short life of key-fob battery

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Toby said:
Thanks for that. I hung my key-fob on its usual hook in the house and then tried to start the car. This message came up, "NO KEY DETECTED".
You are missing the point.
There are 2 distances at work: the one to start the car (must be inside the vehicle cabin) and the one to unlock the doors. Both are affected by the RF environment, but both will definitely drain the battery (when in range). Sounds like you had a "bad batch" of batteries anyway.
 
cwerdna said:
Approximately, where you located?

The Okanagan valley of Canada. I never heard of Daiso but good thought. Thanks.

Stanton wrote, "You are missing the point.
There are 2 distances at work: the one to start the car (must be inside the vehicle cabin) and the one to unlock the doors. "

Good point. I'll try to open the car with my key-fob on its hook.

Edit: spelling
 
Consider checking fob batteries before installation; https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=32144&p=603206&hilit=fob#p603206
 
My fob never leaves the car, as I live in a low crime area. Haven't changed the battery for almost a couple years.

I agree with what leftie wrote about Chinese batteries. Bought a dozen cr123 that were worthless right out of the package.
 
Here in UK we have a spate of keyless thefts of cars by the use of cloning devices. If your key is accessible from outside your property (in radio terms) it can be read, cloned, and the device used to open and run your car - BMW, Audi, Nissan, whatever brand. The advice is to keep your key(s) in a Faraday cage to render it inaccessible from anywhere outside the 'cage'. Such a 'cage' might be something as simple as a small metal container such as available here to pack and sell larger packs of loose tobacco for pipes or self-rolled cigarettes. Any metallic container (may need to be ferrous, I don't know) with a lid will suffice. This should 'blind' the Leaf key to the proximity of the car.

My key is kept overnight on my bedside table which is upstairs and about 30 - 50 feet from where the car stands on the drive. I am able to lock and unlock the car from there, so I assume that jjeff's advice that the key may be chattering away with the car all night holds true? I'm off to my workshop now to find a suitable container... :geek:
 
motco said:
My key is kept overnight on my bedside table which is upstairs and about 30 - 50 feet from where the car stands on the drive. I am able to lock and unlock the car from there, so I assume that jjeff's advice that the key may be chattering away with the car all night holds true? I'm off to my workshop now to find a suitable container... :geek:
I have verified the same (I can lock/unlock the car via the remote buttons) from as much as 50 feet away...but that is different from the remote proximity to lock/unlock via the door handles (outside the front doors) and/or the remote proximity to start the car (inside the car). In fact, the sensors to detect these are different (in different places) and affect the battery life accordingly. For example the Remote Keyless Entry receiver is in the glove box and has a much different detection pattern than the Outside Key Antennas that are near the driver/passenger/hatch doors. I learned (the hard way) that leaving your key fob inside the car is a quick way to kill the fob battery, and I suspect leaving it within close proximity of the door antennas is much worse than trying to lock/unlock with the buttons.
Having said all that, a "bad batch" of batteries is still a bigger problem.
 
motco said:
Here in UK we have a spate of keyless thefts of cars by the use of cloning devices. If your key is accessible from outside your property (in radio terms) it can be read, cloned, and the device used to open and run your car - BMW, Audi, Nissan, whatever brand. The advice is to keep your key(s) in a Faraday cage to render it inaccessible from anywhere outside the 'cage'. Such a 'cage' might be something as simple as a small metal container such as available here to pack and sell larger packs of loose tobacco for pipes or self-rolled cigarettes. Any metallic container (may need to be ferrous, I don't know) with a lid will suffice. This should 'blind' the Leaf key to the proximity of the car.

My key is kept overnight on my bedside table which is upstairs and about 30 - 50 feet from where the car stands on the drive. I am able to lock and unlock the car from there, so I assume that jjeff's advice that the key may be chattering away with the car all night holds true? I'm off to my workshop now to find a suitable container... :geek:
Boy that's really sad, the extent to which people will go to avoid real work :cry: and for whatever reason, the UK seems to be a vision of the future of what might happen in other places. Probably because the UK is close enough to countries where they come up with such things but are prosperous enough to have nice cars. I know the UK was where I first read of catalytic converter thefts, several years before the cats were ripped out of our '07 Prius :evil: apparently the #1 car for such thefts due to it having 2 cats and very high quality at that. Now a week doesn't go by when I don't read or hear of someone else getting their cat taken, outside homes while people sleep, in shopping areas while people shop, while people park at work, etc. Not on our street but our suburb or for sure our city, it's gotten out of control!
Anyway back to the question at hand. I just did some tests of the FOB of my '12, '13 Leafs and '07 Prius.
The Prius is easiest to block the sensor, now I'm only going to talk about the proximity sensor as that's what they use to clone, the buttons you push are radio waves and different than the prox system and not what they use to clone your FOB or what communicates with the car, causing the battery to wear down prematurely.
Prius was easiest to shield, a small Altoids tin successfully blocked all prox functions on both front doors and hatch. It did take 2 layers of AU foil to block it, it went through just 1 layer of decent(not ultra-thin) foil.
My '13 Leaf was the next easiest to block the FOB although if you held the Altoids box right next to the door handle and in a certain way, the car would lock/unlock even through the closed Altoids tin. Two layers of AU foil did block the prox though.
My '12 Leaf was the hardest to block, although some of that may have to do with the brand new battery I just put in the FOB a few days ago. The fobs prox easily went through the Altoids tin but it took 3 layers of AU foil to stop it.

