have to get the scan tool and then figure out exactly what you're suggesting I do with it, but how hard can that be? Is there any primer on programming with the scan tool that you're aware of?

That's never stopped me before Besides, if it comes to that it'll just be a good excuse to get a 3 door SKS ECU.

Thanks,
Brett

 

I considered that last night and I have no idea if it would work or not. The components in the handle are an antenna (so it knows when the key is near) and the two touch sensors. I don't know what would happen if you connected two antennas to something that was only designed to have one, or two touch sensors to a system designed to only see one. I don't believe it would damage anything, but I don't know if it would work either.

Like I said, the thought crossed my mind last night and I would have tried it if I could, but I only had access to one SKS enabled door handle so there was no way for me to do so. I don't know how much a second handle would be, but I suspect it would be more than I'm willing to spend just to test this theory.

However, if there's someone else with a 2010 Prius in the Central Florida area that's nearly as crazy as I am and wants to test this with my handle and their handle I'd definitely be up for it.

Brett

 

Doing the links as i described above, my initial though is that the ECU doesn't have a way to know where the signal comes from. The wires should feed the sensors of both handles at the same time.

If we grab only one handle, the ECU can't know which one was. The only problem could be if we (two people at the same time) grab both handles at the same time.

But it is only a theory.

It should work like an "OR" logical operator.

 

FYI - you can do this yourself (no dealer required). Page 48 of the owner's manual: push both the lock and unlock button on the remote for 5 seconds. This will toggle the feature on or off - whether grabbing the driver door handle will unlock only the driver door, or all doors.

Now - if you want a single remote key press to unlock all doors - you need to have the dealer set that for you.

 

One way the SKS system could identify the location of a keyfob is to send out a different signal from each detection location. Something like "this is the driver side outside door looking for a keyfob for car x". If the keyfob recognizes car x, then it replies "I hear the driver side door". The strongest (closest) signal wins.

 

I've had TPMS on the spare tire for about a year now. I know I set the pressure to 60 when the sensor was installed, and the pressure a year later was 50. The threshold for turning on the light was 59.3, so another month or so would probably do it.

You can get an ELM 327 type scantool off eBay for about $30. Well, actually it's a clone of the real ELM device which costs several times more. The official documentation is at http://www.elmelectronics.com/DSheets/ELM327DS.pdf . There is some discussion about using an ELM device in the threads about using a ScanGauge to change the backup beeper setting.

Without knowing the address of the certification ECU, I'm afraid it's premature to run the experiment I mentioned. It's probably 7xx, but I don't have a clue what xx is.

I like your attitude!

 

That would definitely work if it was using real switches... then it's easy to connect the two switches in parallel. The problem is that it doesn't use real switches, but rather a touch sensor... that somehow (capacitance, maybe) determines if someone is touching it. Since the system was only designed to have one sensor connected to one input I don't know what will happen if there are two sensors connected to the same input. It may work fine or it may no longer be able to tell when someone is touching it.

We have a similar issue with the antenna in the door handle. I have no idea what will happen when we connect two antennas to a system that was only designed to have one connected... it may work fine or it may reduce the range of the antennas or it may prevent it from working entirely.

Like I said above, it may very well work and I think it's definitely worth trying, but we need to find someone with access to two SKS handles and the willingness to play around with them.

Brett

 

That's certainly possible, but I suspect it may be more simple than that. According to the factory wiring diagram each antenna has it's own connection to the ECU, so I believe that the ECU can simply determine which antenna is in contact with the key and only enable the sensor near that antenna to trigger the unlock. I think the antenna range is such that it would be impossible for the system to detect the key at more than one location, but if you could manage to get the key in the middle of two SKS sensors such that they could both detect the key, then I suspect that you could use either touch sensor to trigger the unlock.

In the end, I'm not really sure it matters too much how this process works. If we're able to connect a second SKS enabled handle to the driver's side connectors then no matter which handle we use it will think that we're using the one on the driver's side, but I don't really see a big down side to that. There is the security aspect mentioned in another thread, but I have my car set to unlock all the doors when the driver's handle is touched anyway, so that wouldn't matter too much to me.

Alternately, if we are able to use the scan tool to reprogram the ECU to enable the additional inputs, then it would work as designed and I wouldn't really care how it's working or how it determines where the key is... just that it works

Brett

 

I agree. I think it is a question of time we learn more about this.

If it can be done, i'm sure we'll found a way to do it.

Of course, my dealer says that it is no possible.

The only thing a miss a lot in my base model prius is the hability of opening the passenger's door without take out the keyfob from my pocket.



I have a question for those who have the car with both SKS:

Let's supose two people. The one who carries the keyfob is near the driver's door (but doesn't grab the handle), then a second person grabs the passenger door handle...will the door open?

 

The answer to that question is no. The keyfob needs to be near the door handle that's used to unlock the doors. I asked that same question in this thread... http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...one-2010-three-door-sks-try-something-me.html and someone was kind enough to test it for me.

Brett

 

I took four days off next week and I'll be doing NOTHING... Maybe I'll have some free time to wire up my passenger door handle in the drivers side rear or passenger side rear and test things out.

It's pretty cold outside though and I have no garage... so I might be too lazy to do this.

 

If you do this, and I very much hope you do, please let me know, as I think I may have some good information for you from the work I did on Wednesday.

Good luck,
Brett

 

Thanks for the info.

I think that if we tie both handle wires in parallel then the answer to my question would be "yes".

Regards.

 

Okay I'm thinking through this and what I'm planning to do is disconnect the wiring from the passenger side to the "brain" and then piggy back the wiring of the driverside to the passenger side.

Good idea?

