Well, I got my perf board in from Parts-Express, and of course I had to start assembling the final version of my remote start cell phone trigger, so here we go.
Remote Start using Cell Phone: Part 3
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.
First, the tools:
The tools…well, some of them.
These are the tools & parts. In the picture are: The ethernet cable headphone jack thing, solder, flux (I know, I know, the wrong kind of flux…), epoxy, project box/plate/screws, perf board, mixing stick, 2-pin connector, electrical connectors, relay, optoisolator, jewellers tweezers, helping hands, needlenose, soldering iron and screwdriver. Not listed is the relay jack/dongle thingy and the hobby knife.
Ok, that was boring. Next I took the opto and mounted it on the perf board. At first I held it in place with tape while I soldered it, but then I realized I was an idiot and I took the tape off and just bent the 2 unused pins down.
Perf Board and Optoisolator
Held with tape (dumbass)
Pins bent and soldered.
- Alright, not too bad. Next I soldered on the jumper wires. Easy enough, but wait…they don’t touch? How to I get the jumper wires to touch the copper on the hole over? I’ll just solder a trace! (NO, no you won’t. This is forkin hard, and anyone who has successfully done it, it usually looks like crap.) I ended up just bending over the jumper wires so that they touched and soldered all together. I think I will use this method all the time. It was easy, and worked well.
Soldered up.
I didn’t want all the wires soldered directly to the perf board and sticking out of holes in the project box, so I scavenged some sweet little connectors that I would use to bridge between the box and ‘the outside world’. Here is my first attempt:
Something is wrong here…
Yeah…something is wrong here… It looks good, nice solder job… Oh damnit! This is the part that was gonna go on the OUSTIDE of the project box! Crap, now I have to desolder it and solder on the other part of the connector.
Other Connector Soldered Up
- Yeah, there we go. All ready to go. Now I just have to, wait… this connector…the other connector… the box, click, outside, here, there… … … AUGH! Sunnava*$@*! This connector is what goes FROM the phone TO the other connector on the outside of the box! Dangit!
- So right about now I went and got a glass of milk, sat in my chair and collected my thoughts. I was getting a little rushed and ahead of myself, making silly mistakes. “What is the next thing I had to do? After that?” I took my time and planned the whole thing out, one logical step at a time (or so I thought).
- Next, put the square connector into the outside of the project box, and solder wires to it from the board. GO!
Lining it up to mark it. I just eyeballed it.
Marked with pencil and cut out with Xacto knife
- There is another connector (you can see it in the first picture of all the parts that everyone ignores) that I wanted to use to hook up the heavier wires from the relay. These wires aren’t gonna have a lot of current, they are just heavier cause the manufacturer thought they ‘might’.
Marking the center line and the marks for the spade connectors.
- I wanted to keep these holes small- because… just because. I decided the best way to do this would be to burn them in with something. But what? The answer was right in front of me.
Burn it down!
That’s a spade connector on my soldering iron. This worked exceptionally well. probably not an original idea, but I like it.
Here are the connectors epoxied in place.
Terminal Connector
Little white connector thingy.
Aaaannnd, solder the wires to the pins/spades on the connectors.
Small Connector Wires
Larger Connector Wired
- Next time around (I have to build some of these for friends), I’ll probably use A) Longer Wires, B) More flexible wires & C) Solder them BEFORE I epoxy the connectors in place. It’s a little cramped in there.
- Next thing, I attached and soldered the crimp type connections to the end of the relay socket wires.
Relay and Relay Socket
Relay Socket Connections
- Now this picture highlights the next time I got into a hurry. The blue wire is the wire that will connect to ground (I know it should be black, but I am too lazy to disassemble the socket and switch them). It should not have that round junk on it, rather it should have an extension and a male spade connector, as it needs to reach over to the ground and span inline with the ground wire (you’ll see later). The red wire is correct, however I need to create a sister wire for it that comes out the other side of the screw terminal and connects to the Remote Start Accessory Input. The black wire and the white wire are correct, as they are going to go inline with the current Accessory output from the remote start. Poo on putting a fuse on that, it wasn’t originally fused, and doesn’t need a fuse cause it’s running through a 30A relay. I don’t care if you are an Electrical Engineer, I’m not gonna do it.
