Adding the OEM Kick Sensor to a 2019+ RAV4 (or an aftermarket with easier wiring)

Toyota has the logic in place for all cars for the kick sensor, but doesn’t include the wiring or the sensor. I’m going to explain the factory option below, then I’ll explain an aftermarket option.

NOTE: My Rav4 is a Prime, and it’s an SE – it does NOT have parking sensors but does have cross traffic alert, so the harness I list below is for that specific model. If your Rav4 has parking sensors, or it does NOT have the cross traffic alert, you need to find the correct harness for your model.

Parts Required:

1. 82181-42250 – Luggage Room Wire – $58 online at the time of this writing
2. 90467-07215 – Clips (10 pack but you need 2) to attach factory bracket to bumper – $12
3. #10 screws x3 (or x2 if you have oem hitch) (I got at local autozone, $4 for a multi pack) attaches bracket to bumper
4. OEM Bracket and kick sensor assbly – many on ebay – $50-150 depending
5. 90980-12520 wire pigtails x2 Amazon – $7.99ea

You’ll have to remove the bumper to install the new luggage room harness, and access the drivers rear plastic panel in the trunk. There are many guides on bumper removal for hitch install etc – so follow one of those, know that it isn’t difficult but is way easier to get back on with 2 people.

Once you have the bumper off, and access to the rear panel – you need to unplug and remove the old luggage room harness. See below – Red is the factory grommet to pop out, yellow are the two harnesses to disconnect on my car (I don’t have rear parking sensors) the black thing up top is the cross traffic sensor, blue thing at the bottom is the buzzer for open/close of the hatch.

Here is the harness on the inside. Unplug it here, and pull the 2 or 3 wire holders out and feed it outside the car.

Old harness gone:

Feed the new harness from the outside in, and resecure the new grommet into place.

Plug all the harnesses back in. You’ll now have a new harness (for the kick sensor).

Here is another shot as people often ask if the harness might be there, based on what I learned doing this, no – if you didn’t have a kick sensor, this harness isn’t going to be there unless you add it like we are doing here.

At this point you can sinch the inside of the car back up.

I didn’t take any pictures of the bracket install onto the bumper – my fault, but it’s also the easiest thing. If you have a factory hitch, follow the posts showing how to modify it to work. By doing so in my case, instead of 3 screws I could only attach it with 2. It will take 2 (or 3 if not hitch) #10 screws to attach to the bumper, and two of the clips I listed above. Also note – if you have the factory hitch at least in my case I had to remove the connector clip shown below (I ziptied it after I was done) because it will be pointed directly at the hitch bracket.

This is the overall assembly, note some ebay sellers sell JUST the wiring and not the bracket, and some have both together, you need both. Note the 3 screw spots on the left, and the two plastic clip holes to the right.

Now we get to the semi complicated part. You can go ahead and remount everything, but you’ll notice you have two connectors – the new white one on the luggage harness, and the black one on the kick sensor – and that they are about 8-10″ away from each other, AND they are both the same connector, but also both are male…. Hummmm. I can’t find the part # for this connector – I tried and tried. I think it is part of the bumper, but literally can’t find it listed anywhere…. So – I searched the connector # and found pre-wired pig tails. You need two of them, and yes they are both the same connector as crazy as it sounds. As extra crazy as this gets – DO NOT WIRE THEM PIN TO PIN. No clue why toyota did this but it’s not straight pin to pin.

The wiring IS DIFFERENT from the body side, to the sensor side, so I recommend doing what I did and….

1. Mark the sensor side with perm marker black to note it goes to the black plug on the kick sensor
2. Leave the other side alone so you know where it goes later.

See the diagram and pinouts above, but essentially you need:

Left Wire Pins are TO THE SENSOR

Right Wire Pins are TO THE BODY CONNECTOR

1. 7->8
2. 6->5
3. 2->6
4. 3->7

I may offer these for sale if people are interested, if you just solder directly to the provided stripped pig tail ends the harness is long enough to work!

You are done! If you are like me, and you roll out with the keys in your pocket from under the car the trunk is going to open lol…

Also – as soon as the wiring is plugged in you now get this option on the dash gauge setup of the car: (hands free on/off)

That’s it!

