On my old car I had the LandAirSea gps locator. It was great -- keeps track of the car's location in real time directly by satellite, calls my cell phone if the burglar alarm sounds, if the battery voltage is too low, or the air bags deploy, and allows me to disable the ignition remotely from any computer in the event the car is stolen. It is a little like LoJack except that I control the whole thing and it will track anywhere in the US, Mexico or Canada, communicating directly by satellite. You can read about it at LandAirSea.com. It is their Model 7100 and worked great on my BMW. My problem is that it requires a source of continuous 12V power, and inputs from the burglar alarm and air bag actuator, and needs to be able to cut off the ignition with a relay if I send a command to do so. I was going to have the local dealer install it, but they declined because of warranty issues. Any Prius service guy out there who knows where I could get the relevant wiring diagrams or where I would find these circuits to sense what is going on without doing any damage, and where would be best to cut off/ground the ignition circuit? I don't mind if it runs a couple more miles as an EV after I send the command, but I do want to be able to cut off the ignition to the gasoline engine. Spindoc
Circuit diagrams can be had from techinfo.toyota.com, but be prepared for a less than satisfying "experience" at their site. You probably want the EWD [electrical wiring diagram] and "location of parts" and "connector list" documents first off, and those might hold enough info to work from. If not, get the whole manual. . The subsystems that this system expects to jack into sounds like a fairly complex undertaking, and in the Prius may not be possible for some features due to various signals transmitted over data buses as packets, rather than pulling individual wires high or low. .
sounds complex, but cool. If you get it to work, i would be interested to do the same with mine. keep us posted
Thanks very much for the advice. Kind of you to respond. I can see your point; however, I would suspect that with respect to air bags and burglar alarm, there must be a wire that latches high or low to indicate condition -- though I doubt I will be lucky enough to find more than a couple of volt change. I am motivated, though! I'll report back here if I find any success. Meanwhile, I will be looking for anyone in the Orlando/Tampa area with Prius electronics expertise whom I can pay as a consultant on this.
On Ebay you can find a felow selling a copy of the wiring diagram and all the goodies for the '04 @ $20.00. It's worth it.
continuous 12v power? hmm. that could drain our wimpy Prius battery... i'll ask DH about those inputs when he gets home and see what he says. the whole ignition thing is pretty complex as i recall, all sorts of verifying tricks and such, i don't know how that will go over trying to tap into one wire to control all that.
Thanks for the advice! I think if I find the fellow I want, however, he will come equipped with wiring diagrams. We'll see. If I learn how to get this done, I'll surely publish it here!
Thanks. Let me know what he says. I can understand how cutting off the spark to the ICE might be more complicated than in a conventional car. I notice that pressing the "Power" button while rolling along does absolutely nothing. But theres gotta be a way...
I would suggest seeing if you can find the power to the solenoids that connect the main HV battery to the rest of the car at startup. If you disconnected those then the entire car would be dead. Not sure what would happen if you did it while it was in motion however. On the plus side though you wouldn't run the risk of fully discharging the HV as you would if you just disabled the engine ignition. Just had another thought - you could perhaps investigate disconnecting the accelerator pedal. It's an entirely electronic system - if you cut the power to the Hall Effects then the car would be disabled - it wouldn't accelerate and would just coast to a halt.
with the ignition lock on the car, that feature may not be necessary or imm, i could do without that part. the calling your cellphone if it detects movement, now that would be awesome and worth the price of admission...oh wait... how much does this 7100 cost?
he says he'll have to give that some thought. you don't want to cut out just the engine and let someone who's driving a stolen car and drive the battery down. they're not going to stop on the side of the road to see what's wrong with it... if you want a consultant, he'll be in jax tuesday-friday next week. i don't know how far of a drive that is, i have no concept of florida's major city locations.
The drain is 80 ma when not transmitting (most of the time) and 1.5 amps when transmitting (i.e., when polled). Spindoc
You should easily be able to pull that much power from the power outlet relay. Somewhere on here there's a Knowledge Base article on how to make the power outlet hot all the time. It simply involves bypassing the relay, which has power on one side all the time, so those directions will point you to the appropriate wire to tap into if you need cotinuous power. How often does the unit transmit? As someone else said, our tiny battery could have a problem if you leave it sit for several days without recharging, especially if it transmits very often.
Coastal Tech sells a kit for $10 that'll do it, but the instructions are on their site so you could follow them and supply your own wire and connectors. Then either plug into that or connect a second outlet (like Darell has done). I would be concerned about the power drain as well. There's been discussion if the battery would be able to supply power for the radio at the drive-in for the whole movie without having it in Ready.
