SPY 5000 Alarm - User manual and How Too's

[finless]

So a few folks have asked me how to set things after installing the SPY 5000 Motorcycle Alarm.

It appears MANY did not get the full user manual with their alarm.

So first step is for me to post a scanned PDF of the user manual.
Here is a link to the SPY 5000 User manual with high resolution scans.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9BFwCzfMWZ8b1Uta1R0NVlsZ3c/view?usp=sharing

After this, if you still have questions please post them here and I will answer.

Please do not ask me via PM as no one else gets to learn using PM.

So this is my thread about this alarm and "how too's".

Bob

 

[SNOOPY]

Couple things I don't like about mine is it doesn't seem like the shock sensor is very sensitive (perhaps a placement issue) and the battery in the remote has to be replaced pretty often.

 

[SNOOPY]

Oops, forgot to throw a smilie in there... :thumbup:

 

[DrewNJ]

I had one for awhile and eventually ended up trashing it. It worked fine but obviously cheap/low quality. Also, ended up not really using it and got tired of the chirp, chirp, chirp.....

Snoopy, I had the sensor mounted on the top of the frame right under the plastics in front of the seat. Worked good there.

Also, to those doing the install, keep the shock/motion sensor away from the antenna. I originally had them right next to each other and it caused all kinds of random glitches that once separated, went away.

 

[finless]

Couple things I don't like about mine is it doesn't seem like the shock sensor is very sensitive (perhaps a placement issue) and the battery in the remote has to be replaced pretty often.

Good comments!

I replaced the HARD sticky tape on my main box (where the sensor is) with heavy duty Velcro. This made the shock sense work perfect for me.

You are correct. The battery does not last very long it left in the remote for a long time!

So this is what I do:

1) I turned off auto-arm as I do not use the alarm that often.
In fact I do not want it to ARM every time I stop somewhere and remove the key because I wont be staying long and will be pretty close to my Spyder anyway. Only when I am in a shopping mall or some place I am going to be away from my parked Spyder a while do I ARM it.
2) Because of #1, I keep my remote in my trunk with the battery removed! Remember auto-ARM is disabled. I won't need the remote at all.
3) When I want to use the Alarm, I put the battery in the remote and then ARM the Alarm. Because auto ARM is turned off, this is how you ARM it. Only when you want to!
4) When I return and disable the alarm, I remove the battery in the remote and put it in my trunk.

I have yet to have a low battery using this method and I now have had my SPY 500 for over a year!

Hope this helps....

Bob

 

[finless]

I had one for awhile and eventually ended up trashing it. It worked fine but obviously cheap/low quality. Also, ended up not really using it and got tired of the chirp, chirp, chirp.....

Snoopy, I had the sensor mounted on the top of the frame right under the plastics in front of the seat. Worked good there.

Also, to those doing the install, keep the shock/motion sensor away from the antenna. I originally had them right next to each other and it caused all kinds of random glitches that once separated, went away.

Sorry... I am not having ANY of these problems at all..

My "microwave" sensor is under my seat behind the gas cap.

My remote antenna is mounted under the rear trunk lid on the passenger seat backrest screw down bracket. This gives me great reception from a LONG way away with the remote.

Drew, sorry but maybe you just were not using this alarm system at it's best?
I have had mine installed for a year now and am SUPER happy with it.

I use it ONLY when I want and not when I do not.

If you install it stock and don't use it's features, then I will say most will not be happy with it.
Take advantage of it's capabilities and it is a very good system! Well I think it is and I love mine!

Bob

 

[SNOOPY]

I had one for awhile and eventually ended up trashing it. It worked fine but obviously cheap/low quality. Also, ended up not really using it and got tired of the chirp, chirp, chirp.....

Snoopy, I had the sensor mounted on the top of the frame right under the plastics in front of the seat. Worked good there.

Also, to those doing the install, keep the shock/motion sensor away from the antenna. I originally had them right next to each other and it caused all kinds of random glitches that once separated, went away.

Thanks, I'll have to try moving it. Honestly can't remember at the minute where I ended up putting it. lol

 

[SNOOPY]

Good comments!

I replaced the HARD sticky tape on my main box (where the sensor is) with heavy duty Velcro. This made the shock sense work perfect for me.

You are correct. The battery does not last very long it left in the remote for a long time!

So this is what I do:

1) I turned off auto-arm as I do not use the alarm that often.
In fact I do not want it to ARM every time I stop somewhere and remove the key because I wont be staying long and will be pretty close to my Spyder anyway. Only when I am in a shopping mall or some place I am going to be away from my parked Spyder a while do I ARM it.
2) Because of #1, I keep my remote in my trunk with the battery removed! Remember auto-ARM is disabled. I won't need the remote at all.
3) When I want to use the Alarm, I put the battery in the remote and then ARM the Alarm. Because auto ARM is turned off, this is how you ARM it. Only when you want to!
4) When I return and disable the alarm, I remove the battery in the remote and put it in my trunk.

I have yet to have a low battery using this method and I now have had my SPY 500 for over a year!

Hope this helps....

Bob

I installed mine in case we made a short trip somewhere and maybe stopped somewhere for a bit or for a bite to eat...and in a year and a half havent done that, so perhaps I need to look into disable auto arm and only arm in the future when necessary.

I leave it sitting in front of the doghouse to cool off before putting into the garage, but don't leave the key in it of course. I'm sure if someone wanted it bad enough there are probably master keys out there that would start it...that's when insurance hopefully kicks in I guess. LOL

.

 

[DrewNJ]

Sorry... I am not having ANY of these problems at all..