Now – for those that want to use an aftermarket sensor you have a few options here….

1. Buy the luggage room harness, and 1 of the connectors I list above, and use that to give power/ground to the kick sensor you buy online – this way everything is still very much factory like.
   • In this method use pin#3 coming from the body harness to your new harness to send the ground pulse to trigger things.
2. Use the grommet I just showed you (or wherever else you want) and connect to the harness in the left trunk area to open/close the trunk (that saves the complicated wiring setup and getting into the hatch itself).
   • You should simply need to send the ground signal to Pin17 LA-Blue wire in that harness to trigger things.

Network Trivia Buzzer

Basics:

iOS/Android clients support 1 or 2 player “buzzer” operation by setting unique player names on each device.

The MQTT server (Android Only) runs on a large table/chromecast/fireTV stick and manages a list of players (auto generated as the network connection is established) and then displays the top 3 people who have buzzed in, as well as the time in milliseconds between 1st/2nd, and 2nd/3rd.

The software is provided free and is as-is where-is.  Have fun!

 

Mellanox 10GB IBM OEM Card Woes

So I bought some 10GB Mellanox cards on eBay recently in order to add some cheap 10GB capabilities to my test cluster.  Here is my story so I can hopefully save you some headaches.

So my two machines, ClusterF1 and ClusterF2 booted up with the cards fine, however one of the two ports showed as could not start in device manager and would not work.  A quick google suggested using the proper driver/firmware update would remedy the problem.  Now the cards I bought were OEM IBM cards, so I ended up having to goto their site to get the driver/firmware update.  All  is right in the world right?  WRONG….

So, after downloading and running the installer on ClusterF1 (I was RDP’d in) I lost my network connection, thinking that it was just doing something with the networking stack, I mistakenly started it on ClusterF2 as well.  Later, using the iDrac console I discovered that the installer had completely F’d up my 2012R2 fresh install on both machines.  I was getting blue screens of death and it would not boot back up 😦

In digging into things, I seemed like my best bet was going to be to get some non-OEM firmware installed on the card… so here we go again.  I now had my 3rd cluster member to play with while re-installing the OS on the other two.

The cards I bought were labeled as:

IBM Mellanox 10Gb ConnectX2 EN Dual Port PCI-E Adapter 81Y1541

Here is the fix:

1. Download the Mellanox firmware tools here: http://www.mellanox.com/page/management_tools
2. After installing, goto the folder where the tools installed and run:
   1. MST Status
   2. Get the PCI Device ID of the card and use it to run this command:
   3. flint -d <pci device ID> query
   4. Note the PSID (mine was IBMxxxxxxxxxxxxx as I had an oem card and most importantly look for what kind of card it is, mine was a MT26448
   5. Dig through the non-oem Mellanox firmware on their site and find the proper firmware for your card, download it, extract it and place it in the firmware tools folder (firmware for my card was fw-ConnectX2-rel-2_9_1200-MNPH29C-XTR_A2-A5-FlexBoot-3.3.400.bin)
   6. Run this command: flint -d <PCI Device ID> –allow_psid_change -i
      firmwarefile.bin burn
   7. In my case it asked me if I wanted to overwrite the boot rom, I said yes, and then it warned I was changing the PSID, I confirmed that as well.
   8. It takes a reboot for the card to load the new firmware.  I did this, then installed the 4.8 driver (in their archive section) for Server 2012R2 and all is now right with the world.  In IO tests with Jumbo Frames enabled I’m hitting 9.55Gb/s with some cheap Amazon DAC cables from host to host.
3. Hopefully this helps someone else, good luck!

Making a HP Procurve 5406ZL quieter for homelab use

Before and after video with sound

So the 5406 is a great switch that can be had cheap on eBay if you keep an eye out.  My current unit came with 2 blades and 2 power supplies for $200 shipped.  The only problem is that now that my basement is finished and used, the noise which was ok for a datacenter, was too much for a homelab.

I solved this problem by ordering 6 Noctua fans.

4-NF-R8 Noctua’s for the power supplies (2 each)

2-NF-P12 Noctua’s for the fan card

WARNING – taking apart the high voltage powersupply is bad, mmmmkay?  You could get shocked, killed, deaded, hurteded or blowned up (according to my youngest).

