How to automatically roll down all of your windows

How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

This was a fun project to work on that turned out pretty cool.

I wanted to be able to roll down all of the windows on my 1998 Toyota 4runner by pressing a button on my keyless entry remote. My 4runner has a moonroof, a rear window that rolls down, and the normal 4 passenger windows, so there were 6 windows all together.

Here is the schematic for the circuit that does the job:

Schematic

My keyless entry system is made by Autopage. It has several auxiliary channels that create a ground signal capable of drawing 200 mA when a button on your keyless entry remote is pressed. The signal can be grounded for as long as you want by programming the keyless entry system so I didn't need any timing circuitry for this project.

Here is a breakdown of the circuit:

I needed 8 relays total.
- 1 for the moonroof.
- 1 for the rear window.
- 4 for the passenger windows.
- 1 to create a high-current activation signal from the original 200 mA signal.
- 1 to trick the car into thinking that the keys were in the ignition.

As you can see from the circuit the 4 passenger windows work differently than the rear window and moonroof. For the rear window and moonroof you can simply ground the correct wire and voila! your window rolls down. If you try that with any of the passenger windows of a 4runner things start to melt...

I chose not to make the circuit capable of rolling the windows back up because my 4runner doesn't have any sensors that would stop the window motors if anything got in the way of one of the windows. It wouldn't be good if I crushed my dog's tail by pressing the wrong button.

I'll post a video of the windows in action soon. I hope this helps someone because the12volt.com and toyota-4runner.org/ were extremely helpful during the research portion of this project.

Oh and the best part (besides my car not blowing up) was that the entire project only cost $35!

Wow, that sounds pretty cool and ambitious. You should post the video of the whole thing in action

thats awesome!!! ive been waiting to see this happen for a very long time. i wonder if it works with the factory alarm system too.

Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

That's ingenious how you pulled this together. Obviously lots of research, planning and work. Props!

Now the start of question period...

Would it be possible for you to do a more detailed writeup of this mod with pics?
Where did you place the relays?
At what location did you cut/splice the wires (in each door or in a main harness?)
Can you cross reference your schematic to the Toyota wiring diagram where possible?

xiv014 said:

... that the entire project only cost $35!

Click to expand...

I'm assuming you already had the Autopage keyless entry system so that wasn't part of your costs. Is it possible to do this with the T4R stock keyless entry (ie. does the stock system use a path to ground for the rear window activation?)

Thanks.

Re: Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

Kmvreter said:

That's ingenious how you pulled this together. Obviously lots of research, planning and work. Props!

Now the start of question period...

Would it be possible for you to do a more detailed writeup of this mod with pics?
Where did you place the relays?
At what location did you cut/splice the wires (in each door or in a main harness?)
Can you cross reference your schematic to the Toyota wiring diagram where possible?



I'm assuming you already had the Autopage keyless entry system so that wasn't part of your costs. Is it possible to do this with the T4R stock keyless entry (ie. does the stock system use a path to ground for the rear window activation?)

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Thanks for all of the positive feedback guys! I'll take a video and post it soon.

I didn't take any pictures during the install, but I can give you some pointers that would help you out if you want to do the same thing to your 4runner.

1 - There's room for the relays behind the kick panel near the driver's left foot. I mounted mine on a proto-board and secured them above the wiring down there.

2 - I used a Chilton's manual and commandocaralarm.com's wiring diagram to find most of the wiring I needed to get at.

wiring descriptions

3 - To get at the wiring for the driver's window you have to take off the driver's door panel.

4 - The wires for every passenger window except for the driver's are all easily accessible below the interior fuse box (right where the wiring comes in from the driver's door). The ignition wire and constant 12V are located under the steering column.

5 - To control the back window and the moonroof I ran wiring from each of those switches to my relay circuit in the kick panel. There might be a way to access each of those connections from somewhere in the kick panel, but I didn't bother looking.

6 - I don't remember the exact colors of each wire I spliced, so I can't give you that. I can tell you how to figure it out though. To do that I need to give you some background on how the windows work.

