Smartphone Car Starter System

Product Description

You can remote start or lock and unlock your car just by pushing a button on your iPhone or iPod Touch; using the exciting new Viper SmartStart app from Directed Electronics, the leader in vehicle security and remote start. The simple graphical interface gives you control over the following features of your installed Viper remote start or security/remote start system:Lock/arm, Unlock/disarm, Remote car starter, Trunk release, Panic or car finder

Features

• Warm or cool your car
• Lock and unlock your car
• Controll Multiple Cars
• Personalize Settings
• Start your car from virtually any where with your iphone

Top Reviews

SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA BUT WE HAD TO DISCONNECT IT ...
by AC (1 out of 5 stars)
June 13, 2018

SO HARD TO INSTALL EVEN WHEN IT'S PROFESSIONALLY DONE. YOU HAVE A MONTHLY MEMBERSHIP TO PAY FOR. SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA BUT WE HAD TO DISCONNECT IT FROM CAR BECAUSE OF ALL THE PROBLEMS IT WAS GIVING US.
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A Great Deal
by Tony (4 out of 5 stars)
December 11, 2013

Great price. This same setup runs $500, new at Best Buy. System works flawlessly.

Installation was straight forward - very straight forward for those who have done remote start systems before.

Activation is a bit confusing. You have to set yourself up as both a Viper dealer and customer to activate the unit. All of this can be done online. I understand you can also pay any willing Viper dealer to do it for you.

The app itself is okay. It crashed frequently for me while I was running Android 4.22. However 4.3 seems to have solved these issues.
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Awsome way to start car
by Timothy Cranfill (5 out of 5 stars)
November 10, 2013

Awesome remote start system. no alarm available on this model. installing was difficult because it came with no wiring instructions but was able to figure out after many hours. recommend getting professionally installed. other then the wiring problems the system is great and wicked good price.
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The start system works great. There are times when the cell phone does ...
by Tina Reed (3 out of 5 stars)
January 16, 2015

The start system works great. There are times when the cell phone does not get reception but they are minimal. Geek squad installed and everything is good. There is a membership fee but pretty small for a year!
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No customer support comes with this
by Lisa (1 out of 5 stars)
January 3, 2014

I bought as a gift for my extremely handy engineer husband. Who has put in four similar systems. However when he called and emailed customer support to get it activated he was told that it needed to be done by an authorized installer. If that's true then you should not sell to the public, or at least warn u when u r buying it that the major component that u r paying for will not work unless u pay someone to install it.
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Five Stars
by Jim S (5 out of 5 stars)
August 21, 2014

Fantastic value. Works everytime.
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Bought VSS-4000 at authorized retailer & installer
by Brian (1 out of 5 stars)
December 17, 2013

I bought the Viper VSS-4000 with high hopes last fall (November 2012). I purchased and paid for install at a local, big-box retailer here in Columbus, Ohio. I bought this package (4000) because I figured that having a cheap 1-way remote is a good back-up in case my iPhone died or I didn't have cell service or my car was parked in a dead zone. The one thing that I didn't consider were the claimed "network issues" (but I think a Viper issue, not cell provider).

Quick background - I already have the Viper 5901 installed without Smartstart on my wife's car... No issues there, and we've been very satisfied.

After my VSS-4000 smartstart unit was installed, I noticed that it took anywhere from 12-30 seconds for a command (remote start, lock, unlock) to be sent, received by the car, and for me to get the success confirmation on my iPhone. This was a little annoying, but I thought it would be something with which I could deal for the convenience it offered. What I did not realize is that I would have intermittent success and failures with my vehicle within that first week.

Now I've heard that smartstart uses AT&T's wireless network which is interesting because I have AT&T cell service on my phone, I live in the city limits of Columbus (very good reception), and yet for some reason, I never have such problems with my SMS (actual text messages, we're NOT talking about iMessage, just the SMS).

What I did notice was consistent failures from early AM hours until mid-morning hours (~5am to about 9am) where you can basically count on the car start command to fail. The reason this is so weird is that I have excellent signal strength on my iPhone with AT&T service at my house, and my car is parked outside in the driveway some 15-20 feet away, and somehow I get the timeout and failure from the app when I try to start my car most mornings. Trying 10-20 times yields the same results - timeout errors where the car is not receiving my request to start remotely. Between 5am and 9am, my success rate is about 25% (day-to-day, not per remote start attempt... Often if it fails once, it will keep failing, but not always so there is some randomness there). That percentage would be much lower if I considered per action attempt in the app (start, unlock, lock).

I am strangely able to start my car with about an 80% success rate at home during most of the rest of the day. I am not finding a lot of other trends besides the rampant morning failures, but I have a good friend who recently got this VSS-4000 smartstart installed in her brand new car, and she experiences the same problems (again, most notably in the mornings). She seems to have even worse issues than I do, but she has Verizon cell service and she lives about 10 miles away. I can't quite officially prove it's Viper's fault, but I suspect it's an issue of theirs and not the cell service provider.

Some other things to note:
-I had this issue on ios6 and I continue to have it on ios7.
-I have installed, deleted, and re-installed the SmartStart app (including after my upgrade to ios7)
-using iPhone5 (if you care or think it might matter)
-I am sung the most up-to-date version of the SmartStart app.
-I get 4 bars of LTE signal and 4 bars of 3G/edge signal from my home (3G/Edge only applies when I turn LTE off)
-smartstart installed in a Honda Accord (professionally at authorized big, box retailer)

Overall, I am dissatisfied with this VSS-4000 because of the (very) high cost of it, it's installation, and the yearly service cost of the SmartStart. If I could just pay for the equivalent percentage of those costs to equate with my success rate of getting this to work, I would at least consider a 2 or 3-star rating, but I give it a 1. If I had a choice, I'd want to have the $200-250 back (increase in cost of having VSS-4000 instead of the 5901 like my wife's car) and have a 5901 like my wife.

You live & you learn... DO NOT get the Viper SmartStart or you will be disappointed. If you take that chance and are unhappy, don't say we didn't tell you so. There are a lot of unhappy people with the SmartStarts out there so I'm slightly suspicious of the number of 5-star reviews I have seen.
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Great, no problem!
by Shaquandia Dykes (4 out of 5 stars)
August 26, 2014

Works great! I love it! every once and a while signal doesn't receive, but if you try again it usually does.
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Not sure
by Tracy Shafford (4 out of 5 stars)
February 18, 2015

Best buy would not install in my car (jaguar) one bring because I did not purchase from them and another place charged over $500 to install. I sent it back

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