There are a few vehicles on the road that are targeted often by car thieves, whether that’s because they have valuable parts, the OEM security is easily bypassed, or even because it’s an antique vehicle that needs little more than a screwdriver to get started. For those driving one of these vehicles an additional immobilization feature is often added, like a hidden switch to deactivate the fuel pump. But, in the continual arms race between thieves and car owners, this strategy is easily bypassed. [Drive Science] hopefully took one step ahead though and added a decoy killswitch instead which triggers the alarm.
The decoy switch is placed near the steering column, where it would easily be noticed by a thief. Presumably, they would think that this was the reason the car wouldn’t start and attempt to flip the switch and then start the ignition. But secretly, the switch activates a hidden relay connected to the alarm system, so after a few seconds of the decoy switch activating, the alarm will go off regardless of the position of this switch. This build requires a lot of hiding spots to be effective, so a hidden method to deactivate the alarm is also included which resets the relay, and another killswitch which actually disables the fuel pump is also added to another secret location in the car.
As far as “security through obscurity” goes, a build like this goes a long way to demonstrate how this is an effective method in certain situations. All that’s generally needed for effective car theft prevention is to make your car slightly more annoying to steal than any other car on the road, and we think that [Drive Science] has accomplished that goal quite well. Security through obscurity is generally easily broken on things deployed on a much larger scale. A major European radio system was found to have several vulnerabilities recently thanks in part to the designers hoping no one would look to closely at them.
Isn’t it “on” instead? You want to arm the alarm, not disarm it, right?
Turning on the alarm will make it go off, because the English language hates you.
“Going off” in this context meaning “activating”, which is the opposite of what it appears to mean.
Yes, it’s how we say it: going off means going on. I was just thinking the other day how stupid that phrase must sound to non-native English speakers.
While we’re at it, can you turn up the air conditioning, please?
That and people saying “move it back” when rescheduling something at a date further into the future.
Try electro-pneumatics: a closed electrical contact allows current to flow, but a closed valve stops air flow!
Same reason we park on driveway and drive on the parkway!
That makes sense because an electrical switch needs to close for the contact to touch, but an air valve needs to remain open for air to pass through. It’s just describing what’s actually happening, unlike “go off”
It’s rather that using “closed” to mean “disabled” is the weird thing here. It’s completely context sensitive: you can drive a car through a closed circuit.
I tried to reason with this a bit as a native english speaker. An alarm “going off” is an erratic/mayhem inducing event. So it’s more about the result of the alarm causing things to “go off of normal”
Like when we take a dump but (hopefully) leave it behind
When we say “the alarm goes off” we mean the alarm activates (which you know means loud noises and probably flashing lights)
Welcome to the wonderful world of the English language
In English, “the single” is a plural.
“At wedding receptions, the single people usually sit at their own table.”
‘people’ is the plural noun here, not ‘the single’.. ‘single’ would be the adjective, it describes a characteristic of ‘the people’ (that they are single, not singular.. but individually they are ‘single’)
“At wedding receptions, the single chair usually sits where it wants” <- singular
“At wedding receiptions, the single chairs usually sit where they want” <- plural
“After the reception, the single left for a pub.”
Here “the single” is both the adjective and the noun, and plural.
@Dude:
That’s one singular “single” isn’t it? How is that supposed to be plural?
If there were more than one please say “singles”(?).
““After the reception, several singles left for a pub.”
– some singles
lol
Because “the single” is also a category of people, so when the single went to the pub, we’re assuming there were enough of them to warrant the use of a group label.
Otherwise, if it’s just “Bob” who went, it’d be weird to call him “the single”, like that was his defining feature – Bob the single.
“All that’s generally needed for effective car theft prevention is to make your car slightly more annoying to steal than any other car on the road”
Or, like the joke about outrunning a bear, just more annoying than the car next to yours.
What really ends up happening is “smash smash, break break, pick up whatever valuable part comes off and run.”
One time the thieves wrenched my hood open and stole the battery and the valve covers – no power, no alarm, just a big mess with everything on top of the engine torn to shreds by idiots.
Years ago I did something similar. I had a hidden switch that turned off both the fuel stop solenoid ( Diesel ) and the fuel gauge meter. The engine would turn over but never start giving the appearance of an empty fuel tank. 😂
Genious!
The best car theft protection – The hidden switch nobody know where instead of well documented alarm system.
Yeah, my dad implemented something like that for my aunt’s car back in the late 70’s/early 80’s. In her case, it was literally just a manual valve on the fuel line, that could be operated from the driver’s seat. Car got stolen 7 times as far as I recall, my dad just asked which direction it was pointing, and found it 100m or so away each time.