The power supplies are the hardest part of the project, requiring about 16 tiny screws to be removed.  But once inside, remove the 8 exterior screws holding the existing fans, unplug the fan harness, and remove the fans.  I cut and re soldered the stock connector onto my two fans, and re-assembled.  No problems.  The power supply fans are 2 pin, you’ll only connect black/red just like the factory wires.

The fan card was much easier.  Use a screw driver to pry the 8 quick release pins out, swap in the new fans, solder the wires (I taped and shrink-tubed them) and re-attach using the Noctua low noise mounts.  The Noctua’s I used for replacement here run at 1300rpm, the stock fans ran at 2300rpm.  The HP does flash a fan error, however it runs cool and quiet.  You can check by running “show system temp” at the command line.  It will throw errors into the event log.  If someone finds a quiet fan that runs at 2300rpms, let me know!

Put everything back together and viola, your HP is whisper quiet.

 

 

HP ZL Compute Blade on the Cheap

So I recently was lucky enough to come into a cheap HP ProCurve 5406ZL setup.  I’m talking sub $200 cheap, with 4 blades, and dual power supplies.  This gave me 96 POE gig ports, plus power redundancy plus two empty slots I could fill at some other time. (note there is also the HP5412ZL which is 2x the size of the 5406 but is often cheaper due to it’s increased size, the power supplies and modules are interchangeable).

As I was searching for a deal on one, I noticed the  HP Advanced Service module w/Vmware.   At $4k+ retail and $1500+ on eBay it was out of reach.

The idea however, of having a redundant hypervisor or Pfsense blade with TWO 10GB uplinks built in got me thinking….

As I researched it more, I found HP also had a wireless controller option, that could be had as cheap as $50 (or less) on eBay and was extremely plentiful (at the time I wrote this it was, now they are $150+ and not as common dirt cheap…).  It also appeared to have a large heatsink and DIMM slots + a SATA hardive option and a CF card slot.  Seemed PC like to me…  The part # may either be: msm765zl or J9154A

On a whim I ordered one to see what I could do with it….

The unit had no front serial/VGA connection and I’d never seen/used one before.  It arrived minus hard drive and a wiped CF card.  So I threw a USB drive in the front with VMWARE 5.5 on it, a kickstart file to auto install, and prayed for the best.

I followed the instructions from here: http://www.virten.net/2014/12/unattended-esxi-installations-from-an-usb-flash-drive/

Note that I needed a longer password than their example or it failed!

I waited about an hour, then reset the module by reseating it.  I checked and saw a new DHCP lease, so tried it an VIOLA!  I was in VMWARE!

Turns out the module has a Core 2 Duo T7500 processor at 2.2Ghz, and 4GB of ram.  I then added a normal SATA laptop hard drive, restarted the module and formatted that drive as VMFS5. (the auto install will install to the CF card by default).  You also get two Intel 82598EB 10GB AT CX4 network connections to the 5406ZL.

Then I hit a problem, the VWMARE windows management tool was timing out and slow to gain access, I couldn’t figure it out – I had a 10GB link why so slow….  I checked the switch and all looked ok, until I ran a sho run.  The running config had added 2 lines, each line was rate limiting the interface ports on the wireless controller (now vmware box) to 100kbps (I assume a safegaurd for new installs).  I simply issued a No rate-limit in command on both interfaces to undo what it auto-did, in my case interfaces E1 and E2 and all was good.

The bummer is that these things are limited to 4GB of ram, so pretty limited for VMWARE use.  However perefect for pfSense, or running Pfsense virtualized but redundant.  I went ahead and created a Trunk (team/port group depending on switches you are use to) that created a LACP group of the two 10GB interfaces then used VLAN’s and VMWARE vswitches to divy up the different networks I needed.  pfSense does install without a hitch and detects the 10GB interfaces just fine.

