I have an unusual request. Maybe you guys can help.
I'm sure you guys have seen me posting recently trying to get my Clifford alarm system figured out. Well one of the boys at my firehouse just got his truck broken into. His alarm went off but nobody came out cause we were all at a fire. Work in miami so car alarms are normal. To remedy that I'd like to install a mechanical siren, like the ones on the fire trucks, but here are my criteria:
1) I want to set it up so the siren will go off when the alarm does but not from the arm/disarm.
2)I 'd like to wire it with a switch so if I am at work/public before I exit I flip the switch and if the alarm activates the mechanical siren will kick in. But if I'm at home(condo) I can flip the switch so if the alarm activates only the alarm's siren will sound.
Sounds kinda funky....any suggestions???
look for a mini air raid siren. you will have to use a relay to make it work. the good thing about it is that it has to spool up before it makes any sound, so it will not make any noise on normal arm and disarm. if the vehicle has a pre warn liek dei... half to 3/4 of a second pulde you will only hear a slight whirrr, but when full alarm is triggered there will be a one second delay before the siren spools up, then look out. when you wire up the relay you can put a switch on it to turn it on or off.
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My installer mentioned how tying into the Clifford Smart Siren with Battery Back up wasn't a good idea.....this was my intended method of install....any other ideas to make this work?
i am a little confused, there was no mention of this in your original post. could you give a few more details? i thought you wanted a fire truck like siren?
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Depending on the model of clifford that you own, you should have one or more "speaker" outputs that you could use for this. They will not output during the arm/disarm chirping, but signal is received when the alarm is triggered. They're used primarily to run a relay for an additional horn or siren. There are two such wires (brown) in addition to a horn wire (yellow)on my Avantguard 5 and this is in addition to the battery backed smart siren.
Tapping into the smart siren likely wouldn't work anyway, because these units communicate with the alarm brain digitally (usually through the cliffnet digital interface).
You should have some kind of horn output wire that you could split and use to power a relay that would trigger multiple horns and/or sirens upon alarm trigger.
Good luck!
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2002 Toyota Sequoia Limited 2WD (Clifford G5 Avantguard 5 w/ 2 SmartWindows modules) - IT Engineer - NRA Life Member - LDS Return Missionary - Married for time AND ETERNITY - Eternally sealed family