Eddie Zarrick wasn’t a big fan of hiding the key to his Jeep Wrangler every time he hiked around the great outdoors and went for a swim. So he decided to build an Arduino-based keypad entry for the trusty Wrangler.
“I went to a river this weekend for a swim and realized that I had no way to lock my jeep up without hiding my key through my back soft window and fetching it after to unlock the Jeep,” Zarrick explains in a Wrangler forum post. “If I can do that, so can anyone that was watching me hide my key! Then my friend showed me how his ‘super cool SUV’ had a keypad for keyless entry.”
As the HackADay crew notes, the above-mentioned project uses a spare waterproof keypad attached to an Atmel-powered Arduino Micro.
“Zarrick simplified things by cannibalizing his extra keyless entry keyfob; if the ‘duino receives the right code from the keypad, it presses the unlock button on the keyfob to grant access,” writes HackADay’s Josh Marsh. “Zarrick admits that the Wrangler’s soft top is easy enough to get into, but explains that the goal of this project is to keep the alarm activated, which would presumably go off if someone tried to break in through the soft top.”
Interested in learning more about creating a custom car keypad with an Atmel-powered Arduino? Be sure to check out the video above and the Wrangler forum post by Zarrick here.
