I am looking into getting a clifford alarm, primarily for alerting me to towing and breaking/entering... I'm not terribly concerned about if it is stolen as our cars are virtually impossible to hotwire, etc (plus the car PC will have gps on it so tracking is very possible).

My question is, I am looking to fire an external device when the alarm trips. Does clifford support attaching an external device/relay to some sort of "auxillary output" port on the alarm? Also, if it does have this sort of terminal/port, does it exist on a primary control unit for the entire system (meaning it will go hot any time any of the sensors trip), or does each sensor have such a terminal (so you can fire an external device based on which sensors trip rather than the entire unit).

Thanks all.

 

The only thing they are likely to have is a dedicated horn out in parallel with the siren out.

As far as an output assigned to a specific trigger condition, I doubt it, but I have your question in for review by DEI technical

 

Wow, much appreciated. I got your PM, been meaning to reply. Haven't had a chance to install it yet, I've only taken my 04 dash apart once- it still scares me unless I have a solid 5 hrs. to work on it

A couple of generic question...

My assumption is that when a sensor trips, it sends some sort of signal to a "control unit" of some sort. Is this simply a voltage on an otherwise 0v line?

I know this is going to sound ridiculous and unnecessary, but that's 99% of who I am I'm trying to capture when the alarm goes off, and more specifically when individual sensors go off. If this is possible, I can program a BASIC stamp and interface the alarm with my PC. PC has internet access, so I would be able to receive SMS alerts to my cell phone via the internet. I'd also like to try to mount some mini webcams to take some still pictures upon certain sensors tripping, and having the PC upload those to some webspace.

I also want to try to start dumping GPS coordinates if movement is detected from a sensor as well.

 

There are individual triggers that are (-) on a line that is usually open (it's an open-collector input) so you could monitor those indivudally (there is another wire that goes ground when armed so you can only trigger when armed. Pulse duration dictates warning or full trigger.

 

Excellent. So each sensor has a wire that goes - when it trips. The duration that it is - determines whether it is a warning or a full alarm.

Correct?

 

Yeah, the window used to be 250 mS for warn and 1S for full alarm, but it might have changed...

 

I thought it was anything shorter then 0.8s for warn away, anything over 0.8s for full trigger?

If its a standard DEI shock sensor (which I'm pretty sure it isn't) you would have separate wires for each stage that could be used, if you didn't want to multiplex it.

Also, keep in mind that the siren wire will chirp every time you arm and disarm the vehicle, making it not a very good source for alarm detection (unless you put a timer on it, which wouldn't be hard with the basic stamp.)

You will run in to other problems though, such as door pins. I guess you could reference the alarms (-) when out signal to decide when to send alarm triggers to the cpu. Seems like a fairly doable project. Where exactly do you live that you feel you need this level of protection???

Oh, and our cars are one of the easiest on the market to hotwire. You can have the OEM alarm disarmed and the car started in under 3 minutes, with the right tools, and with minimal damage (if any) to the car.

 

thought you needed our smart key or whatever. sounds like a dumb key...

 

The trasponder based immobilizer is a simple system to bypass. Nissan has been known for their severe security flaws since the late 90s Maximas.

Funny thing is is that they haven't fixed any of them.

 

greeeaaattt. now I have to worry about that too. sigh thanks for the heads up, guess I'll just add those appropriate items into the system

 

Just because I was in the meeting where we decided how the mux timing would work, you don't think that I remember, do you? That was 12 years ago, man...

 

Well, actually, we are talking about two differnt ends of the system.

You are talking about the signal sent out from the shock sensor, and I'm talking about the input to the brain.

So, if my memory is correct, the warn away stage is less then 0.8 seconds long, and full trigger is over 0.8 seconds long.

From what you are saying the warn away from the shock sensor is 0.25 seconds, which would fall well inside the limits of the warn away, and the full trigger is 1s, still well within its region.

You were in that meeting eh? Thats pretty cool! I still don't understand while they had the two wire interface for so long, before finally decided to loop the wires and go with the one wire!

 

Yep, I think you're right... all coming back to me now.


Partly because they wanted the option of going with warn only or warn/trigger, and partly because I left : )