How to unlock my car/start engine using RF signal from ISY

[valbor]

Please advise how can I send RF commands to my car (to unlock doors/start engine) using RF command from ISY ?

[ergodic]

First, think hard. Really, really hard. Do you really want Insteon controlling your car's engine? Keep in mind: Insteon is not in any way a secure protocol, nor would I think of it as nearly reliable enough to trust for something like this.

 

Car remotes are not like garage door openers - they are proprietary and specific to particular manufacturers and models (sometimes shared across a few models and model years, but still quite specific to your car.)

 

So you start with the presumuption you need to use a specific remote from your manufacturer for your model, and that you've then programmed to your vehicle. Definitely a DIY project, though not really that hard.

 

Take off the shell of the remote and rig a pair of thin (26ga) solid, insulated wires to each set of switch pads inside in order to be able to electrically toggle the contact(s) for the internal membrane switches you want to activate. You might only need n+1 wires since there is probably one trace in common for all the buttons.

 

Coil up some considerable excess around a pencil so you have slack in the wires when you need to move the remote around to change the battery. And you'll likely have to snap the shell back together to lock the battery in, so ream out some small gaps for the wires to run through when you do that. (This destroys the watertight integrity of the unit, but we're way, way past that.)

 

Now that you have those wires coming out, you connect them to an EZIO or IOLinc and plug that in to the line. Presto! Insteon control of your car. (But again I repeat: be careful what you wish for.)

 

I'd get a small mounting board, put Velcro on the backs of everything to keep them in place together and bolt that somewhere in range you can plug it in.

 

You can use a micro-soldering station to attach the wires. If you don't have that I'd probably opt for conductive silver epoxy - just be sure to clean the contact surface carefully first. Possibly a cold-soldering unit could do it - I personally hate them but here it might be an option. Anyway, those remotes are expensive if you mess it up and have to toss it so you want to be careful.

 

Or... you could put a "halloween finger" (i.e. some sort of relay-controlled poker.) and connect that to an IOLinc and have it push the remote's buttons mechanically. That would be kind of fun to show people at least!

[apostolakisl]

I did that exact same thing but used my Elk panel's relays instead of Insteon relays to control it. When I speak of "it" I mean my garage door openers, not a car starter. Maybe if you have a detached garage, but the risk of the car starting and pumpin CO into my house accidentally scares me.