How to Install a Remote Control/Tracking System (MFC) in Your Ride

As mentioned before, the Subaru WRX we showed at the Maker Faire features a remote tracking and control system. With this system you can:

• Log in from anywhere in the world and see where the car is
• See engine status, RPMs, speed, GPS info, and a bunch of other stats
• See history of location and statistics
• Unlock or Lock the doors
• Start or stop the engine
• Cut power to the fuel pump
• Control Windows, etc.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out the possibilities. Imagine a script that checks for upcoming appointments in your computer's calendar. 15 minutes before you leave for the appointment, your script logs in, finds your car's location and pulls the weather for the area. If the temperature is below 40 degrees, the script will send the commands to start your car. You get in 15 minutes later and everything is warm and toasty!

This is one of many possibilities with such a system. Just imagine if the thing got stolen! "Officer, my car was stolen but I have it's GPS coordinates. I will cut the fuel pump as soon as the officers arrive."

You can get such a system off the shelf and installed by a local shop, but in true DIY fashion, we installed our own module from Connect2Car, who was kind enough to sponsor us. The module we used is called the "MFC Anywhere" and will be available soon from their store. We will keep you posted when it becomes available.

The mission was simple. We had only a few short days to get the MFC anywhere and the remote starter installed into the car before the Maker Faire.

See our installation of the MFC Anywhere module after the jump!

We received the MFC unit on the Saturday before the Maker Faire. This combined with the remote start module made for a long couple of days before we left for San Mateo. Here's what came in the package:

Some promotional materials (CD and flyers), a boost mobile phone a cables for internet connectivity, some LEDs that you use for status, the MFC module, and all the wires you're going to need. First thought; "Look at all those wires!" But by taking things one wire at a time, it turns out the install is not too difficult.

These instructions are for a '03 Subaru WRX. Your car may be a little or a lot different. The best I can suggest is to find a forum devoted to your car, and search around and post your questions in car alarm installation forums. You should be able to find equivalent data for your car.

Before attempting something like this on your own car, be sure to disconnect the negative terminal on your car's battery. The last thing you want is to blow some expensive component of your car out because you accidently grounded out some connection.

Here is the wiring diagram I used as a reference during the install.

This shows the wires coming from the MFC
module.

Where to Install the MFC?

The first step is figuring out where to put the module. You want it out of the way, not easy to get to (for security reasons), but close enough to a location where you are going to put the phone. It was decided to install the module under the seat in the back on the driver's side. The cable for the boost phone could then be run behind the seat up to behind the headrest.

This is where the MFC is installed.

I learned afterwards that you want to give plenty of space between the phone and your amplifier, if you have one. Whenever the phone connects to the network, you will hear buzzing in your speakers if it is too close.

Powering the MFC

The first thing you want to do is supply power to the MFC. We tapped directly into the ignition harness for this. On a WRX, this is located right under the steering wheel behind the kick panel. It is a blue plug with 4 wires. Note: The wires are different colors on either side of the plug - if you are looking at a key or a pinout, make sure you're looking at the correct side of the plug!

This is the ignition harness hanging out. You'll actually want
to remove that kick panel to work on it.

Here are the wire locations for the WRX for this part:

(Click for larger)

Now you can start matching up wires. Looking at the colored diagram for the MFC above and this list of wires, you can begin to see where things are going to be. For example, the white wire found at the ignition harness supplies a constant +12 volts. The Red wire coming from the MFC is for a +12V input, so you simply splice the MFC's red wire to the ignition harness's white wire. Easy enough, right?

You're going to need to wire up the power and ground first. This is the red and black wire from the MFC and the white wire from the ignition harness. For ground, just connect the black wire to any good bolt connected to your car's chassis. Make sure it is shiny, not painted. Test possible grounding locations with a multi-meter.

Once you have those two wires hooked up, it's time to do the ignition wire and the starter wire. These are also both located on the ignition harness for a WRX. Here is what it will look like:

Ignition harness wired to the MFC. The splices are the
yellow boxes.

Splicing Wires Together

For the splices, I mostly used a quick splice, which looks like this:

You simply run both wires you are trying to splice together through the obvious tracks in the quick splice. Then use a pair of pliers to smash the metal part down into the wires. The last plastic piece folds over to cover everything up. These are very simple to use, easy to remove, and I swear by them. They are not the cleanest looking thing in the world, but whose going for clean? Nobody is going to be seeing this stuff anyway.

Running Wires

There are usually several ways to get wires from one place to another in your car. In the WRX, as with most cars, there are two channels running down either side of the car. This is where the factory wiring goes. It is very easy to use these channels. First, you should have your back seat taken out and the protective plastic pieces that cover the channel taken off.

The bundle of wires from the MFC, heading up front.

These plastic clips hold the carpet down, but are
very easily removed. Grab the clip (not
the carpet) and pull them up.

Here's the bundle of wires coming out from under the
carpet up front near the steering wheel.

Locking and Unlocking the Doors

Most of the wires you will need to tap into are up here under the steering wheel. After power was taken care of, we tackled power lock/unlock. This is an easy one to work with first, before you go on to something like hooking up the remote starter. Here are the wires you need for lock/unlock.

The integrated module is right there to the right of the fuse box. It has a gray and blue plug going into it. The wires you need are on the gray plug. Splice right in and you're good to go. This is the light blue and blue wires coming from the MFC. I ended up having to reprogram and use the yellow wire because the normal dark blue output on the MFC was not working for some reason. This is when you realize how awesome the MFC is - reprogramming the output took all of two minutes and we were done.

