I have been wondering for a while how I can protect my truck while I am away from home. Well this does not protect against a bashed in window, it should help if my pickup gets stolen or someone opens the door.

Here goes:

I found 2 12+ supplies, one that goes high when the interior lights come on, and one that goes high when the ignition is turned to the on position. From there, I wired them (in parallel) to a 12VDC low current relay. The relay goes open when voltage is applied to it. Therefore activating a wireless transmitter that is on my home alarm system. If the truck transmitter is tripped when the home alarm is on, the cops are coming (and a really loud siren is going from the eve of the house).

The only draw back to this is, if my wife has the alarm on when I am out, when I pull into the driveway it will trip it. The only thing that I can figure is to put it on it's own area of the alarm, so that when my wife arms the house it will not arm my truck.

I guess I'll give this a try. I don't drive my truck much, it seems that ADT is nice enough to provide their service techs with a take home vehicle.

If anyone has any ideas how I could make this easier from the standpoint of protecting the interior of the truck please let me know.


Thanks,

CJ

 

cj797,

That's a great application of a wireless home alarm transmitter!

You need a way of "arming" the truck after you have exited it(arrived) and disarming before you leave.

This could be as easy as a hidden switch somewhere accessable from the outside or another wireless system (such as keyless entry). If you alraedy have a keyless entry system(and the experience) it could be tied into that.

Good Luck...XLT_D.

 

I use my wireless keyfob for the alarm system to arm/disarm outside the house. But I did figure out how to arrive home when the alarm is on and not trip it. By placing the 1 transmitter on it's on (partition) area of the alarm it has to be armed seperately. This is kinda neat because I could turn on the truck's system without the house, plus my wife doesn't know how to arm and disarm that part

I did do something wrong on the inital mod, I noticed by placing both wires in parallel with each other, when the truck is on or running the light stays on all the time. For now I pulled the wire, but I guess a second relay or maybe a diode will do the trick.



CJ

 

cj797,

Yea, I thought about that issue of having both of those "outputs" tied together, that's a no-no.

The diode idea should be OK if the relay is of sufficient "quality" to operate at the lower voltage as a result of the diode's voltage drop. Be sure the diode can handle the forward current required for the relay too.

But you really need a diode on both +12 lines. As it is now (was), in addition to what you noticed, when you open a door (or turn on dome light) the lighting circuit will also be supplying current to what ever is tied to that "ignition On" circuit.

Good Luck...XLT_D

.

 

That's a really cool idea! My truck is usually in the garage but I may add a wireless sensor to it anyway.

 

Well, at looking into it for a while tonight I have decided to change out the relay and use two Altronix relays(a quality relay used by us alarm guys). These will still be both 12VDC low current, but now by using two I will take and run them to the switch, still in a normally closed position to activate the alarm.

I guess I should just stick to the commercial building stuff, but you know it's always the easy stuff that gets ya!