So while at a COG function in PA recently, I was carrying on with my due diligence to prove KiPass virtually indestructible by exposing it (not that way Bob) to greater concentrations of alcohol. As those of you following the experiments will have noted, we started off by soaking a fob in water (no effect), soda (the fob actually worked correctly while totally submerged in a glass of soda) and then beer (it worked during and after resting in a glass of beer too). So last Saturday it was time to try wine; I put my fob in a glass full of the finest Riesling that the hotel had to offer.... well, at least the finest Riesling that the hotel had with a screw on cap. I had to pay a little extra to have the glass topped off beyond the top of the fob but where KiPass is concerned, nothing is too good.
After an hour or two of soaking my fob and showing it to Cap'n Bob, we retired to the hotel parking lot with the wine glass with the wine and fob still inside. I walked up to the bike and.... nothing! Yep, a KiPass failure! Apparently either the wine or Cap'n Bob's bad odor aura finally got to the fob. After removing it from the wine I shook off the excess and.... viola!.... it still didn't work. Yep, the fob was sleeping with the fishes. So of course I went into a panic and banged on the final drive with a rock to unstick the caliper, changed the battery in the bike and all light bulbs in the hotel and generally ran around and screamed a lot. Really I just removed the key from the fob and tried the fob against the fob boss on the ignition switch housing and KiPass worked fine. So it was working in RFID mode but not RF mode. After opening the fob and draining the wine out of it and drying the inside, I tried it in RF mode again and it worked.... sorta'. It would work but it took a long time for the bike to recognize the fob and it was working intermittently, perhaps two times out of three. So I got the other fob from my wife, tried it in RF mode and it worked perfectly. Then I swapped batteries between the fobs and my original (wine soaked) fob also worked perfectly- it was just a drained battery from sitting in a puddle of wine.
The moral of the story of course is that excess w(h)ine(ing) can affect KiPass but only temporarily. Remove the w(h)ine, change the battery and all will be well.
Now to check that fob's seal and off to the whiskey testing in August.
Brian
