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New way to unlock Pruii when keys misplaced

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by raintree, Jun 22, 2005.

  1. priusham

    priusham New Member

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    C'mon fellas... he read it on the Internet. It must be true.

    Everybody knows it's illegal to tell a lie on the Internet!
     
  2. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    AMPS and TDMA are 824-849 MHz upstream and 869-894 downstream. Upstream is divided into 416 channels, so is downstream.

    CDMA and GSM in North America typically operate in upstream bands of 1850-1865 MHz or 1895-1910 MHz, and downstream in bands of 1930-1945 MHz or 1975-1990 MHz.

    So it would be highly improbable to operate the FOB remotely over a cellular link, especially one using high chip rates in CDMA operation, which would tend to severely distort the FOB coding.
     
  3. bookrats

    bookrats New Member

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    Now that's a law-enforcement branch I'd enjoy working for: The Internet Police!

    Particularly with a jazzy credits sequence. "A Quinn-Martin Production." :mrgreen:
     
  4. ross33

    ross33 New Member

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    right now i'm 30 miles away from my 05 prius, just called home and hit the lock pad over the answering machine. car is in the garage below, do you think it locked itself?? i'll find out tonite. hee hee !
     
  5. philforman

    philforman New Member

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    This all reminds me of a morning drive time DJ we used to have here. He would borrow a bunch of car alarm fobs and click on them over the air to see if he could set the alarms on the cars of his listeners as they drove along.
     
  6. ross33

    ross33 New Member

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  7. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    this is ridulous... who cares what the cellphone network can transmit??

    it still transmits to a speaker with bandwidth of 20khz MAX. so IF the signal were transmitted, and it possible since broadband over cellphone is possible, the signal would be truncated at about 18khz (if you are lucky and have a very high quality external speaker hooked up) which means that the info would not be transmitted anyway
     
  8. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    Dave:

    The vocoder will usually allow a 4 kHz plus a 1 kHz "guard" band.

    That, and the Walsh coding, such as orthogonal Walsh, along with the high chip rates, make it very highly improbable a cellular phone could remotely "link" a FOB.

    Jay
     
  9. DieselConvert

    DieselConvert Member

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    I notice that RAINTREE hasn't been back here since the original post on Friday. Sitting at home, laughing at all the commotion?
     
  10. DieselConvert

    DieselConvert Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patrickmaher\";p=\"101093)</div>
    Sooo, raintree.... the chick in the office where you left your fob, 100 feet from where your Prius was parked was the person who really unlocked it (if you're not still laughing).
     
  11. raintree

    raintree New Member

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    No, I'm not laughing. It happened, just like I said it happened.
     
  12. DaveG

    DaveG Member

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    It was the phone call! The phone was used to summon DOOR-NINJAS, who moved like ghosts into the car and unlocked the door from the INSIDE before they vanished into the night!
     
  13. HYACK

    HYACK New Member

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    Hi all,

    forgive my ignorance here and btw I appreciate the cumulative info I've absorbed thus far from certain members here.. OK..

    Newb Question: Given that if the smart FOB is nearby the Prius while at home (30' away on the kitchen table) for 'prolonged periods' of time...and is thus activated/engaged within the smart key range...will this create a constant, slow drain/strain on the battery? (unless the 'key' under the steering wheel is turned off at all times)?

    Thanks.
     
  14. mikepaul

    mikepaul Senior Member

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    Well, I have to say I couldn't recreate the successful unlock.

    Three separate experiments: cell calling 2.4Ghz phone, digital land-line calling cell, and cell calling cell. None of them made the car do anything.

    Since I can't do a POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) land-line calling cell test, I can't say if there's absolutely no way for this to work, but I'm leaning toward fortunate closeness to the fob as the only way the original car unlocked...
     
  15. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    POTS wont work for same reason none of the others will work and that is limitation of bandwidth. POTS only transmits analog sound at frequencies to a speaker with upper frequency limit that falls way short of anything except sound
     
  16. mikepaul

    mikepaul Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HYACK\";p=\"102018)</div>
    Fob or no fob, the SE/SS system drains the battery if left on...
     
  17. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HYACK\";p=\"102018)</div>
    Yep, it will. The manual warns you not to do this, as not only can the car 12 vdc battery discharge, but the FOB battery will discharge much more quickly.

    I suppose if you drive the car every day it wouldn't matter, but you'll still have to replace the FOB battery much more often. Might not be a bad idea to poke that SKS Disable button after all..
     
  18. DanMan32

    DanMan32 Senior Member

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    Guys, lets not forget, even if the audio bandwidth of the cell phone was wide enough, the fob does not transmit audio waves of any frequency. It transmits radio waves. My previous post assumed that, and took the idea instead that the fob radio signal might mix with the cell radio signal, imposing its digital data on the cell carrier. If both phones were analog, then it might be possible, as unlikely as that is, if the receiving cell repeated what it received. But since the cells these days are exclusively digital, it isn't likely the carrier would properly digitize the digitized data from the fob for the receiving cell to downconvert properly.
     
  19. HYACK

    HYACK New Member

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    thanks mikepaul and jayman for this apparently crucial lesson to a newb - me! I was never told this by the salesrep and imo it should be an absolute heads up to any prospective buyer. I must confess too, i haven't read the manual yet, as it is in my car sitting in the dealer's lot awaiting leather install (one week after purchase - sheesh!)

    I'll recommend my dealership include this in their 5 min pre-flight briefing. Thanks.
     
  20. Hatfield

    Hatfield New Member

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    There's absolutely no way this happened. Either the car was already unlocked, or the spare fob was in his briefcase.