Car Remote Locking Trick

[Jahee]

Don't know how many people have heard of this but if you're out of range with your remote, you can touch the remote to your head and have a longer range.

Whats the science behind this, does your head act as an antenna or what?
Looking for the sceintific answer otherwise i would have asked in OT

Cheers

 

[Nathelion]

Have you actually verified this experimentally? It sounds like a bunch of bogus to me. Or alternatively, you get longer range because you just hold it higher up?

I very much doubt that your head in itself actually has any effect on your keyremote's range.

 

[Cogman]

i've heard of this one, the range gain does not always happen, but when it does it is usually a result of the remote being higher up, and tilted up so that the antana is more exposed.

 

[Jahee]

No its definately a result of touching your head. Try it, you can hold it with your arms outstretched above you and it won't work, yet if you press it on your head it does.

They did a quick demo of it on top gear a while back too.

 

[zinfamous]

does it work if you just touch it to your jaw? Dolphins receive the message from the sonar signals they send out via their jaw bones, which is an excellent sonic structure in humans as well.

 

[marketsons1985]

Originally posted by: zinfamous
does it work if you just touch it to your jaw? Dolphins receive the message from the sonar signals they send out via their jaw bones, which is an excellent sonic structure in humans as well.

Yep, that's exactly what happens. My acoustics professor was mentioning how good of a resonance cavity the mouth is, so sending the IR into the mouth boosts the signal....

Try calling someone near your car and IR-ing into the phone. I've found it to always work...

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: marketsons1985

Originally posted by: zinfamous
does it work if you just touch it to your jaw? Dolphins receive the message from the sonar signals they send out via their jaw bones, which is an excellent sonic structure in humans as well.

Yep, that's exactly what happens. My acoustics professor was mentioning how good of a resonance cavity the mouth is, so sending the IR into the mouth boosts the signal....

Try calling someone near your car and IR-ing into the phone. I've found it to always work...

a)It's not IR, it's RF.
b)The phone trick does NOT work, since it's not audio.

 

[Nathelion]

It is maybe by a real stretch of the imagination plausible that the resonance thing could be an explanation in the UHF-SHF bands. I don't know if those are the bands your typical car key uses though, and even if it is... how open (what the dimensions are) your mouth cavity is would determine if you have resonance or not. If you were looking away from the car it wouldn't work. And you'd practically have to stick it in your mouth for it to work to begin with. Plus, the mouth is full of saliva, basically contaminated water, that would make a decent conductor... that is, it would absorb rather than reflect/transmit the light (edit: changed dielectric to conductor, that was a typo).

Oh, and acoustics doesn't have jack sh*t to do with it. Acoustics is about sound, but car keys use EM radiation (light).

I'd still like to see solid, repeatable evidence before I believe this...

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
It is maybe by a real stretch of the imagination plausible that the resonance thing could be an explanation in the UHF-SHF bands. I don't know if those are the bands your typical car key uses though, and even if it is... how open (what the dimensions are) your mouth cavity is would determine if you have resonance or not. If you were looking away from the car it wouldn't work. And you'd practically have to stick it in your mouth for it to work to begin with. Plus, the mouth is full of saliva, basically contaminated water, that would make a decent dielectric... that is, it would absorb rather than reflect/transmit the light.

Oh, and acoustics doesn't have jack sh*t to do with it. Acoustics is about sound, but car keys use EM radiation (light).

I'd still like to see solid, repeatable evidence before I believe this...

well, they don't use the visible light spectrum (so.. calling it EM works). What frequency do they use? Perhaps the signal is being reflected by the skull creating a more direct beam.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
It is maybe by a real stretch of the imagination plausible that the resonance thing could be an explanation in the UHF-SHF bands. I don't know if those are the bands your typical car key uses though, and even if it is... how open (what the dimensions are) your mouth cavity is would determine if you have resonance or not. If you were looking away from the car it wouldn't work. And you'd practically have to stick it in your mouth for it to work to begin with. Plus, the mouth is full of saliva, basically contaminated water, that would make a decent dielectric... that is, it would absorb rather than reflect/transmit the light.

Oh, and acoustics doesn't have jack sh*t to do with it. Acoustics is about sound, but car keys use EM radiation (light).

I'd still like to see solid, repeatable evidence before I believe this...

This is what I was thinking, but just throwing some wild-hat speculation out there. As for the Dolphins, though: sonar isn't really audio is it? Or is a sound wave just a sound wave?

 

[Jahee]

Here's the demonstration of it on top gear. You can't really see the indicators flash because of the video quality but you can tell by his reaction it works.

Youtube Link

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
It is maybe by a real stretch of the imagination plausible that the resonance thing could be an explanation in the UHF-SHF bands. I don't know if those are the bands your typical car key uses though, and even if it is... how open (what the dimensions are) your mouth cavity is would determine if you have resonance or not. If you were looking away from the car it wouldn't work. And you'd practically have to stick it in your mouth for it to work to begin with. Plus, the mouth is full of saliva, basically contaminated water, that would make a decent dielectric... that is, it would absorb rather than reflect/transmit the light.

Oh, and acoustics doesn't have jack sh*t to do with it. Acoustics is about sound, but car keys use EM radiation (light).

I'd still like to see solid, repeatable evidence before I believe this...

It's always worked. It SIGNIFICANTLY increases your range, almost double sometimes.

My guess is the body is acting like some kind of antenna and focusing the energy.

 

[gsellis]

I think the tinfoil hat works as a good reflector when you press it to your head. Not sure if Armadillos work though.

 

[Ruptga]

Never tried the car remote thing, but I know from experience that holding the antenna of a radio often fixes crappy reception. All I can figure is that my body becomes a kind of antenna, which doesn't sound too insane since our nerves use electricity, and electricity and EM are related. But, I really have no idea how/why it works, I just know it does.

 

[Nathelion]

Nerves don't use electricity per se. While electricity is the movement of electrons in a conductor, an action potential is charged ions flooding into and out of the nerve cell, triggering the same process in adjacent parts of the cell in a continuous manner. So nerves aren't really any more electrically conductive than the rest of the body. In fact, all parts of the human body are pretty crappy conductors.
The only way to really run large amounts of energy across a human body without frying it in the process is to use a very high frequency, high voltage AC current. It will propagate across the surface of your skin, with some seriously cool visual effects. Nicola Tesla did this for recreation and never suffered any physical harm. That being said, that is not what's going on here - we're talking about EM radiation, not electricity.

 

[AncientPC]

I don't know what signals car alarms use, but television and radio signal can be improved by simply touching the antenna with your hand. I believe that the reason behind is that your body can carry a very small current (demonstrated by a math teacher in high school completing a circuit but touching two diodes) and thus your body acts sort of like an extension of the antenna.

 

[mruffin75]

I've always been able to get this to work by pushing my remote against my neck....been inside the house and no matter where I move or point the remote I can't lock the car...

Put it to my neck... and it works nearly every time..

I was under the assumtion that it was amplified somehow..

 

[RedBeard]

I read this thread and just tried it with my alpine car alarm.
I was attempting to get my car to arm without having to go outside (I was at a window). No go
So I held the alarm against my temple and it worked...

Weird

 

[aaqubit]

actually, if you want to isolate the height factor, instead of bring it to your temple, you should bring your temple down to where your remote is and touch it.

 

[pectoralis]

brain activity is actually electrical signals.. very minute though and it involves propagation of an action potential involving K and Na ions thereby producing very small changes in voltage.. thereby producing measurable EEG activity. Rest of the body also has nerves but far far less as compared to the brain. How may this boost the signal? I dont know.

 

[RedBeard]

Originally posted by: aaqubit
actually, if you want to isolate the height factor, instead of bring it to your temple, you should bring your temple down to where your remote is and touch it.

Since I was at my window there wasn't much leeway.

I also touched the remote to my other hand and that worked too. So I guess it doesn't have to be you head.

 

[novasatori]

I always touch it to my chin pointing up towards my mouth, it can almost double the range and works from inside, I learned it from my dad.
My wife thought it was bogus, but I had her walk well out of normal range with me and try it and it worked, so now she does it all the time too.

 

[Nathelion]

Does it work if you turn around as well, or does it only work in the forward direction?

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
Nerves don't use electricity per se. While electricity is the movement of electrons in a conductor, an action potential is charged ions flooding into and out of the nerve cell, triggering the same process in adjacent parts of the cell in a continuous manner. So nerves aren't really any more electrically conductive than the rest of the body. In fact, all parts of the human body are pretty crappy conductors.
The only way to really run large amounts of energy across a human body without frying it in the process is to use a very high frequency, high voltage AC current. It will propagate across the surface of your skin, with some seriously cool visual effects. Nicola Tesla did this for recreation and never suffered any physical harm. That being said, that is not what's going on here - we're talking about EM radiation, not electricity.

Not to be too picky, but in your post, you're referring to electricity as "current". Then, you're referring to running energy through a body (which is not current.) Regardless, what's happening in the transmission of signals along nerve pathways is most certainly referred to under the broad term "electricity."