Forgetting to forget
10/09/2022
Do you remember my adventure with the remote key? Back then, the remote control of my Opel Omega forgot which car it belonged to after a battery change. And this was despite the fact that the short-term memory, which was disconnected from the power supply, was at least two-thirds of a minute short of its maximum shelf life of three minutes. The subsequent synchronization cramp spoiled my desire to use the second key again. It had been lying on the shelf since I bought the car with three blocked micro-switches and no battery.
But if you have the luxury of a spare key in a 22-year-old used car, you should also have something of it. So I took heart and a soldering iron, replaced the small buttons on the circuit board and inserted a suitable button cell. The subsequent function test in the underground garage, which was intended more to confirm my prejudices about electronics in cars, achieved pretty much the opposite: the locks on the car responded to the first press of the remote control, even though the key had had more than half a year to forget its programming - and should actually have done so according to factory specifications.
As often as we complain about modern technology, it also knows how to amaze us.
