Help me out here please!

[bascule]

I got home from work and my doors wouldn't lock with the remote. No problem I just used my key as nature intended.

Then a few hours later my wife comes home and her Clio won't lock either? She went searching for the spare keys and none of them would work. Her car had unlocked at work mere minutes beforehand, so I sent her of round the block and yep, her car would lock.

Now my Mum is here, she parked up the road and her Mitsubishi locked just fine, I got her to put it on our drive and bingo, her remote now does nothing????

I've turned of my wireless router, video sender and dect phone to see if they are causing interference nope, still got a dead spot. Been this was since teatime today.

Soooo, any ideas??????

[ALD0]

-nope-normally happens near automatic doors like front of tesco, sainsburys etc,

[Restyle]

Try walking slowly to the spot with either a Mobile Phone monitoring the Signal Strength, or a tuned AM radio checking for reduced Volume.
As a further test, take the radio off Tune so you just hear white noise, & then see if any change in the white noise when wandering around the suspect area.

(This second check is also a good method of veryfing Infra red remotes by holding them close to the back of the radio while pressing suspect buttons)

[bascule]

Restyle, thanks I'll get testing.

I did my usual and searched after posting and find this is more common that I would have thought. Mind you if you actually take a look at the frequency allocations supplied by ofcom, it's hardly surprising.

[bascule]

It's the tranciever in the garage door opening thingy. This is going to be quite dear methinks!

[Malin Dixon]

The frequencies used by car keys (433 MHz ish) are fairly loosely regulated.

Most such transmitters will jam most other systems. Try operating both keys at the same time and the car won't respond, because they send different codes and they won't be transmitting at exactly the same time, so the car gets confused.

However, those frequencies are only supposed to be used for intermittent transmissions. Car unlocking and garage door opening are intermittent. The remotes should not transmit anything at all when the buttons are not pressed. If one is transmitting and jamming car keys all the time, it is faulty, illegal, and it will soon have a flat battery.

The garage door, like the car, only recieves so shouldn't be able to jam anything even though it is turned on all the time. Or have I misunderstood and it's one where you don't have to press a button? If so, then the garage door will transmit something all the time so that the thing in the car knows when to transmit.