Fixing my van's lack of security

andys

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I've decided to stick everything I do with this into one thread, and it won't be of much interest to the majority of forum members as what I'm trying to achieve is the baseline you probably already have

i.e. 1) My van has no deadlocks

2) Despite paying Westfalia £300 for the alarm option, my van has no interior sensors

The combination of these two things makes my van about the easiest to steal things from in the country, not ideal for a camper holding all your belongings...

So I'm trying to make my own way of solving these, starting with the alarm. My idea is to have an interior sensor connected to an Arduino microcontroller board. When triggered, the Arduino would be programmed to open a relay connected to a wire that would then make the van think the door had been opened, setting the alarm off.

I have some Arduino boards and accessories knocking around as it's an occasional hobby of mine so I set about experimenting with ultrasonic distance sensors connected. I spent quite a while on these without much success, unfortunately they seemed to trigger false alarms often enough to be unusable and although I could programme most of these out on the Arduino, to get rid of them altogether took so much error correction that they only triggered about 6" away, no good for my purpose. So I turned to PIR sensors, and I know the issues with these, I was around in the 80s when there were car alarms with these that rapidly moved over to ultrasonics due to false alarms triggered by changes in temperature affecting the PIR, but I'm giving them a try. I have got hold of a couple of interior ultrasonic modules from scrap cars and I may give them a try too, but I have no documentation for the connections and I may have to use them on the analog inputs so I'm pressing on with PIR for now. The sensor (s) I use will be remote from the control unit in the final fitting and I will use 6 core burglar alarm wire to connect for futureproofing. The arduino can always be reprogrammed in situ.

So I quickly knocked up a prototype using tweaked code available off the shelf and a piezo buzzer playing a little tune when triggered. This will obviously be replaced by the relays in the finished unit.
File 26-09-2017, 10 11 13.jpeg

I'm using a larger Uno board with all the headers for convenience while setting this up but the final unit will use a smaller Nano with soldered connections. This morning I tried it in the van to test for sensitivity, false alarms and positioning. It's being powered by a USB power pack for now.
File 26-09-2017, 10 12 03.jpeg

I videoed it being triggered but couldn't get them to upload but it worked as soon as my head came through the drivers door or a hand was waved through one of the open rear windows. It stayed in place for an hour without any false alarms but I realise this isn't representative of real life use as it was in a garage with a constant temperature and no sun falling on it. Saying that, the sun has just come out so I'll back the van out and see how it reacts as the the sunlight moves round it.
 
Also got one of these after @snoop6060 mentioned them on another thread, the intention being to get it to text me if the alarm went off. I may also be able to use the relays on it to trigger what I need. However I'll need to put some thought into how the whole setup is wired/programmed as what it would actually be doing was texting me every time a sensor was triggered, so it may have to be powered down in normal use and switched on manually when I want to set the alarm with a key.

File 26-09-2017, 11 23 36.jpeg

I've also got a microwave sensor unit on a slow boat from China, not heard great things about these either but it was only £3 so worth a play when it gets here.

As regards the deadlocking issue, @Pauly identified that my door lock actuators have different part nos from everyone elses so I've taken a punt and ordered a pair of front door locks with the same part no as his. I'm not holding out much hope that they will behave any different without the right coding, but they should arrive today so I'll do some experimenting.
 
If it's any consolation, the interior sensors supplied with my van are a bit too sensitive and have led to false alarms a couple of times so we often turn them off if leaving the van for any length of time - first false alarm was a small moth and the latest one, at Busfest a couple of weeks ago, was probably similar but we never found anything.
 
I would never use a microwave sensor again, they are so unstable!
Yeah I had heard that, but you know what it's like when you're looking for bits on eBay from china and think yeah I may as well try that as well for a couple of quid :rolleyes:

I'm still working on this after work each night, the locks are here but I haven't started looking at that yet.

