Teen puts her car on speed dial
Spa City student devises way to start car with just a cell phone
By BRENDAN McGARRY , PostStar.net
bmcgarry@poststar.com
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SARATOGA SPRINGS -- It all started last winter, with a faulty remote starter
on her 1996 Chevrolet Lumina.
Like many others, Sarah Dodge dreaded the thought of having to brave the
elements to warm up her car before school.
In today's world of high-tech gizmos, the 18-year-old senior at Saratoga
Springs High School figured there had to be a better solution.
Turns out, there was -- and now Sarah is the first student in a
pre-engineering program at the school to have a federal patent pending,
teacher Michael Gallagher said.
Her invention: a cell phone-activated car starter.
Like something out of the 1980s television show "Knight Rider," Sarah can
call her car from her cell phone, punch in a three-digit command and the
vehicle responds by revving up.
In fact, she even programmed the car to call her back to let her know the
engine is running.
"I wanted to think of something outside the box," she said of her capstone
project for Engineering Design and Development, the final course in Project
Lead The Way, a four-year, pre-engineering curriculum offered at the school.
Minus one false start (blamed on a loose wire), Sarah proved the
functionality of her device last week, when she presented in front of her
classmates, along with local engineers evaluating the students'
work.
After the car started, her friends giggled; the engineers seemed awestruck.
By employing a cell phone, Sarah said, a car can be started from anywhere --
not just the 500-foot to 2,000-foot range offered by traditional remote
starters.
The device, she said, could also be programmed to include security codes, to
lock and unlock doors and to activate and deactivate a security system,
among other features -- on any vehicle, domestic or foreign.
Sarah presented a PowerPoint slide show of the wiring, circuits and relays
needed to construct the cell-phone starter, but asked that the information
not be published in detail, for fear of some other enterprising engineer
cribbing the design.
"I didn't want to tell anyone," she said outside her Wilton home, where she
lives with her father, Ken, mother, Tina, and sister Holly, 15. "I didn't
even want to tell my teacher."
News of her invention has spread quickly throughout the 2,200-student
school.
"Everybody wants one," she said.
Sarah worked on the project with her father, who works as a signal
supervisor for Canadian Pacific Railway.
As a side job, he maintains highway crossings for the Delaware & Ulster rail
ride in the Catskills.
Last summer, father and daughter worked together on the scenic rail line,
sparking Sarah's interest in circuitry.
After she came up with the idea, the father-daughter duo spent countless
hours in the garage working on the project.
"We were amazed as anybody else when it worked," Ken said.
Gallagher, the teacher, helped the Dodges touch base with New Freedom,
Pa.-based patent attorney Gerow Brill, who has since filed a provisional
patent application for Sarah's project with the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office in Alexandria, Va.
"It's very interesting," Brill said of the design, "but no patent attorney
is going to tell his client or the public that it's a slam dunk."
The road to securing a patent is long, expensive and sometimes contentious,
Brill said. Just to obtain a response from the patent office can take about
three years, he said.
For all her electronic wizardry, Sarah plans to pursue computer science at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the fall. (RPI doesn't even know about
her new starter.)
Let's hope she keeps thinking outside the box.