7 - The moonroof and the rear window work differently that the other 4 windows. When you press "DOWN" on the rear window switch you're really connecting ground to a wire that's normally not connected to anything. So if you want to figure out which wire you need to ground to roll the window down take a voltmeter and probe each wire on the rear window switch harness until you find the one that becomes 0 volts when you press "DOWN". FYI, there's different wire that does the same thing when you press "UP". The moonroof works the same way. So for each of these all you need to do splice in a wire that is grounded when you want to roll the window down.

8 - For the each of the passenger windows there is a wire that is normally grounded, but becomes 12V when you press "DOWN". Probe the wires that come in from the driver's side door below the fuse box to find the wire that changes when you press "DOWN" for each window. They're all very close to eachother, so once you find one you'll easily find them all. The only catch is that the wire that control's the driver's window is actually located in the driver's door panel. So controlling that one requires taking off the driver's door panel and running two wires into it. Anyway, because the wire is normally grounded you cannot simply slice in a wire and put 12V on it when you want to roll down the window. If you do you'll short out your battery (12V) to ground and melt some wires. Instead, you have to temporarily break the connection with a relay. The relay works like a two-way switch (lookup SPST switch on wikipedia). If you wire the relays like I have in my schematic the passenger window down motors are connected to their respective touch switches unless the control signal from the alarm is present, in which case all of the passenger motors are connected to 12V which causes them to roll down.

9 - I don't think this would work with the factory alarm because I used a feature of my Autopage alarm that allows me to program how long my control signal is present for. I'm not sure if the factory alarm has that feature.


I hope I answered your questions Kmvreter. This is a complicated project that will take some time to do right, but when you're done it looks pretty cool. I'm sure you could have it professionally done for some big bucks, but it's much cooler knowing that you did it yourself.

Re: Re: Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

xiv014 said:

... I hope I answered your questions Kmvreter. This is a complicated project that will take some time to do right, but when you're done it looks pretty cool...

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, especially about the way the side windows are powered differently than the rear.
A further question: Why the relay to trick the ignition? Is this the same as putting power to the original circuit to actually power the windows? Or does the "Fused 12V - Always On" at each relay provide the power to the window (does this make sense, did I ask that right?)

I was hoping someone on the forum could attach the Toyota original '98 power window electrical diagram so that I can compare that to what xiv014 has done and how to apply it to the 4th Gen.

Re: Re: Re: Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

Kmvreter said:

Thanks for the reply, especially about the way the side windows are powered differently than the rear.
A further question: Why the relay to trick the ignition? Is this the same as putting power to the original circuit to actually power the windows? Or does the "Fused 12V - Always On" at each relay provide the power to the window (does this make sense, did I ask that right?)

I was hoping someone on the forum could attach the Toyota original '98 power window electrical diagram so that I can compare that to what xiv014 has done and how to apply it to the 4th Gen.

Click to expand...

The simplest answer for why you have to power the ignition circuitry with 12V for this design to work is that the windows won't work unless you have your keys in the ignition. In reality, if you don't add the ignition relay the 4 passenger windows will still work, but the moonroof and rear window will not. That is because the 12V that controls the moonroof and rear window is tied to the accessory circuit, which is only powered when the keys are in the ignition. The 12V for the 4 passenger windows is switched in by the circuit's relays, which are tied to 12V always on, which is why they will work without the ignition relay.

You could solve the problem another way by rewiring the 12V for the moonroof and rear window to the 12V always on circuitry, but the first method is easier in my opinion.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

xiv014 said:

... The 12V for the 4 passenger windows is switched in by the circuit's relays, which are tied to 12V always on, which is why they will work without the ignition relay...

Click to expand...

I'm trying to think of ways to adapt this to a 4th Gen. I don't have a moonroof so I'm not even thinking of that. I want to use the OEM key fob which allows me to remote power down the back window.

Here's what I'm thinking based on the attached wiring diagram:

1) The power to the side windows comes from the always hot 30A POWER fuse via a relay controlled by the Body ECU. Pull the relay and jump the connector to have constant power at the window switches (regardless of the key.)

2) The back window gets power from the same fuse but not through the relay. That way the back window can operate remotely without a key in the ignition or touching a hard switch.

