Aloha y'all - does anyone have any experience programming a transponder for the new Colorados? I'm curious if there is a low-budget option, aside from having a locksmith or dealer make one. My goal was to buy the actual transponder chip that Chevy puts into the remote and use that as an un-powered fob. The specific reason for this weird idea is below:

I'm a relatively new owner of a '23 Trail Boss and I've encountered a new problem with owning a push-button start vehicle: If you spend any amount of time in the water (surfing, scuba diving), you don't have a good way to secure your keys. Ocean users here tend to rely on lockboxes that go on your bumper, but these are easily exploited and a lot of cars have been stolen this way lately. The separate hard key that can be removed from the fob can obviously go in the water but it only unlocks the door (and oddly only locks the driver's door, and activates the alarm if you lock all other doors with the interior lock button, which means you need access to the transponder to avoid this. Leaving the key fob inside the vehicle in a faraday bag still leaves it vulnerable to someone who smashes out a window.

The solution I have in mind is to buy one of the transponder chips, program it for my truck and embed it in resin so it can be looped on a lanyard with the hard key and taken in the water. This still doesn't solve the issue of silencing the alarm when it's triggered by unlocking with the valet key. Anyone have any suggestions?