Disabling a Car's Panic Button

You all know the scenario: You're walking out to your car, it's late at night, it's dark, and you're alone. You've got your keys held firmly in your hands, just like in all those public service announcements, when some gangsta mo-fo comes out of the shadows, AND STARTS MUGGING YOU! But wait, you have your car remote in hand; you're saved! You press the big red button... Annnd your car alarm goes off.

Now here you are, still getting mugged, but at least now all the neighbors are annoyed with you as well...

I'm kidding, but seriously, those little red buttons can get freakin annoying. A few weeks ago, my sister's cars alarm starting going off every time she pulled her keys out of her pocket. It got to the point where she couldn't carry her remote with her any more, so I decided I should try and "fix" it.

And by "fix," I mean disable the crap out of that freakin panic button, in case we're at all unclear what I meant by fix.

This is a relatively easy fix, that I've actually done a few times on various remotes already. Usually what I do is just cut the actual button rubber down so it becomes exceedingly difficult to press, but once I opened this remote up, that didn't look to work out well.



The buttons were all a single sheet of multicolored rubber, molded so it would look like four buttons. Thank you wonderful modern technology: you make our lives so much easier, when you work. Cutting that off just didn't seem like a good idea, breaking the seal on the electronics, etc.

That worked out just as well, anyways, since a little poking around with a volt-ohm meter made it pretty clear that this wasn't a case of fat fingers. The panic button (top right in the picture) was really defective, naturally shorted out, just waiting for some good reason to cry wolf. This meant I needed to actually disconnect the button entirely.

I first tried using my soldering iron to heat and lift off the entire button, but I've never really had much success with surface mount components like these, so I gave up on that fairly quickly. I instead opted to simply cut the trace. A little scratchy scratchy with an exacto knife, and the button is officially out of service.

You can see the scratch between the button and the 4th pin on the IC on the vertical trace. Tested it with my ohm meter to make sure it was really open, put everything back together, and we have a much calmer remote (get it? no panic - calmer. Man, I kill). Another day saved by not being afraid to open something and figure out what's up. Carpe diem, people.