Well, not really hack, but I definitely 'modify' things.

 First things first, I screw up ALL the way through this project.  From the first picture of the tools, to the final assembly where I have a loose wire, this whole thing was a cluster.  But what fun is it for you to read about something that went perfectly?  It’s not.  So I’ll take you through the ups and downs and ins and outs of what I did, and how I fixed it.  In the end, it all worked out.  Read more

A friend of mine a while back bought me a multi-meter (thanks T-Bone!).  It’s a pretty darn good one too, but just like everyone else who uses a multimeter often, I found myself wanting a way to attach my leads to wires and have them STAY there.  Before I knew about places like SparkFun and Parts-Express, my shopping experiences told me that new leads were going to be too expensive Read more

Why hack a Bosh Style automotive relay?  Because you went to the auto parts store, and bought a Normally Open (NO) relay thinking it was a Normally Closed (NC) relay, Radio Shack is too goddamned expensive far away, and you don’t feel like getting blank stares from all the rednecks at the nearby automotive stores when you ask if their poorly labelled products are NO or NC. Read more

It works!  Not to spoil the punchline, but yeah, all the tests so far have worked out.

I received my breadboard from SparkFun and started assemblage.  I used one of the two optoisolators I found in an old board I scavenged from- something.  The optoisolator seems to be a good fit, at least for testing.  Read more

Recently I added a remote start to my car.  All is good in the world.  Unfortunately, I work at an airport and my car is about a 15 minute shuttle ride from my office.  There is not much opportunity to ’stand at the door and wait for warm car’ there.

But cruising the web, I happened upon the Viper website, where I read about a new system where you can start your car via an iPhone from virtually anywhere.  After looking into the system, I soon stumbled onto the fact that the system is ridiculously expensive, as is everything that has to do with the Goddamned iPhone newer technology.  Further research on the subject yielded little hope, as all other systems were out of my budget (cheap as hell).

My co-worker and I started daydreaming on the subject (what goes on at an airport that we would need to pay attention?) When I stumbled on an idea.  Read more