RF interference

Yesterday a friend of mine calls me and tells me that the alarm on his wifes van is not accepting commands from the remotes and that they had to leave  the van about 20 miles from home.  He asked me to go with him to get the van and to check on the alarm( I installed the alarms on both his car and his wifes). We get there and the alarm would not accept any commands from the remotes, so I tried the override and it didn't work either. I said fine I'll unplug the harness so we can take the van home.

After I'm done he tries to get on his car but now his alarm won't accept the commands and he only has the remote on his hands , the keys are inside his car which is now locked. After a couple of minutes of trying the remote from different parts of the car it finally opens the doors. We get back to his house and I re-connect the harness on his wifes van and everything works fine. His alarm works fine too and the funny thing is that they are not even the same brand.

The van has an APS-997 and the car a Galaxy 5000rs. The spot where the alarms went dead was on the parking lot of a municipal complex where the police and  dpw crews are dispatch from. And the police radio antenna was about  30 yards from the cars.

Has anyone ever experience something like this before.

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ieSpell rocks.

Yeah. Up here in Toronto the CN tower has a gazillion radio antennas transmitting all kinds of stuff. If you park your vehicle within two blocks of it, your range can be cut down to almost nothing. If this area is the only one in which the problem occurs, then don't use the remotes to lock/arm the vehicle when its there. If all else fails, open the car with the key and use the valet mode to shut off the alarm.

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sparky

yes i ran into this before also with an alarm i installed.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has experienced this.

But I'm still puzzled about the fact that the valet switch didn't work on the APS-997. And it was working when I re-connected the harness at his house. I didn't disconnect the valet switch just the long harness.

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ieSpell rocks.

BWAAAHAHAHAAAA!! Something like this happened to me, too. I was working at this shop that was across the street from the local Fire/EMS outfit. Well, I install an alarm in a customers car. I get the job done & everything works fine. I back the car out & park it in the lot. I go along w/ my day ... did a few other cars. Well, I get another car done. I back it out & park it next to the earlier alarm job I did. Well, as I am walking away, I hear  "chirp-ca-thunk ... chirp-chirp-ca-thunk" ... the alarm was disarming/arming ... disarming/arming like mad!! I'm like ... WTF? I go get the keys & remotes and go back out to the car ... by now everything is working fine. I shrug it off and walk back inside ... a little later, same thing ... park another car in the lot & I notice the alarm car doing it's "chirp-ca-thunk" thing ... now I'm going crazy ... and there are Ambulances & Fire Trucks tear-assing outta the building & making all kinds of racket so I'm really like "W-T-F!! Shaddap! I'm tryin' to THINK over here!!" That's when it hit me ... this alarm was goin' nuts just before all the Emergency vehicles would leave the building! Their radio gear was doin' it!! Never saw it happen again, though ... just that car, that day ... three times (that I heard, anyhow). LOL!!!!

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Make sure that you were actually using the valet switch and not the programming switch. There are two switches for that unit. One turns the remote start feature on and the other is the valet switch. Try and put the unit into valet know to make sure all works fine, just in case you ever need to put it into valet again.

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sparky

It was the valet switch. I do a lot of Audiovox units.

And it did work fine at his house valet and everything, that is why I find this so strange. One thing is to have RF interference and not been able to use the remotes, but the valet been affected by it.

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ieSpell rocks.