viper 5904 range 1 mile? not quite

Hi there

I've recently put in a Viper 5904 due to the benefit of one mile range.. And the paging functions as I like to know if anything happens to the car.

Today I thought I'd do some testing whilst out to lunch but was told I was out of range...

Strange, because I was 250m from the car, with one building between us (both outside in open air). 250m is less than a quarter-mile, and pretty close to 1/8 mile...

Walking back to the car I again was testing range and finally got a response at approximately 160m (or roughly 0.1 mile)..

The antenna is mounted high on the windscreen and the remote is fully charged.

Does anyone have any suggestions how to improve range or is the advertised 1mile range really meant to be 0.1mile range??

Thanks

Alex :)

If I give you the whole story of why you haven't got the range, you'd be reading for the next six months but simply.
1 mile is a MAXIMUM under conditions of flat ground, no buildings* or natural objects, hills trees etc.
Antenna quality and placement.
Transmitter battery condition.
It's a bit like European (the US is more stringent) market mpg economy (fuel consumption) lists.
NEVER achievable in the real world.
The whole thing is a mixture of science and installer experience/ingenuity.
Ever tried to make a cell call from inside a buildings lifts (elevators)?
*Steel framed concrete building with tinted glass? Forget it.

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Amateurs assume, don't test and have problems; pros test first. I am not a free install service.
Read the installation manual, do a search here or online for your vehicle wiring before posting.

1 mile range is a maxium range with true line of site, not with a building between you and the system as every wall will effectively cut range by half. And brick or block walls will be more so degrading to range. Also if the windsheild has a foil layer to it will also cut range.

Some Euro vehicles also had a metal film in the windscreen (wind shield) I remember in the cell phone car kit days that glass mount antennae were useless, also GPS.

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Amateurs assume, don't test and have problems; pros test first. I am not a free install service.
Read the installation manual, do a search here or online for your vehicle wiring before posting.

Thanks for the replies.

Yes I understand it is a theoretical maximum however I have read on here someone's account of having a range of 3-5 thousand feet in a city area... With one of the older models..

I don't believe that even with true line of sight on flat ground (when I did get reception) that one-tenth of the advertised range is acceptable...

Obviously it would be a case of "the company is too big to try and take to court so I'll have to shut up and deal with it" but come on. I'm a bit disappointed..

No, no foil layering on the windscreen. Australian delivered Jap car.

what car do you have exactly? and are your windows tinted at all? lots and lots and lots of things could be killing your range, buildings, atmospheric conditions, obstacles such as buildings, interference from power lines and other high power utilities. the 1 mile range is maximum for the absolute ideal conditions. the 1 mile range is a gimmick on every alarm that claims to have it.

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Times 2 with all the above.  Range "claims" are the maximum possible under very ideal conditions.

You could try moving the antenna to different locations to see if you can get better results.

Of course, the effect of Earths magnetic flux lines where North is South, Winter is Summer and everyone drives
on the wrong side of the road might have something to do with it...  

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Soldering is fun!

Viper always over rates there systems. I install alot of excalibur. I have gone 1 mile from the truck and hit the button it took a minute but I got a confirmation. The antenna shouldnt be behind the dot matrix that will hurt some range. I truely doubt you will ever see 1 mile range in the cities with that. Power Lines kill the range. Cell phone towers kill the range. If you want a true one mile of range look at a different unit.

Visiting Australia is on my Bucket List.  Hopefully someday I'll get there ( and rent a Holden Ute SS and try to learn to drive all over again ).

I wonder if anyone has tried extending the Antenna harness ( with a little cut and splice surgery ) and mounting the antenna at the rear window?

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Soldering is fun!

i had the idea once to put the antenna in one of those magnetic waterproof key holders and mount it under the plastic panel at the bottom of the windshield. this way the antenna would be outside the cabin and probably get better range

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On the older Viper units if you coiled the antenna wire up it would kill the range. I'm not sure if that is still true with newer models. We used to make sure we ran the antenna wire the longest possible route to avoid bunching the wire up. Made a HUGE difference.

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Kevin Pierson

I was thinking about soldering a very thin copper wire to the antenna/control center and running it all around the windshield. What do you guys think?

KPierson wrote:

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On the older Viper units if you coiled the antenna wire up it would kill the range. I'm not sure if that is still true with newer models. We used to make sure we ran the antenna wire the longest possible route to avoid bunching the wire up. Made a HUGE difference.

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Do you think that this would still be the case for the newer SST antennas? From how I am understanding them, it's basically just a serial data connection between the antenna unit and alarm brain.

All the transceivers and other antenna gizmos are in the antenna unit itself, so how the cable providing power and data is routed shouldn't really matter?

You've got me curious though because I have the excess cabling for my 5704 antenna rolled up in a bundle and tempted to unravel it to see how much farther it may or may not work

Lol I think there was a post by Howie in here that got deleted? Guess he couldn't get away with it in the end Lol.

Car is a 2000 WRX.

Rear and side windows tinted at 35% and non-metalised tint film used.

No dramas getting GPS signals through front or rear windscreen (fixed GPS antennas on both for in-car GPS and GPS tracking).

I'm going to have another play with it this week and see how it goes.


Also in relation to the above posts; antenna wire (6 pin ribbon cable to antenna unit) is run the full length and not doubled over at all, let alone coiled/bunched up.

The SST antenna'a run on the 900mhZ Spectrum if there are any celluar antenna towers that are close that run on the same freq. could also effect range. Or you could have a bad antenna or remote also. The IDEN Sprint/Nextel celluar networks run on 800 and 900mhZ in the US and cause a lot of issues if the tower is close. I have a cordless home phone that is 900mhz and only works good up to 25 feet from the base before the signal starts breaking up as I am a less than a mile from a IDEN tower.