Dave Hacks

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.

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.  (continue reading…)

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.  (continue reading…)

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 Godforsaken iPhone newer technology.  Further research on the subject yielded little hope, as all other systems were out of my budget (cheap as heck).

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.  (continue reading…)