Ryan, I believe most after market alarms activate and deactivate features based on ignition sensing. I looked over Toby's site and didn't see anything specific about this. You probably shouldn't ground the alarm itself to the parking brake as that would cause it to function intermittently. Meaning, when you applied the brake, and subsequently the ground, the alarm will wake up and most react as if they have been triggered. If the ground through the emergency brake is not good enough for your options then you could add a contact switch. Either way I would talk with Toby to make sure any modifications you do don't harm the system(s). Greg -----Original Message----- From: DMCForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:DMCForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ryan Wright Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 4:30 PM To: DMCForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [DMCForum] Relays & current draw On 2/26/06, timnagin <timnagin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Just curious, what is preventing you from running the connection(s) directly > to the battery itself? I do, actually. All of my toys - alarm system, stereo equipment, launchers, etc - run off dedicated fused connections straight back to the battery. However, I want to prevent operation of launchers & trunk release when the e-brake is not set, which means I have to tie into that. The e-brake switch is simply a switch to ground - when the brake is set, the wire is grounded. So the easiest way to deal with this (that I know of) is to use that ground to power the coil on a relay, which will apply (or remove) power to the accessories in question. Quite simple, really, except for the fact that the relay's coil is going to draw a small amount of power any time the e-brake is set. Now, maybe my battery won't care about a 160ma continuous draw over a period of months. Or maybe it will kill it in a day. I don't know; that's what I'm trying to find out. > My understanding is Toby built in the feature of disabling the launchers > when the car was running or moving. I'll have to recheck the docs that came with them. I don't remember seeing this as an option. If I had, I probably would have used it, and could then tie the trunk release into that circuit. But I'm fairly certain this wasn't included in the docs. -Ryan Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DMCForum/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/