Replacing a Boring Subaru Door Chime with “Africa” by Toto

The various features and equipment in a car vary from one model to another, but all of today’s vehicles have a chime that sounds when you open the door while your keys are still in the ignition. The purpose is obvious: to keep you from accidentally leaving (or even locking) your keys inside. For that reason, that door chime is almost never pleasant; in fact, it is likely irritating as all get-out. YouTuber Robatron is a good husband, and replaced his wife’s Subaru’s annoying door chime with one that cheerily plays “Africa” by Toto.

The 2015 Subaru Impreza’s door chime probably sounds a bit like your car’s chime. It is a constant, maddening “ding, ding, ding” that will continue until you remove the keys from the ignition or push in the car into the sea during a fit of rage. The chiming comes from a small speaker attached to the car’s “combination meter” (the gauge panel), which receives the chime command via the CAN bus from the “integrated body module” (the car’s computer) when it detects that the driver’s door is open. The speaker’s “audio” input is a simple DC PWM signal. Robatron’s modification disables that speaker completely and plays actual music instead.

The first step for this mod was to cut the PCB trace leading to the speaker. A wire was put in its place so it could be reconnected if necessary. Otherwise, that wire triggers a relay that activates Robatron’s custom door chime device. That device contains a DFplayer Mini, which can load and play MP3 audio files stored on microSD cards. Power comes from the car’s battery, and a DC-to-DC converter drops the 12V down to 4V for the device. Robatron setup many SD cards so the particular song to be played can be changed at will. Finally, the audio is pumped out through a small set of speakers that have protective 3D-printed grills. This is a lot of work just to alter the door chime, but it almost certainly makes Robatron’s wife smile every time she hears it.