 

OK... I'll try to make this post short, but I'm not quite sure how that will work out

Both the driver's side and passenger's side SKS handles have 6 wires going to them... 1 goes to ground and the other 5 go to the certification computer, which is on the passenger side behind the lower glove box. The certification computer is reasonably easy to get to... open the lower glove box, then pull off the damper on the right side, then open the box a bit more and pull it off the hinges. There are actually directions for removing the lower glove box in your manual because you also need to remove it to replace the interior air filter.

In my car, the certification computer is blue in color and I've circled it in the picture below. There are two connectors going into it and we're concerned with the bottom connector. On that bottom connector, here are the connections we're concerned about by pin number, color, side, and description from TIS

Pin 4, Red, Driver's ANT2
Pin 3, Green, Driver's ANT1
Pin 20, Yellow, Driver's SENS
Pin 18, Black, Driver's TRG+
Pin 32, Blue, Driver's B

Pin 6, Red, Passenger's ANT2
Pin 5, Green, Passenger's ANT1
Pin 21, Yellow, Passenger's SENS
Pin 19, Black, Passenger's TRG+
Pin 33, Blue, Passenger's B

Unfortunately I didn't take a great picture of the connector, but I'm 99% certain that pin 1 is in the upper left corner of that connector as you're looking it as it's plugged into the computer. It's pretty easy to double check that, though just by starting counting at pin 1 in the upper left and when you get to the pin's I have listed making sure that wires are present and are the correct color.

Now, rather than trying to disconnect or clip any wires from that connector, since it's a big pain to pull those pins out I would suggest the following... leave the driver's door connected and as is, but open the panel on the passenger's door (you could do this the other way around if you want, but the passenger's door is closer to the certification ECU, so I think it will be easier to run the test wires.

To remove the passenger's door panel you need to get to two screws... one is inside the fingerhold that you use to close the door.. there's a little foam piece just sitting there that simply lifts out and there is a screw under it. The second screw is behind a small panel behind the inside door handle. I carefully used a flat screw driver between the door handle and that panel and pried it out... it came out pretty easily. Once those are out, unscrew the two screws, then put your fingers behind the bottom of the door panel and pull it straight out, working your way around both sides of the panel... there are several clips that just pull straight out. The top hooks over the window slot, so once you have the sides and bottom free simply lift it up an inch or two to clear the window slot. At this point you'll need to disconnect three wire clips...two for the power locks/windows and one for the light at the bottom of the door, and also the cables going to the lock and door handle... They wires have a release you need to push in, then just slide them out easily. The handle and locks release by pulling the cable out of the slot in the door and bringing it around about 90 degrees, then the little ball just slips out. You should be able to figure it our pretty easily when you see it.

Set the door panel aside and look for the SKS wiring. I've circled it in the picture below. In my car its just a connector, since I don't have the SKS handle on the passenger's side, but you'll have a wire plugged into that handle going horizontally across and into the hole in the door.

The wire that plugs into that connector has different colored wires, but they're the ones that eventually wind up connected to the ECU that we looked at earlier. Here are the wires on that connector...

Pin 3, Blue, ANT2
Pin 6, Yellow, ANT1
Pin 4, Green, SENS
Pin 1, Red, TRG+
Pin 5, Black, B
Pin 2, Violet, Ground

Now, what I would suggest doing is disconnecting the wire from the connector that I circled in the door in the picture below and simply sticking wires into the connector that goes into the door to make contact with the SKS handle... that should be reasonably secure and quite temporary. Then, ground the ground wire and run the other 5 over to the SKS computer. Using wire taps tie them in with the driver's side handle wiring.

In your case, you can probably skip the antenna connectors if you think that the antenna on the front door will pick up your key when you're standing at the back door, but if you're able to, I'd appriciate it if you could test it both ways so we will know if the antenna will work for us when we try to connect the passenger handle to the driver's side.

Once everything's connected, shut the doors and try it... remember that if you didn't connect the antenna on the passenger side handle that you'll need to put your key on the driver's side before trying to test the passenger handle.

If you need any further explaination or anything feel free to let me know.

Good luck and let us know how it goes

Brett

 

Cool! I'll get to work sir! Look for a follow-up from me on Monday afternoon. UnderArmour is a great invention, hopefully that will keep me warm.

 

I wasn't able to complete this yesterday. I spent most of the day replacing a bad tire caused by a pot hole.

I'll be working on this today.

 

Where are your priorities? Didn't you realize that you don't need four functional tires in order to do this test?

Seriously, though... I hope everything is good with your tire and it didn't cost you too much to get it fixed.

 

There may be another way around this. I did a hack on my 2008 Gen II to unlock the doors when you approach the car (no handle touch needed). This was pretty simple to accomplish. The Gen II lights up the interior lights when it sees the smartkey near the vehicle. If the Gen III does this, then it may be possible to implement the unlock without buying/wiring new door handles.

The Gen II system works by sending out a 134khz signal to the fob, and then the fob sends back a 312mhz answer. There is only one 312mhz receiver in the car, and it's the same one used for the fob buttons, so it works at considerable range. The "rub" is the 134khz signal; it's very short range, so in the Gen II there are a total of 5 transmitters. Toyota refers to these as "Oscillators", and since they are short range, they do not pass through the body sheetmetal. 2 of them are on the inside, one in the center console, and one in the rear cargo area. The inside ones verify the fob is in the car so you can power it up, and also insure that you haven't left the fob inside when trying to lock. The other 3 are located in the 3 doors, such that they can transmit to a fob located left, right, or rear. They seem to have about a 3 foot range.

Now if the Gen III is the same, this is bad news, as it means even if you do the hack to bypass the door touch sensor, you still have to get that 134khz signal outside the car.

There still may be an easy "hack" here, and that's to add more antennas to the existing door oscillator, or just add in the extra oscillators.

I'm off to TIS/TechStream to dig up the details on the Gen III...