View CartOkay, this blog post is only for those of you over the age of 40 . . . or who have a vehicle over the age of 15. In the early days, aftermarket alarm remotes transmitted a fixed code. Then, some fairly silly people became concerned about thieves capturing and copying the signal when a remote was used in a public parking lot, and the industry shifted to rolling code technology. I say silly people because any car thief will tell you how easy it is to get into a vehicle. The concept that they would buy an expensive sensitive antenna to surreptitiously copy the signal from a person’s remote is fairly laughable to most self-respecting car thieves.
Anyway, back when remotes broadcast a fixed code, some of them were made with a receiver that could only “understand” a single code. Each individual transmitter-receiver pair used a different code so that when you used your remote after a stadium event, you would not unlock all of the vehicles that had the same alarm system installed. When one needed to replace a transmitter for this type of system, instead of programming the receiver to accept the various codes of replacement transmitters, the keyfob was custom-set to transmit the specific code required to work with that system’s receiver. This was accomplished by having circuit boards in the remote that could be set to different codes by making “trace cuts” to alter the circuitry.
Audiovox, DEI, Omega, Ungo and other aftermarket alarm manufacturers all sold lots of systems employing this technology. Believe it or not, many people still have these systems in vehicles and need a custom-made, trace-cut remote to operate the system. Several of the original keyfobs have been discontinued, making it more of a challenge to replace these remotes. Some trace-cut replacement remotes are still available and, if they are, Remotes Unlimited has them.
