unconventional uses for car alarms

what other things do or have you used a car alarm system for? right now I dont have anything out of the ordinary but on my other recent thread Im trying to figure out a way to run an external wire pair out to plug into a magnetic door sensor in an unattached garage so that I can plug in and have the alarm go off if the garage door is opened. Im also trying to figure out a way to make it so that if the external wire pair is cut it will also trigger the alarm so that I can also use this on a trailor wire harness, that way if the trailor gets un connected the alarm goes off. this would be great! my next idea is to somehow use a driveway beam sensor and have it wired into the first stage trigger input on my alarm so that I can get an alert when someone enters my driveway. this would be much better than the driveway sensors currently available because none of them have a two-way system like my car alarm. they all have a fixed alert chime that you can only use in the house. if I can figure out a way to have my autopage alarm tied into the driveway sensor then I get a page anywhere in the yard and even have a vibration mode for times when I cant hear the audible pager. I hope to get both of these figured out soon so if anyone has ideas to make this work then please share them. either way could open up alot of possibilities for other advanced uses. got any other good ideas for unconventional uses?

you can use a car alarm the same ways you use a home alarm. the only difference is that you cant buy monitoring service on a car alarm. although ive never heard of anyone installing remote start on a house haha. home alarm systems run on 12v too they just have a converter to feed power to 12v batteries inside the alarm panel. therefore, any sensor ( motion, light, glassbreak, smoke, etc) you can use on a house alarm can be used on a car alarm because they all run on 12vDC. something fun to do is to wire an electronic door strike ( the device you hear buzzing when you have to push a button to open a door) to the unlock output on a car alarm through a relay to up the current and set the alarm for a 3 second unlock pulse. this way you can hit the unlock on the keypad and it will unlock a door for 3 seconds so you can go through then relock when it closes.

hi, for a closed loop trigger, obtain a 4.7K ohm resistor, 1/4 or 1/2 watt is fine. connect resistor to battery power and the positive door trigger of the alarm. for your trigger wire connect it also to the positive trigger and the other to ground. the resistor will be connected to ground until the wire is cut, which will then trigger the alarm, through the resistor. the value of the resistor is high enough to cause minimal current draw, but may need to be altered. mark

hi soundnsecurity, thats exactly why I made this thread.. cool idea there! hi Ween, another member "I AM AN IDIOT" suggested almost exactly as you have in my other thread except his suggestion was a 1k ohm resistor, I tried it with the 1k in a .5 watt and a 1 watt but as soon as I armed the alarm the door open icon wash flashing and it didnt work. so you think maybe it was because the 1k resistor and I should retry with the 4.7 as you suggest? I'll have to look at the resistor guide again so I can tell what color codes I need to search for in my junk again. heres a link to that thread if you feel like checking it out for more details [URL]https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp~TID~131100~PN~0~TPN~1[/URL] thanks

to add an external switch that will trigger the alarm when the switch is thrown or the external wires are cut or disconnected see the thread in my last reply It can also be used to wire a trailor into the vehicles alarm so that if the trailor is disconnected it will set off the alarm. I had the reed switch wires reversed at first but now it works! now I want to incorpoarate a infra red beam sensor driveway alert into my alarm on the first stage trigger of the dual stage impact sensor or the call remote so that I can get a page when the beam is broken. this will be a bit more tricky, Im not sure if it has to be a pulsed signal or if it can be a constant one. I'll post more info when I have it figured out. anyone else have some tricked out custom features they have added to their alarm? post em up! thanks

a few unconventional uses i've done are using one as my garage door opener. the other odd one was the one i used to remotely control a blow in insulation contraption for an HVAC company.

Now quite an alarm but I used an immobilizer with rif tags to open a cat door to keep  unwanted animals out.

another-kelly wrote: a few unconventional uses i've done are using one as my garage door opener. the other odd one was the one i used to remotely control a blow in insulation contraption for an HVAC company.

hi another-kelly, how did you use an alarm as a garage door opened? I assume you used an extra output with remote control and wired it into the door opener but how did you do it? I and others reading Im sure, would like to do this also.

lspker wrote: Now quite an alarm but I used an immobilizer with rif tags to open a cat door to keep unwanted animals out.

hi Ispker, that sounds really cool.. can you explain how it works? thanks

Back when I was in college I had a DEI Viper 550ESP on my car. I bought the stand alone channel expander for it which was basically just a receiver that worked with the remotes that had its own dedicated outputs. I wired it up in my apartment and wired a SPDT relay to a 3 way switch. I could then turn my bedroom light on and off with my keyfob.Kevin Pierson

two12 wrote: another-kelly wrote: a few unconventional uses i've done are using one as my garage door opener. the other odd one was the one i used to remotely control a blow in insulation contraption for an HVAC company. hi another-kelly, how did you use an alarm as a garage door opened? I assume you used an extra output with remote control and wired it into the door opener but how did you do it? I and others reading Im sure, would like to do this also.

i have a small +12v power supply (6 amps i think?) powering an older Clifford Matrix RS. i bought a Chamberlain replacement garage door opener and programmed it to both garage doors. after opening up the Chamberlain unit, i soldered two wires each to the buttons inside the unit. just using the lock/unlock and trunk release outputs of the Clifford to trigger relays that closed the loop between the the two (each) wires that i soldered to the Chamberlain remote