Wires Hooked Up Wrong
Yeah, the caption is right. Remember I said that I needed to extend the blue wire to ground and make another red wire to go out from there to the Remote Start? The Blue wire should not even be hooked up there. Straight from the relay to ground.
Relay in place.
Little White Connector Male End Soldered to Phone Output
White Connector In Place
The new spanning ground connection in place. This will span between the remote start ground connection and the ground wire. I soldered the stuffed connection on the left.
Shrink Wrapped
The whole ordeal soldered up correctly.
In the end it all worked out…AFTER I hooked it up and it didn’t work.
Turned out that the little white connector I used broke. Why? Because I soldered the ethernet cable to the little tiny original wires and they could not handle the strain, so I pulled it apart, spread the crimp connector and soldered the ethernet directly to the pin. Good. No… The pins were female and I soldered the entire opening full of solder. So not only did I screw that up, I destroyed the pins in the connector attached to the box trying to jam them in.
So I rummaged some more, and managed to find an identical connector! Yay. This time I took my time and made sure I did everything correctly. That connector turned out GREAT!
But it still didn’t work. I checked for shorts, and found that one of the spade connectors on the back of the screw terminals block wasn’t soldered very well and broke off when I was soldering on the other connections. Sooo, I melted the everliving Christ outta the project box resoldered the wire back into the hole in the spade connector, taking care to not contact the plastic with my soldering iron.
With that, the whole thing was together, and once installed in my car, worked like a charm. Since using it for about a week now, I have come to the conclusion that I probably will not purchase more minutes with the cellular provider, rather I will simply use the calendar on the phone to set events for when I leave for work or leave work to go home. This is what I have been doing most of the time thus far. There have been a few occasions where I used the call function, like when I left work early; but for the most part I leave at the same time every day. A recurring event on the calendar takes care of that just fine.
Cost breakdown.
- Remote Start – $35
- Phone – $10
- Minutes – $20
- Perf Board – $0.45
- Project Box – $2.10
- Relay Socket – $1.79
- Relay – $1.69
- Solder, tools, wire, optoisolator – $Free (Had or Scavenged)
Overall Cost of project: $71.03
Well worth it if you ask me.
January 27th, 2012 on 2:30 AM
Where did you bought the Terminal Connector ?
February 18th, 2012 on 1:44 AM
You can get them online nearly anywhere. I bough these at Harbor Freight.
February 1st, 2012 on 9:34 AM
What were the part numbers of the relays you used. Cool Idea. Im doin it too.
February 12th, 2012 on 8:48 PM
yes the timer feature is great for you and possibly let the phone in off line mode because sometimes you receive promotional SMS or even messages letting you know your minutes are up that will start your car and burn your gas.
February 18th, 2012 on 1:41 AM
Yeah, no. Not that bad. Car will only run for 15 minutes. If that happens once a month, so be it.
February 20th, 2012 on 11:30 PM
If you have any interest in selling the phone to remote module u made, even if its just parts email me at tyler.rich76@gmail.com
April 21st, 2012 on 10:21 PM
I’m going to try and build this soon soon, but had a couple of questions. I don’t know if you still check these comments or not, but here’s hoping.
1. Do you have a link or some information on the relays that you used? I think the optoisolators you used have been discontinued, and you said you were worried about the voltage through them anyway. I’m trying to find a good low-current relay to use. I have a general idea of what I need, but if you could help me out with something specific, that would be great.
2. If I just omit the automotive relay from the circuit, I should be able to retain the ability to turn off the car via the cell phone, right? I will be trying to find a cheap Android phone to use, so I should be able to control the number of pulses it sends, so I’m not terribly worried about it turning off with extra pulses right after it’s turned on.
Thanks!
July 13th, 2012 on 4:37 PM
I check this about once a month. I need to add to it. The complete kit has never come to fruition, unfortunately. Once I get on a better shift and get life calmed down a bit, I’ll put the energy back into another version.