I started with a programming setup that checked if the ignition was off, the defeat switch was closed, and the doors all shut (by checking if the courtesy light was grounded) and then armed after a 30 sec delay, but I've since reined back from that and gone for a much simpler setup to cut down on running wires so it now just gets switched on by the defeat switch and waits 30 secs for me to lock the car. So far I'm having perfect results by having 2 PIRs separated by about a metre and activating only when both are triggered within 1 sec. This has produced zero false alarms so far and activated 100% of the times I've gone into the room or even waved an arm round the door. For obvious reasons I haven't been able to test the stability in hot weather :D

Next is to set up the coding and connections for activating the GSM module and then I'll be ready to build the final unit and actually try it in the van. I'm not going to use the relays in this unit to trigger the alarm, but I have an idea to use them to maybe trigger an internal pain-inducing piezo siren and a bright strobe light...
 
How about a Vodaphone (Cobratrak plus) tracker? you can set up geofence so if it moves your alerted.
 
Or a dual tech pir with ultrasonic and IR in double knock mode.
 
Or a dual tech pir with ultrasonic and IR in double knock mode.
That would be my preferred option but I've had no luck getting reliable results from the ultrasonic sensors I've tried, they've all ended up producing a momentary spike outside the normal range and to get rid of the false alarms altogether with code meant practically having to headbutt the sensor to set it off. So PIRs it is, but the sensors could always be replaced with something else at a later date and the code tweaked if a better option is found.

@Wongo I'm trying to do it all at minimum cost and not too bothered about a tracker. Strange as it might sound, I'm less bothered about the entire van being stolen than it being broken into and damaged and contents nicked
 
Protecting against theft from van is very difficult. I always use the analogy " it's like a fire alarm, it will tell you that you have a fire, but not prevent one". Scumbags to looking to steal your goods won't know how comprehensive or clever your security system is, at the end of the day all it will do is make a noise if someone breaches it and if you aren't around to respond extremely quickly then the chances are your stuff will be gone. Sorry, but that's the reality!
 
Protecting against theft from van is very difficult. I always use the analogy " it's like a fire alarm, it will tell you that you have a fire, but not prevent one". Scumbags to looking to steal your goods won't know how comprehensive or clever your security system is, at the end of the day all it will do is make a noise if someone breaches it and if you aren't around to respond extremely quickly then the chances are your stuff will be gone. Sorry, but that's the reality!
Absolutely, but having no interior sensors or deadlocks leaves them all the time in the world to search through everything in silence before being able to leave easily through the most convenient door. At least with those they are working under a time pressure that someone reacts to the siren and then have to struggle out of a window, so they may just get away with some things rather than everything.
 
For those scenarios you need one of those sickeningly loud internal sirens where it is too uncomfortable for the perpetrators to stay in there :)
 
Yes I mentioned doing that earlier in thread along with a disorientating strobe light, no problem with activating while sleeping in the van as the internal setup would be switched off by default and manually switched on when leaving the van. The main issue I have is deactivating it when I return to the van without setting off a siren and sending me an SMS every time I come back to it. Don't really want to have to reach just inside the door to turn off a switch each time as that could be obvious to anyone watching and would rather not carry a second remote for deactivating the sensors but it may come to that.
 
Can you take a signal from the vans unlock command?
If there is a wire I can tap a signal from then I'd be interested in doing that, I know @Pauly said there was a wire in the door to detect whether it was closed as I was going to use that as one of the conditions for activating until I decided to KISS. The only downside to using the door unlocking as a trigger would be that, as I don't have deadlocks, pulling open a door to unlock from the inside with a slim jim etc will turn off the internal mods I'm doing, though I realise the factory alarm will still go off. I haven't had chance to try one of the replacement locks yet and I'm working all weekend so won't be taking the door to bits any time soon.
 
As for the GSM module, I haven't been able to get anywhere with that yet as I made a cockup. I wanted a PAYG sim that doesn't expire as it'll (hopefully) take ages to use £10 of credit and the best one was Three. I haven't been with anyone but Vodafone for at least a decade and thought things might have changed but it's still the case here that if you're not on Voda, youre talking to yourself. I managed to activate the sim by putting it in an old phone, standing on the back fence holding it to the sky, but the GSM module can't get a signal anywhere so the sim will have to go back and get a Vodafone one. Finished all the arduino and sensor circuitry and the coding though so I'm making some progress :)
 
I think the giffgaff payg are goood for that purpose
 
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