I decided to try and figure out as much of these little controllers as I could so I then started studying the circuit board and I found a 10pin connector labeled “VGA”.  After probing I was able to identify the ground pins (easy!) and 3 pins that had 70-75ohms of resistance to ground (my R/G/B signals).  All I had left was vsync and hsync.  I broke a VGA connector out to a bread board and on my first try had the pinout right (graphic below).  Ok not perfect, the image is fuzzy if anyone knows why let me know!  It was good enough to see what was going on.  I went to get into the BIOS and was presented with a “PASSWORD:” prompt – DOH!  But with some luck and the Hiren’s boot CD, I got the password, “PCMFG”.  That let me check out the bios settings, I ended up not changing anything but was interesting to poke around.  Here is a pinout for the header labeled VGA:

For now I plan to install pfsense bare-metal on the hardware and forgo VMWARE.  ESXi itself takes 1gb of ram idle with no VM’s installed/running and since I don’t own licenses for home use I can’t benefit from the cool failover features.

At this point you are probably asking – why the hell does this guy have a 5406ZL at his house?

I have the entire house networked.  It’s no Taj, but I have network up and downstairs in about every room.  I work from home and support the network of the company I work for, including hosting some “DR” servers at my home.  I need 24/7 VPN from the corporate office to my home for replication, but also want to isolate that traffic from my normal “home” network.  I have PBXinaFlash running a few PoE IP phones (1 has registrations to both corporate and home phone).  I use the IP phones built in intercom function to communicate from my office to upstairs and vice-versa.  I also have roughly 8 IP cameras for home security, two AP’s to cover the house, and a ton of network devices for other “stuff”.  I had purchased a 24Port managed POE switch and amazingly it cost me more than the 5406!  I got 4x the ports, redundant power, plus now a redundant pfsense install with 20GB of throughput.

Oh – and the managed switch w/GBICs requirement came after losing a TON of network equipment to lightning last year.  See this post on how and why I went this route…

 

Lightning-proofing the home LAN

So I work from home and the home network is important for a number of reasons (TV runs through it being the most lol).

Last summer while I was traveling I got a call from the wife that internet was down and the TV’s didn’t work.  About an hour later my neighbor texted a picture of a hole blown in the ground at his house by lightning.  A direct hit to the cable wire, it severed it!  No equipment in his house was damaged, but as I would find not true at my place!

When I got home I found that though I had an enterprise grade APC battery backup/surge protection device lightning had found it’s way through both the cable modem AND my HD Homerun Prime.  The damage:

1. Cable modem dead
2. HD Homerun prime dead
3. Asus wireless router dead
4. 2 TP-link gig switches dead
5. Media center PC on-board NIC dead (PC ok)
6. Swaan security DVR on-bard NIC dead (unit worked at console though).

In all $700ish in equipment lost or broken.

I ordered replacements for all of it and got to thinking that I’d realllly like for that to not happen again.  So I did what any other (in)sane person would do and I optically isolated both the cable modem and HDHomerun Prime from my LAN.

My initial setup involved 4- TrendNET Media Converters w/2 multimode patch cables:

 

A rough diagram looked like this:

 

So now my network was optically isolated.  Lightning could take out the cable modem and/or the HD HomeRun, but not anything past it….  It cost me roughly $220 for the 4x converters + fiber cables….

One odd problem I had/have is that I can’t connect the HDHomerun directly to the media converter or the TV pixelates.  I have to put a dumb switch between it and the converter, still looking at that one….

At some point later I added a LOT of IP cameras (PoE) and IP Phones (also PoE) and began looking at managed switches.  I picked up a used HP ProCurve (lifetime warranty!) 24 port POE switch on ebay as well as two mini-gbic’s for fiber….

I bought a HP Procurve 2520G-24-POE:

You’ll see that that last 4 ports look odd, thats because they are shared minigbic ports.  I put two multimode transceivers in those ports.

I created an isolated VLAN for the internet on port 20 and port 24.  The cable modem network jack goes to a Media converter changing it to fiber, that plugs into port 24 on the HP, from there port 20 is connected to the WAN port on my Asus router and the switch allows the fiber to to convert back to copper while being on an isolated VLAN it keeps the internet/LAN traffic separate. The config for this is below: (you can do this in the GUI or SSH to the switch).

vlan 200
name “INET”
untagged 20,24
no ip address
exit

 

I did the same for the HDHomeRun Prime with the exception of leaving it on the default LAN VLAN. (Port 23 take the fiber from the converter to the switch, from there the device is talking to the LAN as usual.)

I later upgraded to a 5406zl – see my other posts about this….