verbosity

Wireless mishaps

My Harley's security system appears to conflict with certain garage door opening systems. Perhaps I'm drawing the wrong conclusion, so let me lay out the facts:

1. Bike is parked in front of friend's house on street. Security system auto-arms after time delay expires. Wireless key fob is not used.
2. Carpool leaves house. Wireless garage door opener is used from mid-driveway to close garage door.
3. Carpool returns, wireless opener is used from street near where bike is parked to open garage door.
4. I attempt to disarm my bike's system. Pressing the button on my key fob results in no response from the bike. I try from various ranges and angles. Button was pressed many times from right next to the bike to inside the house. I disassemble the fob, clean and adjust the battery and contacts to no avail.
5. Carpool departs house to head to my place. I knew there was a manual override procedure, but I did not have the procedure or my passcode with me, despite them being on a convenient wallet-sized card that should have been in my pocket. BOYSCOUT_POINTS - 1
6. House garage opener does *not* work when attempting to close the door. Keypad on house is used to close door.
7. Opener again fails when returning to house. Keypad used.
8. I use the manual disarm on my bike, head home. Wireless fob still fails back when at the house.
9. I look up and execute the procedure to reassociate my fob with my bike. Fob now works perfectly.
10. Garage door opener still doesn't work. Reassociation probably necessary.

At #4, I suspected a dead battery in my key fob, even though it's only a year old. When the garage opener suddenly failed at #6, while possible that the battery had died in it too, the probability was rather low. #9 shows that the battery in my fob was fine.

My conclusion? The garage and bike systems conflict in some manner, and caused both to reject their respective remote units. A far shot, but I don't have any other theories at this point besides wild stuff like EMPs or solar flare CME's. It would not be surprising to find that both systems are of the same basic design, such as the common KEELOQ as shown in AN662. Even so, if my theory is right, it's still suprising and disappointing that the systems failed in the manner that they did. Unauthorized remotes should not be able to interfere with the operation of a valid remote: Denial of Service. Bad designers, no cookie.

I'll be repeating the "experiment" soon to try and confirm my theory. With manual override procedure in hand, of course.