3) Use a relay and the remote back window down to generate the "Window Down Control Signal" (WDCS). This could be accomplished by tapping into the wire that gives the rear window motor power. A drawback to this is that all the side windows will go down any time you activate the rear (however you can add an interrupt for this; see 6 below.) Still looking for other ideas to generate this signal further upstream.

4) Use the WDCS to fire the new relays for each side window. Here's where I need the '98 OEM diagram to compare to see if I need to provide another constant 12V soucre (as aiv014 did) as a signal to the PD, RRD, RLD & DD wires or if things changed and run the relays to ground (I don't think this is the case.) I need to investigate this further by actual voltmeter testing and also think through why this can't be done with a single relay, if that is possible.

5) The back window is already taken care of by the OEM wiring. The timing is taken care of because the side and back windows take approximately the same amount of time to lower. As long as the back window has power the side windows will be moving.

6) I see using this as a seasonal feature to quickly cool the T4R down in summer. You need to install a simple disable switch in the new WDCS circuit so that you have the option to use it or not (based on the seasons or when just wanting to use the rear window.) This switch could also be a relay fired by the rear key and dash window down switches to interupt the WDCS.

I may or may not try this sometime depending on my free time. Anyone have pointers on how easy it is to remove the rear hatch and side door panels?
Open to any and all pointers from other electrical gurus who want to join in.

xiv014,
I tried the links you gave earlier but maybe I missed it. Do you have the actual OEM wiring diagram for your power window circuit?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How to automatically roll down all of your windows remotely

Kmvreter said:

I'm trying to think of ways to adapt this to a 4th Gen...
1) The power to the side windows comes from the always hot 30A POWER fuse via a relay controlled by the Body ECU. Pull the relay and jump the connector to have constant power at the window switches (regardless of the key.)
...

Click to expand...

Was able to confirm this 1st step. Pulled the relay and have constant power to all the windows. See this new thread to explain how: http://www.toyota-4runner.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=41086.

Side benefit to this is I can crack some of the windows open whenever I want to release some of the summer heat buildup. Previously if a passenger opened a door it interupted the 45 second timing to allow this after turning off the ignition. Now I don't have to cycle the IGN ON to activate the window buttons. I'm happy with just this benefit even if I don't do the rest of this mod.

Still looking for someone to provide the '98 power window electrical diagram.

xiv014 said:

This was a fun project to work on that turned out pretty cool.

I wanted to be able to roll down all of the windows on my 1998 Toyota 4runner by pressing a button on my keyless entry remote. My 4runner has a moonroof, a rear window that rolls down, and the normal 4 passenger windows, so there were 6 windows all together.

Here is the schematic for the circuit that does the job:

Schematic

My keyless entry system is made by Autopage. It has several auxiliary channels that create a ground signal capable of drawing 200 mA when a button on your keyless entry remote is pressed. The signal can be grounded for as long as you want by programming the keyless entry system so I didn't need any timing circuitry for this project.

Here is a breakdown of the circuit:

I needed 8 relays total.
- 1 for the moonroof.
- 1 for the rear window.
- 4 for the passenger windows.
- 1 to create a high-current activation signal from the original 200 mA signal.
- 1 to trick the car into thinking that the keys were in the ignition.

As you can see from the circuit the 4 passenger windows work differently than the rear window and moonroof. For the rear window and moonroof you can simply ground the correct wire and voila! your window rolls down. If you try that with any of the passenger windows of a 4runner things start to melt...

I chose not to make the circuit capable of rolling the windows back up because my 4runner doesn't have any sensors that would stop the window motors if anything got in the way of one of the windows. It wouldn't be good if I crushed my dog's tail by pressing the wrong button.

I'll post a video of the windows in action soon. I hope this helps someone because the12volt.com and toyota-4runner.org/ were extremely helpful during the research portion of this project.

Oh and the best part (besides my car not blowing up) was that the entire project only cost $35!

Click to expand...

HI, Mr xiv014,
Nice to say hello, thank you very much for having accepted me in this fantastic forum, I hope to learn and share a lot of information with all of you.

To the scheme that you upload, I can not open it or download it, please I thank you upload it again, because it marks error, I remain attentive to your collaboration in this regard, again, thank you very much, greetings.

I wish I had those electronic skills :bravo: