Is there anything inherent in the empeg that would make my car alarm unhappy?

Nearly every time I park my car with the empeg in it, after 10--30 minutes the alarm goes off. I have turned the sensitivity of the alarm down to the point where it would probably take a collision by a good sized truck to set off the motion detector, so it's most likely a voltage change that is setting off the alarm.

I don't leave the empeg in the car very often, so I don't have a lot of rigidly correlated data, but I am guessing that at least eight times out of ten the alarm will go off. Once that happens, it will continue to cycle about every five minutes until I either turn off the alarm or go out to the car and remove the empeg, after which the alarm will function properly -- that is, not function at all until the next morning when I forget I had it set and open a door and wake up the neighbors.

I have the empeg's "standby" mode set to the default 60 seconds.

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Heh, maybe folks are putting their hands up against the window glass and looking in the car at the empeg, wondering what it is. When the alarm goes off, they scatter before you can see who it was.

___________
Tony Fabris

I *suspect* it's the power pic waking up the empeg for about 300ms during sleep; the empeg then shuts itself down. This can happen every 10 minutes or so, though after the first event it should set the power pic to "never wake up" mode. I'll check the code when I get into the office.

It only takes about 200mA (the drives don't spin up & the display doesn't come on in this scenario) for a third of a second, but this appears to be enough to upset your alarm. Hmmm.

Hugo

AFAIK some alarms respond to power-usage as well as opened doors.

My car alarm has a motion detector, its an IR reciever of some sort. Does the empeg send out erratic IR when the power-pic does its wake-up-go-to-sleep thing?

Just guessing ...



Lars

Current sensing alarm?

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

When you guys get to the bottom of this one, somebody remind me to add that to the "installation problems" FAQ.

My two cents: If it's a current-sense problem, would capacitors on the Empeg's power line solve it?

___________
Tony Fabris

so it's most likely a voltage change that is setting off the alarm.

Current sensing alarm?

I should have said current change, of course, as you pointed out. That's how the alarm knows the doors are being opened -- the current drawn by the dome light is enough to trigger the alarm. I'm not sure what the threshold for the alarm is -- how many milliwatts it takes to trigger it. Maybe I can find out. The alarm senses the current draw by means of an inductance coil wrapped around the positive battery cable -- you wouldn't think it could be too terribly sensitive. There is no adjustment on the alarm for sensitivity to current changes -- I can only change its sensitivity to motion.



tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

Whoah, let me get this straight ?

If you switch off your interior lighting your alarm stops working ? Tip : Do not leave empeg in car and trust your alarm to guard it ... Or am I missing the point again ? Hell happens to me all the time lately, anybody know a nice place for a loooooooooong vacation, lunatic homes not included ...

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

If you switch off your interior lighting your alarm stops working ?

Uhhh, yes. However, in my car there is no way to switch off all the interior lights that are run by the door switch. There are something like eight or nine lights that come on, and only four of them are independently switchable -- the others will come on as long as the bulbs are good if you open the door. Even if all the bulbs failed, the alarm would still go off when somebody sat in the car -- the motion detector would pick that up unless they sat very carefully.

Tip : Do not leave empeg in car and trust your alarm to guard it ...

A good tip. The only circumstance in which that happens is (occasionally) at home, where I live on a cul-de-sac with only three houses on it in a quiet, crime-free, low-density-population area of town, my driveway is over 500 feet long winding through trees and the house cannot be seen from any public vantage point. Most of the time the temperatures are cold enough to discourage thievery, and the car is a 15 year old station wagon that no self-respecting thief would ever look at twice (they'd be after the Porsche in the garage). So, I don't feel all that uneasy about occasionally leaving the empeg in the car overnight, but I would feel better if I could have the alarm protecting it.

On very rare occasions the empeg will be left in the car when I am at work, but the car is in a private, well-lit parking lot, and is visible from my desk.

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

A lot of alarms have current sense, and this is the first we've heard of this problem (I'm sure we would hear about it wherever it happened!). If a brief 200mV load is triggering the alarm then I would suggest that the alarm is much too sensitive.

Rob

Greetings!

What I am curious about is that the player's PIC never enters the "don't restart" mode.

Hypothetically: Is it possible that the empeg is not causing the alarm directly? Could something else in the car (engine block warmer, amp, etc.) be triggering voltage across the accessory power line? Could it be enough for the empeg to wake up and begin a full boot, including drives, causing enough drain to trigger the alarm. This might also explain why the empeg doesn't go into a "don't restart" mode. What state is the empeg in when the alarm goes off? (power off / standby / booting)

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (40GB Green)

Ya know, the same thing is happening to me, but I havn't had time to investigate into this in order to make a post about it. I have a motion sensor as well as an impact sensor, and ever since I have installed the Empeg my alarm doesn't like me anymore. Last night I went to dinner, parked near nothing, and like 5 seconds after setting the alarm it went off for no reason.

The funny thing is, I don't think it's releated to the Empeg itself, because it was not in the dash (in fact it was in a locking compartment made out of plastic). I think it is related to the grounds that I have used for the entire system, as when I put in the empeg I put in a second amp and now I also have some alternator whine that I never had before.....

The reason I bring this up is that I am wondering if you installed anything else at the same time as the Empeg, or if you just installed the Empeg and now your alarm is doing this? As well, if you have a chance could you email me the brand name of your alarm as well, I wonder if they are from the same company.

-- verteggio
verteggio@earthlink.net

email me the brand name of your alarm as well, I wonder if they are from the same company.

The alarm is made by Avital. I don't remember the model name, perhaps it was "Valet". It is an inexpensive alarm ($110 installed) and is activated only by impact or by current draw.

Just to throw a monkey wrench into my theory that the empeg was responsible for destroying my automotive tranquility, this morning at work the alarm started its every-5-minute cycling thing, and the empeg was sitting on my desk.

I am wondering if you installed anything else at the same time as the Empeg, or if you just installed the Empeg and now your alarm is doing this?

The alarm is a recent addition to my car, all my stereo gear has been installed for several years (excepting, of course, the empeg which was added to the mix a couple of months before the alarm).

I'd write it all of to just a cheap alarm malfunctioning... except it is literally eight or ten times more likely to happen with the empeg in the dash.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

It is an inexpensive alarm ($110 installed)...

And that was pretty much the problem. The dealer that installed it (my stereo installer) replaced it free of charge with a much better unit that had just been removed from a new Camry because it was incompatible with the previously installed remote auto-start installation. (With daytime temperatures sometimes running to forty below zero (F or C, your choice) remote auto-starts are a big item here in Alaska. My stereo shop is a small player in the market, and in the winter he probably averages 3--5 installs per day at about $400-$600 each.)

Anyway, the new alarm is absolutely reliable, with or without empeg, and at any temperature.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"