[encantotom]

howdy, i know a few of you have the air door and the keyless entry with it.

mine is an essex electronics 1602 system. it does not have any wireless keyfobs with it and i have a call into essex to see if it is possible to add them in.

those of you that have a similar system, do yours have remote key fobs with it?

tom

[Chester Stone]

Tom, if mine has a wireless keyfob, I have not found it.

[encantotom]

i talked to essex electronics in california this morning.

the system that i have allows for an additional wireless receiver to be added to it. it comes with 2 key fobs with 4 buttons each on them.

it can be wired such that the key fob will lock and unlock the door, do the same for the bay doors. in addition, with some thinking and an additional relay, there is enough capability to actually use it to open the door as well. can set it up so when you hit the key fob lock button it locks the door and the bay doors all the same time. the unlock you can separate so it only unlocks the door and a separate button unlocks the bay doors.

to open the air door, you would have to have a time delay relay to make sure the door had unlocked first.

now i just have to decide if i want to spend ~150 bucks and a bit of time to do it.

by the way, the part number is RB-1704-RV for the kit to tie into the existing system to do this. remember, my existing system is a 1602.

tom

[encantotom]

the door opening part is a little concerning, but interesting.

the keyless lock just controls if the button for the air door is activated or not. meaning, the keyless entry system does not actually engage any real physical locks. just turns the button that opens the door on and off.

the door is held in place firmly by air pressure, not anything mechanical.

since there is no hinge, if the air depletes totally in the system, the door become free and can be opened by hand.

so, to be able to secure the door for storage, there are two key mechanical locks. on on each side. they are only accessible from the outside and only with a key. by the way, that key is only available from newell or bode. no local locksmith could find a blank to make one that i found.

so, if the door is locked manually with the key on each side (there is a lock on each side because there is no hinge on the side of the door and the entire door swings out when it opens. )

AND air is replenished in the system AND you use the electrical button (or key fob if it is wireless) to open the door, the door will strain to open itself against the mechanical locks.

i think it will anyway as i have not tried that part....

so the point to all of this, is though it might be cool to have a remote keyfob open the door, i wonder if it might cause a problem in certain circumstances.

anyone know if the new newells have the ability to open the door with a remote key fob.

thoughts or comments? or if it even makes sense to play with remote lock/unlocking at all? would anyone find it very useful?

tom

[lbrachfe]

I have fobs that came with my coach that I never use for the reasons Tom stated, but do use the keypad

[encantotom]

Larry, thanks for the comment. i was really excited about adding in a remote key fob and having it do other things as well till i asked darlene about it. she just said, why do we care about it? she went on to say that when we leave the coach we dont even take the keys because we use the keypad to lock and unlock it and the wad of keys is pretty large now as it is.

so why do we want to add a big key fob to the big wad of keys we have now?

oh well, it was fun to think about it. i have the part numbers and even know how i was going to wire and hook it up. i think maybe that is the part that i was most looking forward to. the quest of finding the right parts at the right prices and figuring out how to hook it up to work the way i wanted to.

on to finishing my bedroom...(in the coach)

tom

[RussWhite]

I was biting my tongue to keep quiet, but since you or Darlene came to the same conclusion I will chime in.

I don't take any keys with me when I leave the coach. It is hard enough just to remember to take the list I made for the trip :-) I keep a key hidden on the coach where I can get to it if needed, just walk out and push the lock button and hear the nice little whirr as the cylinder slides into place. I do try to leave the outside light on if I won't be back before dark so I can see the buttons more easily, but really I can punch in the code in the dark just by feel by now. Should the batteries give up the ghost while I am away I would get the key and let myself in. I really prefer the pushbuttons to carrying anything else in my pockets. YMMV Russ

[encantotom]

yea, to darlene it was a no brainer that we didnt need it and to me it was more of a quest to find the right stuff and figure out how to hook it up to do cool things that i guess i would never use.

i could save alot of money if i would ask darlene and russ if i should do something before i buy it.

tom