Long story short, while an Altoids tin is probably good enough to keep someone from cloning your FOB, unless they were literally inches from it, it doesn't totally stop the prox from getting through. Three layers of decent AU foil does seem to do the trick but would probably be inconvenient to use over and over. I'm guessing if all your trying to do is stop your FOB battery from wearing out too soon an Altoids tin(or a similar metal box with a metal cover) would be fine if you kept it several feet from your car. They probably also sell boxes or even metal-lined small bags? that might even work better than a simple Altoids tin. From the fact the AU foil blocked the FOB and quite well at that, tells me it doesn't matter if the metal is ferrous or not. I do seem to remember reading copper might be good at blocking radio waves and lead blocks things like X-rays but I'm not sure how either these metals would block prox functions.
 
Had to change the battery again. What's that? six & a half weeks? That was the Vital battery from The Source. So, either the car is demanding perfect batteries or something is draining my batteries. Can another car do it?

This time I am using a Noma that comes with a three year "Power Promise." I cannot find Energizer 2025 anywhere; 2032 yes, 2025 no.

By-the-way, the "bad" battery still shows 3.04 vdc.
 
Toby said:
Had to change the battery again. What's that? six & a half weeks? That was the Vital battery from The Source. So, either the car is demanding perfect batteries or something is draining my batteries. Can another car do it?

This time I am using a Noma that comes with a three year "Power Promise." I cannot find Energizer 2025 anywhere; 2032 yes, 2025 no.

By-the-way, the "bad" battery still shows 3.04 vdc.
It's got to be the battery manufacturer/source (never heard of Vital); 3.04v does sound a bit low for these batteries.
You can buy Energizer 2025's all day long on Amazon...and I even see them at some big box stores, though maybe not specialty battery stores.
 
Toby said:
By-the-way, the "bad" battery still shows 3.04 vdc.

A battery's voltage is not always a good way of evaluating a battery's available capacity (energy);

https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=32415&sid=ebe81b9e16e9443ea8b83d69ed464991&start=20#p608036

as some have learned from this website, i.e. voltage not representative of SOH.
 
lorenfb said:
A battery's voltage is not always a good way of evaluating a battery's available capacity (energy);

You are right, of course. I've read these discussions on the board before. I really need a decent load in order to make a proper test and have never got around to rousting one up. It's sort of like the leaky roof problem, we only notice when it rains.

The fob for our other car (Subaru) is still working after three years. However, one of our Leaf fobs has used three batteries during the two years we have had it and the other fob has gone through five. I have tried batteries from three different manufacturers and don't believe they are all weak on purchase.
 
Toby said:
Had to change the battery again. What's that? six & a half weeks? That was the Vital battery from The Source. So, either the car is demanding perfect batteries or something is draining my batteries. Can another car do it?

This time I am using a Noma that comes with a three year "Power Promise." I cannot find Energizer 2025 anywhere; 2032 yes, 2025 no.

By-the-way, the "bad" battery still shows 3.04 vdc.
Unless things have changed, I've had very good luck with using a 2032 in my '12 and '13 Leaf FOB. Kind of tight getting the case closed the first couple of times I had to replace the battery but a breeze now.
 
I keep the fob on a shelf in the garage near the car (2018). Last night I grabbed the fob and it and my hand was covered with laundry detergent from a big leaking bottle that was kept on the same shelf. I took the fob apart, washed everything in hot water, rinsed the parts in isopropyl alcohol, blew everything dry with warm setting on hair dryer. It now works fine.
This morning I decided to check the spare fob. The battery was apparently dead so I replaced it.
"Live and learn"
Now I need to get spare batteries.
 
AFAIK, Key fobs are periodically transmitting no matter where they are. If you have access to a receiver that covers 315 mhz, you can hear yours squawking its code. That's how many car thefts occur, if they can intercept that signal and code
 
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