Spliced into lock/unlock

Testing the System
At this point you can test the system. If you haven't activated your boost phone yet, call Connect2Car and have them do it for you (it will save hassles later). They also need to create your account on the website so you can log in and control your car. Until the account is created, you should be able to test the functions straight from the boost phone. When you run the MFC program, a menu will come up with all the controllable options. Hit 1 and 2 to lock and unlock the doors. If it works now, it will most likely work from the website as well. Congratulations, you're well on your way!

Fuel Pump Cut-Off

At this point it was time to wire up to fuel pump cutoff. This is a really easy one to do, and will get your feet wet with relays if you have never used them before. For an explanation of relays, and a couple examples of how to use them, check out this post on scoobymods. Think of relays like a regular on/off switch, but they are controlled by electricity instead of your finger.

So for a fuel pump, we want to wire it up in such a way that the switch is on until we tell it to go off. I found a power wire to my fuel pump right under the same seat where I had mounted the MFC. I cut this wire, and attached it to a relay like this:

Fuel Pump Relay

The red wire coming in from the left and the red wire at the bottom are either end of the cut fuel pump power line. The green wire coming in from the right is the green wire from the MFC assigned to fuel pump shutoff. Notice that the bottom and left pins are bridged.

Here is the relay schematic from the MFC manual:

Notice that this is different that what I did. This schematic didn't work. The way I did it worked. I am including both ways here because one or the other might work for you.

Wiring up the Tachometer

Now it's time to wire up the tachometer. On the MFC, this is a brown wire that comes out with the rest of the wires (there is another brown wire that comes out the side that I will talk about later). This one needs to go down the passenger's side wiring channel instead of the driver's side one. If you've already laid it down the wrong one, don't worry, it should be pretty easy to pull back through.

This wire was short on my MFC, so I had to splice it to a longer wire. The guys at connect2car told me that they are thinking of phasing this wire out all together, but I think it offers some cool features.

The brown wire needs to go to the ECU. On the WRX, this is below the passenger side foot rest. If you pull the carpet back under the glove compartment you will see a kick plate. Remove that and there is your ECU.

The ECU

The red wire coming up on the right side of the ECU is my tach wire. Here is a diagram of the ECU plugs on an '03 WRX.

The tach wire is located at C9. Here it is:

RPM, C9, Green

It may be a good idea to confirm that this is your tach wire. Plug your negative terminal back in (you have it unplugged, right?) and connect that wire to the positive terminal of your multimeter, and touch a ground point with the negative terminal.

Set to a 20Volt scale, you should be able to start the engine and see a couple volts across that wire. Revving the engine will increase the voltage. It should be between 1-6 volts.

Once you're sure you've got the right wire, go ahead an connect it. Connecting this to the MFC let's you know when the engine is on, and roughly what the RPMs are at. This can be helpful information for various reasons, so it's worth doing.

Connecting the Alarm
The MFC has a feature that will send you a text message when your alarm is activated. Realistically, you could hook this feature up to anything (Check engine light, headlights, ignition, etc.), but since you probably only want a text message when your alarm goes off, that's the best place to put it.

The wire we need is a brown wire that connects to the side of the MFC. This connects to a wire in the car that is +12V only when the alarm is activated. I found one next to the emergency brake. The plastic panel there is only clipped in, so it should be easy to take off.

Run the wire under the carpet to that center console. You might need to employ the use of a hanger or something to get that wire through, it can be a tight fit. Once you have it where it needs to be, splice it into the grey (I'm pretty sure it's grey, but you're testing everything with the multimeter anyway, right?) To double check you have the right wire, use the multimeter on that wire and see if you get +12V when the alarm is activated.

Once you're spliced in, you can test the system by activating your alarm. I noticed that if the alarm activates for a second, the system will not be triggered. There seems to be a delay where the alarm has to go off for a couple of seconds before it texts you. This is handy so that you don't get a text if you accidently activate your alarm and immediately turn it off.

Connecting the Remote Start

Now that we've tackled all the easy stuff, it's time to install the remote start unit. This is where I leave you in the capable hands of this thread on NASIOC. This tells you everything you need to know to install your remote starter. Here are a few notes to clarify/correct information on that thread.

• I did not wire up the hood pin. I ran the hood pin wire from my alarm directly into the neutral sense on the ECU. This may be a good or bad idea, depending on who you ask.
• Use diodes. This will protect your ECU should anything happen.
• Starting the car with the OEM alarm activated will trigger the alarm. To avoid this, you need to hook up a relay that will cut power to the alarm module (by the e-brake) when the car is started. You can use the same wire that you did for the clutch override, and similar relay wiring.
• The neutral position switch is located a A8 on your ECU. Test, test, test this with a voltmeter to make sure you got the right wire. Once you've hooked it up, push the clutch in and put your car in gear. Try to remote start. It should fail because it's in gear. Take it out of gear and try again, it should now work.
• Double test the neutral switch! Test it every once in a while to make sure it is still working!

Links and Information

That about wraps things up. Here are some links to help you out and information that I used in this article.

Connect2Car (This is where you get the MFC from)
Ultimate Alarm/Remote Starter Thread
Getting Keyless Entry to Work while the engine is running
Relays for Dummies
Blocking Diodes
'02-'03 WRX ECU Pinout
Remote Starter Manuls (Omega)

I am available to answer any questions you have. Just leave a comment here and I will get it and respond in kind. Also, check out mp3car.com, NASIOC, Scoobymods, and google for tons more information.