How to Extend the range of your Remote

Try this it actually works thank to our friends at Top Gear UK :shock:

Park the car and walk a far enough distance that the fob does not work now go back another 5' or so and hold the fob to your temple and press a button.
Your range has been extended!

I do not know how far this trick will extend the range when I have nothing better to do I guess I will test it out but I will say I can get further away than my kids.

If any :ugeek: wants to comment on why this works please let me know

I've found in general that if you hold a car remote (not just the Leaf but most car remotes) right under your chin facing the car, it seems to have better range. Don't know why. Maybe it promotes better reflection of the remote signal or something. Maybe holding it at your temple has a similar effect.

The temple is the area of weakest bone density in the skull, so it's likely that holding it there is allowing the RF to penetrate your skull where it amplifies as it bounces around inside your skull and eventually exits through the eye sockets - kind of like an RF laser beam. Try looking away from the car and see if that has any bearings on your experiment.







Yes, I'm mostly kidding. But it could be true.

I've heard something similar: hold the fob at your throat and open your mouth in the direction of the car.
It does actually seem to help a little bit.

Holding the Remote near a bag of salty water (even strangely
shaped) would tend to give the transmitter a ground plane,
transmitting more strongly in the direction away from the ground plane.

The simple answer is that your body as acting like an auxiliary antenna. This is called a "passive radiator". The antenna inside the fob that is transmitting the signal to the car is non-optimal due to the size limitation of the fob, adding your body to this system (in some cases) will improve the transmission gain and increase range. It has nothing to do with your eyes or skull resonance though, and will not matter which way you look. How it couples to your body and how you hold the fob will have a greater effect. In fact, holding the fob higher up in the air will usually have the best effect overall.

The FCC limits the effective power of these transmitters so that there will be less chance of interference, which is typically why they have short ranges.

-Phil

I'm thinking of building a 12 element Yagi for mine so that I can blip the car from the next zip-code!

TomT said:

I'm thinking of building a 12 element Yagi for mine so that I can blip the car from the next zip-code!

Click to expand...

Or at least a Pringles can

interesting information. i have to say in 13+ months of ownership i think i have used my FOB maybe 2...or 3 times?

Sometimes I use the fob when I'm hanging up my keys (even though the car is already locked), just to hear the little "meep!" It's so cute!

The buttons on the fob have a function?

rickrides said:

The buttons on the fob have a function?

Click to expand...

Yes, unfortunately. They can cause the car to make a bunch of embarrassing noise when something else in your pocket accidentally presses against them.

Ray

+1 on that. i carried a Prius FOB around for nearly 8 years and never had the Panic alarm go off. it has happened twice with the Leaf and one time when i took my keys out and then "tossed" them on the desk from a grand height of about 3 inches...

I took the fob apart (it simply snaps apart) and filed down the tactile switches ever so slightly so that the buttons require much more force before activating. This solves the embarrassing accidental activation problem, but I can still press them if I want them.

-Phil

I got the service dept to comp me one of those rubber covers for the fob, then I cut out a piece of the stiff plastic it came packaged in and slid it inside the cover over the buttons. I now have to press harder to actuate the buttons and no more pocket locking the car.

I think the best range extender would be an RF reflector. Generally, this type of antenna would work
20+ times better than the antenna in the FOB. You take a piece of 10" x 20" cardboard, glue some aluminum foil
to it. Then fold it at the center of the 20" dimension. Make the angle of the "V" created about 90 degrees.
Now place the FOB in the center of the fold and move it out about 5 inches from the fold. There will be an ideal
FOB placement which you could experiment to find out. 5" is a good starting point. I'd guess from personal antenna
design experience that the range could be several hundred feet. Oh, you point the "V" at the car horizontally..as if the
fold is radiating towards it. For max range the V would be much larger...like 20"X 60".

This is what you are making: http://www.antenna-theory.com/antennas/reflectors/cornerReflector.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bob-AB5N (Ham radio calls)

PS: it is unlikely that at 318 mhz your body would provide any passive radiation- as your water would just absorb the RF.
(I'm assuming they use the standard 318 mhz FOB frequency)

GreenPowerVideos said:

PS: it is unlikely that at 318 mhz your body would provide any passive radiation- as your water would just absorb the RF.
(I'm assuming they use the standard 318 mhz FOB frequency)

Click to expand...

But experimentally it works. I learned the trick in college and in that particular variation it was holding the fob in front of an open mouth (touching your lips or teeth or something). Yes you look like an idiot doing this but suddenly my car at the time, with its nominal 15-foot pathetic range, worked from across the parking lot. The Leaf fob has much better range than this without assistance. I've used it from 100 yards or so with line-of-site w/o any tricks. Still it is fun to try and even better to see skeptics jaws drop open.

One thing I noticed after trading in my Maxima for my Leaf is that my fob range is very much reduced (although, it's not necessarily a bad thing; accidentally hitting the panic button or on the Maxima, holding down the "unlock" button and remotely rolling down the front windows, was kind of a pain).

I was able to use my fob with my Maxima from my office at work, a few floors up and across the parking lot. My Leaf's range is half that.

TomT said:

I'm thinking of building a 12 element Yagi for mine so that I can blip the car from the next zip-code!

Click to expand...

Bwhahahahahahahaha!