I've been keen on doing a carputer of sorts myself, but again, alas, with MN temp ranges, I fear it would fry most all the off the shelf stuff. The other issue is visability. I have a stack of old Crackberrys that have ideal screens for the environment (work in direct sunlight) But the units themselves are not really hackable (old OS/ can't get at any of the I/O) Have not seen anything on using the screens either.

I figured I would just start with the wireless entry via bluetooth and work up from there. There is a cut off point when there is more hardware in the car than the vehicle itself is worth.

What year is it? IIRC, some cars can be unlocked via the obd system.

Here's a cool addition: PIC+GPRS+GPS for car security

http://www.embedds.com/pic32-based-gsm- ... rm-system/

Although, I can't seem to find the writeup from my phone. The drawback? GPS & gprs modules are expensive and so is the cell service. Does anyone know of cheap cell service? Aprs could do the GPS tracking for no service charges, but you have to be a Ham and the equipment will cost you at least a bill fitty.

I've been meaning to nag my ATT contacts about getting ahold of some M2M stuff. That seems the way to go on all this. The issue is that you need one account with many devices to make it fly, but I could see having a small company offer service (MVNO style) and make it more affordable to hobbyists.

Outside of that, your cheapest bet is an old skool Nokia with serial access to SMS and a prepay account. Course, pre pay tends to not like to roll over minutes, so that's not exactly 'cheap'. Alphanumeric pages can be had for like $15 a month.