Cobra Alarm Sytem and Interior Light

**ignoramus** · June 13th, 2009 05:18 PM

Hi Help naman po...

First a little history : I have a 10 year old Nissan Cefiro. Twice na, the remote stopped working (even with new batteries) and I had to bring the car to the dealer where they hooked it up to some kind of computer and re-programmed the remotes. Takes less than 5 minutes of actual work (of course may pila before and processing after) and they charged me almost 2k each time.

So when it happened again recently I decided to stop bending over and just have a third-party alarm system installed. Went to Banawe and had a basic Cobra system installed, now it works well EXCEPT

...it refuses to lock the car and arm the system if the interior lights are still on. (I guess this is reasonable and normal)

Trouble is the interior lights on the Cefiro have some kind of time delay switch wherein even after you close all the doors the light doesn't switch off until about 15s later. That may not sound like much but imagine everytime you get out of your car you have to stand beside it for 15s waiting for the interior lights to shut off. :down:

At first I thought "oh this is easy, I will just switch the interior light to "OFF" instead of "DOOR" so that it doesn't come on when I open the door and I don't have to wait for it to shut off." But apparently whether or not the light is actually on, I have to wait for the same amount of time.

Has anyone else experienced this? Please help, thanks.

**ghosthunter** · June 13th, 2009 05:25 PM

The aftermarket alarm uses the power of the interior lights to know of the doors are closed or open.

The interior lights delay is based on a circuit which MIGHT be independent from the rest of the car. If that is true, an electrician might be able to trace to where that circuit is physically located and bypass it. That would mean the interior lights would just open and close just like any other car.

**ignoramus** · June 13th, 2009 09:51 PM

Originally Posted by ghosthunter

The aftermarket alarm uses the power of the interior lights to know of the doors are closed or open.

The interior lights delay is based on a circuit which MIGHT be independent from the rest of the car. If that is true, an electrician might be able to trace to where that circuit is physically located and bypass it. That would mean the interior lights would just open and close just like any other car.

Thanks! It really cleared up the premise for me. and I guess the ideal situation would be if the electrician somehow knew how to adjust the delay? If he could get it down to maybe 5s I would get the benefits of the delay without the inconvenience to my after-market alarm...

**oj88** · June 13th, 2009 10:49 PM

What's the model of your Cobra? Some alarms can be programmed to ignore the courtesy light delay.

**ignoramus** · June 14th, 2009 06:12 PM

Just thought I'd share what finally happened to help those who might have the same problem in the future and who find this thread.

Went to Banawe today (Sunday) in search of an alarm that can be programmed to ignore the delay. Not many places were open. Stopped at one shop that was open, and spoke to their resident installer/technician. As a side note let me describe what this guy looked like. Remember at the beginning of Men in Black 1 when the cops stopped a truck with Mexicans trying to illegally cross the border? and remember one of them was actually an alien? Think back to the face/body that the alien was using. That was exactly what this guy looked like.

I bring this up because who knew that he would hold the key to my problem!

I described my situation and asked if there was a model available that wasn't dependent on the courtesy light. He looked at me funny and said that any alarm can be tapped into the door switch and not the courtesy light, and thereby it would not be dependent on the courtesy light circuit.

I was a bit hesitant of course - because when someone tells you that something is possible (when other installers have said it is impossible), it is either because he knows something they don't, or they know something he doesn't!

But the more I listened and the more I watched him work, the more my confidence grew. and when he was finished, perfect! The central lock/akarm system was working based on the actual state of the door.

Anyway, just thought I'd share to help others. My sincere thanks to those who replied, the added knowledge really led me to the solution. Thanks!