intelligent key fob range

Originally Posted by OhioYJ

OK so first thing I tried was replacing the battery in my key. Note my car is a 2016. Then I tried the other key that has never been used and has never left my safe, same issue. So then I did some testing and found my car has a range of 5-6 feet from both doors, but is almost completely blind from the rear. Which led me to believe it was the rear antenna. The only other problem with my car is the outside door unlock button on the passenger door has not worked for some time. That button has not worked for some time, but its the passenger door so I've let it go. The rear antenna is cheap and easy to replace but if its not that its pretty much the BCM, so much to my dismay I scheduled an appointment for the dealer to look at it since its under warranty.

Dealer claims they put a new battery in the remote and (I only took one key to them) and all the problems went away. When I went to pick it up (two hours after dropping it off) I brought up the other key and sure enough even it worked. So either there is some truth in their batteries are fresher than Walmarts or they wouldn't come clean on what actually fixed it. I think its the latter... But at least it works.

Originally Posted by vtec to vvel

You really went to the dealer to have a fob battery replaced?

It may be your car/keys, as I’ve used key fob batteries from Walmart to gas stations and usually have about a 25-feet range. In fact, I can park my car inside the garage on the 1st floor and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor and can hear the beep when I lock from my bedroom. Also, batteries do have a long lifespan for storage (ie new inside the package and not being used).

Originally Posted by OhioYJ

No....

So I believe I may have sorted out my problem. I have a ECUTek Bluetooth dongle in my car. This was not in the car when I took it to the dealer. Yesterday, repeatability every time I put that back in the car, it goes blind from the rear, and range sucks. Remove the BT dongle and it works fine. So I'm assuming the BT dongle is causing interference of some sort. I'm going to give it a few more days and see if it continues to work without that dongle.

Originally Posted by Thundar

I had the same issue, the ECUTek bluetooth cut my fob range down to a couple feet. Unplugged the module and the range is back to 75 feet

Originally Posted by OhioYJ

I had this discussion with ECUTek's support and they at first claimed they had never heard of it and should not be possible since they operated on different frequencies. I shipped my dongle back to Dynosty for testing on their shop cars. Who also replicated the issue, although not quite to the same drastic degree as my car, but the range was drastically reduced. The same was true for all the other bluetooth dongles they had in stock.

After this confirmation, I have reached out again to ECUTek asking if a firmware update that shuts this thing down when the car is off is possible. They are supposed to be getting with development to find out.

Originally Posted by Thundar

I had the same issue, the ECUTek bluetooth cut my fob range down to a couple feet. Unplugged the module and the range is back to 75 feet

Originally Posted by Alstann

This is an awesome find. I recently got tuned with ECUTek and I also have a range issue with my remote - bluetooth dongle as well. Feel free to mention that I confirmed that removing mine from the OBD has improved my range again. I actually have my dongle mounted deep inside the dash with an OBD-to-OBD extension cable.