Compact Wireless Key Fob Housing
The key fob my car came with is bulky to the point it bothered me when I carried it around in my pocket. I decided to take the key apart to see if there was excess space and if I could create a housing that was more compact. It turns out that the necessary components (pcb, batteries, battery contacts, & backup mechanical key) were all quite small.
I proceeded to reverse engineer the individual components in CAD and packaged them as densely as possible, then designing a housing to securely fit all of them and replicate the necessary features of the original housing to ensure reliable functionality.
As can be seen in the images with my design overlayed over the original, the new housing is substantially thinner and not nearly as wide or long.
It also improves on some of the functionality of the previous key. Accessing the backup key would have required the user to partially disassemble the housing but now the key is simply held in a slot with the loop on the end of the key doubling as a key ring loop. Furthermore, the emergency button was very easy to press by accidentally sitting on the key. In my design, the bump to activate the emergency key is shorter than for the others, making it much more difficult to accidentally depress.
My housing design consists of two parts, a rear shell that features a key slot and recesses to hold the battery contacts in place, and a front plate that uses small embedded clips to hold the PCB in place. The two shells are held in place with a friction fit, allowing a user to separate them to replace the batteries.