May 23rd, 2012 on 1:07 AM
Amazing hack! I was wondering if you ever created a plug&play kit for sale. Thanks
August 2nd, 2012 on 12:54 PM
http://www.instructables.com/id/IR-light-trip-sensor/step3/Step-2-Wire-your-circuit/
If that circuit was used and the could you cut out the bottom 555 timer and or gate and connect it directly to the AQV252 and run your power from a constant 5V such as a radio. Set the trigger as the output of the cell headphones. My only big concern with this is that the circuitry would not be able to handle the power and voltage the car output.
The given schematic is for some LED lights that I have on stairs in my home and I have leftover parts that I could build it with.
Thanks
August 2nd, 2012 on 1:08 PM
One more thing while you are here. I am still trying to figure out where you are connecting to the car. So the phone vibrates, sends a high signal to the headphone, headphone to relay, and then I am lost are you connecting it between two points that you are now connecting around?
Thanks
August 6th, 2012 on 9:56 PM
The headphone jack is not longer connected to the audio component of the board. Instead, it is isolated and connected to the + – of the vibrate motor. That goes to the headphone jack, then to a small relay (repurposed opto). That relay outputs to the remote start, however there is a relay on one of the wires (used to shut down the connection when car voltage is present) so’s not to shut down the remote star with any more pulses.
Clear as mud, right?
December 12th, 2012 on 1:04 AM
I was wondering instead of sending the signal to the remote start module, can the signal be sent to the remote key fob start button to make things easy?
December 31st, 2012 on 6:53 AM
It technically could, but what would be the point? The FOB runs off batteries and interfacing with it would be much harder. Especially considering the FOB needs a pause between pushes, and in my experience they are kinda flaky.
January 27th, 2013 on 10:34 AM
Very nice idea – I used it for my remote starter as well. Works like a charm. I used a DIY optocoupler from an LED and a LDR. The resistance goes down to about 200 ohm which is enough to start the car. The only problem I have is that my schedule is very variable, so I’ll need to keep buying minutes for the phone.
April 25th, 2014 on 11:41 AM
Why do you have to keep buying minutes? I was under the impression that if you call but hang up before voicemail no minutes are charged. Or is it that the minutes expire?
April 27th, 2014 on 11:32 PM
It’s that the minutes expire. They won’t let you just charge $20 and keep that on there. They expire every month. Quite crappy, but it’s the system.
November 5th, 2014 on 8:10 PM
What is the model of the remote start you’re using? Will this method work with viper units?
January 31st, 2013 on 8:30 AM
Looks like a great little project. How long do you think it took you to put it all together?
There’s a pre-built solution that doesn’t even use any minutes over at Click-vroom.com, which is what I have on my car, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the smart start system. It doesn’t have the calendar timer like your diy project does, but it can be operated by text, and I just put a separate app on my phone that sends commands Mon-Fri. Plus, I can lock/unlock/trunk/alarm too.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your project.
Cheers,
Tim G.
January 10th, 2014 on 6:34 PM
Is it possible to make it work on a galaxy s4, and if so…is there anyone of you guys available to estimate how much it is going to cost, include your labor time of corse….
I’m not a professional on doing it, and would like somebody to do it for me…
Thanks for any reply…..
April 22nd, 2014 on 8:56 PM
I’m not a pro either. And this is not an app, but a hardware hack. I don’t think you want me tearing apart and ‘modifying’ your S4!
January 16th, 2014 on 12:16 PM
Really awesome idea. If your work or businesses use wifi around you and have the paassword you could call via Google Voice, Skype, Tango or What’s App and start your car that way as well. Save on the minutes! Use it when the wifi is weak. Only thing you need now is a message coming back to you confirming the start. THink I’ll try and do this myself.
Thanks for the informaiton!
October 7th, 2014 on 7:52 PM
Want to try this too but what do you do about wrong numbers, telemarketers and service provider calls? Does the time out shut the engine down after 5 minutes or whatever the preset is?
November 24th, 2014 on 11:40 AM
How about adding another circuit to have the phone call you back once the engine is started? I’m thinking a relay hooked up to a switched +12V source which activates a speed dial button on the phone.
January 27th, 2015 on 11:39 PM
Something like that would be difficult to do without logic (i.c.). For now, this is all purely mechanical work. However you could monitor the voltage input from the alternator for nn seconds and trigger an even based on that. A small relay with a timer could trigger a long-pres on a number key fairly easily.