Trailer Alarm, and more...

In my state, trailers do not have to be registered or titled... which is good. But, the down side is we have some of the highest trailer theft stats as well... so, you do not leave your trailer casually parked and unattended anywhere around here.

Plan to take this a step further and put an alarm on the trailer. Actually, there will be two independent alarms, as a part of a 'system' . There will be one alarm that is motion activated on the outside. The objective is to keep the potential bad guy from even getting close to the trailer. The second alarm will be on the inside. Just in case the bad guy decides to enter the trailer, there will be another alarm to contend with. This inside alarm will be the primary when me and the trailer are out of town.

The key part of this alarm will be a wireless feature so that they talk to each other. And, I want them to talk to me as well. Whether I am in the house or in the hotel room, I want to know if the alarm has been activated. So, there will need to be a monitor that is either in the house or in the hotel.

-- This needs to be real simple... I am not some electronics expert.
-- It needs to be something I can solder up myself... no small SMD stuff... will have some small parts, but nothing too difficult.
-- Needs to be small.... something on the scale that will fit inside a standard electrical outlet sized box...
-- Finally, it has to be real affordable. Not going to spend a bunch of money on a fancy and expensive alarm system to protect my toys... just something 'reasonable'.

Have been playing with this for a little while and will start posting some pictures shortly... think I might just have a 'smart' trailer when I'm done...

Again, not an expert with this electronics stuff... but, I managed to figure out how to program the micro controller - arduino based - and design a circuit board... Did the board layout in Eagle... ship the Gerber files off to this company in China. In about two weeks, DHL delivers me the circuit boards... pretty fun stuff.

The interior alarm currently has two versions. One requires two different circuit boards. The second version only has a single board. For simplicity sake, I would like to use the single board, but I am running out of room for LED's. I can get a lot more LED's with the two board option. When the alarm first starts to go off, the LED's will flash for a few seconds before the siren starts blaring...

On the top board, you will see a component labeled RFM12B... that is the little radio that will talk to the other 'nodes' in the system... there is a new version of this radio out now, the RFM69CW, which I will change to, but haven't got there yet.

Anyway, here is what the 'rendering' of the boards look like when done up in Eagle.

The boards look like this, sized to fit inside an electrical box.... pen for scale.

Got some of the components soldered in in the last picture.







assembled pics to follow soon.

My suggestion for the siren is get one of those loud train horns, should be able to find a solenoid that can be driven by the arduino. That way youll hear it go off and the perp will crap his pants at the same time.

Sent from my SM-G860P using Tapatalk

Featured! This is great!

Look into a Raspberry Pi, you can set it up to alert your phone when its tripped. Its super simple, cheap and is much more expandable than the Arduino.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/301384040390?lpid=82&chn=ps

Erikv79 said:

Look into a Raspberry Pi, you can set it up to alert your phone when its tripped. Its super simple, cheap and is much more expandable than the Arduino.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/301384040390?lpid=82&chn=ps

Click to expand...

Raspberry Pi would be like using a sledge hammer to put a thumb tack in a wall.... way over kill... little patience and this will come together. Also, want to make sure this is a 'simple' project, and a very small footprint.... something anybody could solder up and do, if they wanted to. A RPi would add another level of complexity for most users.

As far as getting a text message or email... that is in the works and will be addressed down the road... with a little $5.00 esp8266 WiFi module...

Very, Very cool. I'd like to have an alarm for road trips when I have to leave the Trailer in the hotel parking lot. Luckily when it's at home It is in a Hangar

I have a car alarm system that a friend was going to throw away. Has got my wheels turning. Great thread!

Car alarm system works great! Just needs door sensors.