He upped the game for my car, with a normally closed solenoid valve and resistor for the fuel gauge to make it look empty. It was triggered by a reed switch under the carpet next to the driver’s seat, the magnet just lived in the side storage compartment, so it was trivial to operate. It activated as soon as the ignition was turned off, so in theory, a hijacking would simply require turning the car off (or stalling it), restarting it, and the perps would be able to drive away. That car was only stolen once, but I found it 200m down the road, with the thieves still in it, stuck in traffic on a bridge over the highway! (They scarpered as soon as we showed up!)
I hope you’re not American and saying the vehicle was meters away and not miles away…
Cybersecurity and whatnot but all 100usd keyless entry fobs are still relayable, explain me that!
$100 is a lot less than you’d pay for a replacement nowadays. I haven’t heard a number under $300 for a while.
Because relays aren’t that easy to protect against, it’s only RF after all. My idea on this is measure RTT – and to minimise any delays due to processing speed, the car sends a challenge to the key, key calculates the response and holds but not trasmit it. Car sends a request for the response, key sends it back instantly. Measure RTT – within 1m? OK. 10m away? Activate alarm.
“To closely..”
Too closely? 🥴
In my old car I’d just pop the hood real quick and pull off the plug wire going to the distributor. Even if someone watched me do it they couldn’t jack the car unless the went on a trip to the parts store. That plus manual transmission (although it was 20 years ago) and never had problems.
My father’s trick was fairly similar but he would swipe the rotor from inside the distributor instead – it’s very easily pocketable and not obvious from the outside that it’s missing.
My dad swapped the ignition cables around so the car would start but I guess it would have pretty much no power.
I had 2 vehicles broken into and 1 successfully stolen, so I hid an old phone with a cheap 1 year PAYG SIM card and an always-on USB port in my new pickup.
It worked great as a low-budget LoJack, at least until winter reared its ugly head. Apparently smartphones don’t do well sitting in -20 to 30c weather for any length of time. It’s not a theft deterrent, but it’ll probably lead the cops to a chop-shop.
In the summer at least.
Poor mans immobiliser:
12V 433MHz remote controlled relay.
Easy to hide even on a MC, and always keep the remote in a pocket.
Wire it so it sits after the key switch, so no parked power draw.
Startup: Key on and then click remote button.
Fex
http://www.amazon.de/dp/B081CD9GHD
I’d rather put an usb-keyed or NFC interlock box with decoy cables should a thief get access to it. Shouldn’t be too hard to implement & no rf to worry about.
It’s axiomatic that when someone gets to your stuff you’re dead in the water. We could only aim at making it not worth their while.
After my truck got stolen by some fenthead with a flathead, I put a killswitch in it and moved the ignition to somewhere under the dash. The stock ignition is still there (with sheared pins in the lock) but it’s just hooked up to an extremely loud airhorn that blows out your eardrums if you try to turn the stock ignition.
Mad max fury road ass nonsense. Never needed to worry about that until a few years ago..
Um, to paraphrase Dr Strangelove,
“But the whole point of security by obscurity is lost if you don’t keep it secret! WHY DID YOU TELL EVERYONE?!” [on Youtube]
It seems if someone wants your car bad enough, they’ll tow it.
I seem to remember a story of a car that was stolen, it was found an hour later stripped to the frame.
It seems the mentality is, why should I pay for it when I can just steal it?
It’s why I don’t own a car. You have to jump through hoops to keep it safe.
Saw the thumbnail and couldn’t figure out why wish.com Tom Hardy had made it to HaD
It is still not going to stop them from ripping the steering and ignition out only to find out after the fact there is a kill switch, damage is already done. I work in the industry and it is so stupid Hyundai and Kia allowed vehicles to be produced with out an immobilizer. They legally went back 30 years to sell a cheaper car. On average the cost of repair is around $3k and that does not include the back ordered parts needed because every single one is stolen
My first immobilizer system on my motorcycle consisted of a relay (of course) controlled by a thyristor.
The thyristor gate is controlled by a transistor, itself controlled by a simple push button, a resistor and a capacitor.
When the button is pressed, it charges the capacitor through the resistor. With the values used it takes about 10 seconds before the capacitor charge is sufficient to make the transistor conductive, which triggers the thyristor. At this point there is no need to press the button any longer : the relay remains activated as long as the main switch is on. In other words and it will automatically reset itself when the main switch is turned off.
Why have a delay ? we all know that vehicle thieves are people in a hurry, at least more than me.
On a later version, I replaced the push button with a hall effect sensor hidden inside the dash. Don’t lose the control magnet and do not forget where the sensor is placed ! In this case, it is useless to have a long delay because thieves are rarely seen running a magnet across a dashboard without knowing where it will trigger something.
I for one would put a couple cheap horns one under each front seat. But have them go off in a difficult to follow pattern. Because a thief is probably used to the regular alarm patterns. It should stop for 20 seconds, then on for 5, etc. And if they unplug one, have a louder one go off under the dash.
What we all really want…
https://youtu.be/bMtqRir7dco?si=Qzq3RmKKHE-3VtAf