My "microwave" sensor is under my seat behind the gas cap.

My remote antenna is mounted under the rear trunk lid on the passenger seat backrest screw down bracket. This gives me great reception from a LONG way away with the remote.

Drew, sorry but maybe you just were not using this alarm system at it's best?
I have had mine installed for a year now and am SUPER happy with it.

I use it ONLY when I want and not when I do not. If you install it stock and don't use it's features, then I will say most will not be happy with it.

Bob

No, it worked fine once I got the sensor away from the antenna. They were literally right on top of each other. I just wasn't thrilled with the quality and the chirp chirp chirp. Could have wired it differently I'm sure. Guess I lost interest with the cheap quality of the components. Just seemed rinky-dink and cheap.....personal preference.
Its a cheap alarm that works good I guess....

 

[DrewNJ]

I installed mine in case we made a short trip somewhere and maybe stopped somewhere for a bit or for a bite to eat...and in a year and a half havent done that, so perhaps I need to look into disable auto arm and only arm in the future when necessary.

I leave it sitting in front of the doghouse to cool off before putting into the garage, but don't leave the key in it of course. I'm sure if someone wanted it bad enough there are probably master keys out there that would start it...that's when insurance hopefully kicks in I guess. LOL

.

That's just it, an alarm isn't going to keep it from being stolen. If someone is going to steal it, its going on a truck or trailer and nobody is going to pay much mind to a siren.
I originally did mine to keep idiots off of it but have found the small spyder sisters cover to do just as good of a job plus offer other benefits. Most times I don't even worry about it anymore.

 

[finless]

Bottom line I got this alarm for ONE reason.....

Shortly after getting my Spyder, I road it to the grocery store to get a few items. I locked my helmet and jacket in the Frunk.
I came out about 20 minutes later and some DUDE is freaking sitting on my Spyder messing with the buttons on the grips and whatever!
I was SUPER pissed off!

Then another time to the SAME grocery store I come out and some (good looking I may add) MOM put her 5 year old kid on my spyder and the kid was sitting there going "getty up horsy" on my freakin Spyder!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME! What the hell is wrong with some people thinking they can just hop on someone's property!
I guess that is the thing about a Spyder vs a 2 wheel cycle.... It's not going to tip over and looks cool so they have to sit on the damn thing!

Then I remember Stevedfive telling me he put a Scorpio alarm on his Spyder for just that reason.

So I did some research on my own about the Scorpio and what it did. At that time that alarm was pretty expensive so I decided to look at an alternative and found the SPY5000. This alarm said it did all the more expensive Scorpio did so I bought it on Ebay for $89 with microwave sensor.

Now since I have installed it, none of this BS has happened since.

So that is the only freakin reason I installed it. NOT to keep someone from stealing it.... If someone wants it bad enough, they will take it. I just wanted to keep the freakin RIFF RAFF the hell off of it.

If you do not have this problem then my opinion is you do not need this alarm.......

FYI, I am not going to spend the time to put a cover on the Spyder for a 15 minute run into a store, mall, or whatever....
YES, I do use a cover if I am going to be parked for an hour or more.

Bob

 

[finless]

I just wasn't thrilled with the quality and the chirp chirp chirp. Could have wired it differently I'm sure. Guess I lost interest with the cheap quality of the components. Just seemed rinky-dink and cheap.....personal preference.
Its a cheap alarm that works good I guess....

Cheap?
Sorry I disagree.

This is made in Germany not China (although like anything made in the USA some parts are made from China) and is not cheap parts.
Maybe you bought a China clone or something?

I guess you can feel anyway you want about it but cheap it is not.
At least the one I bought is not....


Bob

 

[DrewNJ]

Whatever you say Bob. Relax. Sorry you felt insulted because I called the spy5000 alarm cheap. That was my personal impression of the components. Don't take it personally...I'm glad you enjoy yours. For $89 its great if it does what you need it to. For me the $89 price made it just as easy to toss in the trash because it wasn't up to my expectations. It is what it is... Again, relax.
Oh, not that it matters, but the Spy alarms are manufactured by Guangdong LFF Technology Co., Ltd. Look them up, they manufacture a lot of security components.

 

[garb55]

Bottom line I got this alarm for ONE reason.....

Shortly after getting my Spyder, I road it to the grocery store to get a few items. I locked my helmet and jacket in the Frunk.
I came out about 20 minutes later and some DUDE is freaking sitting on my Spyder messing with the buttons on the grips and whatever!
I was SUPER pissed off!

Then another time to the SAME grocery store I come out and some (good looking I may add) MOM put her 5 year old kid on my spyder and the kid was sitting there going "getty up horsy" on my freakin Spyder!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME! What the hell is wrong with some people thinking they can just hop on someone's property!
I guess that is the thing about a Spyder vs a 2 wheel cycle.... It's not going to tip over and looks cool so they have to sit on the damn thing!

Then I remember Stevedfive telling me he put a Scorpio alarm on his Spyder for just that reason.

So I did some research on my own about the Scorpio and what it did. At that time that alarm was pretty expensive so I decided to look at an alternative and found the SPY5000. This alarm said it did all the more expensive Scorpio did so I bought it on Ebay for $89 with microwave sensor.

Now since I have installed it, none of this BS has happened since.

So that is the only freakin reason I installed it. NOT to keep someone from stealing it.... If someone wants it bad enough, they will take it. I just wanted to keep the freakin RIFF RAFF the hell off of it.

If you do not have this problem then my opinion is you do not need this alarm.......

FYI, I am not going to spend the time to put a cover on the Spyder for a 15 minute run into a store, mall, or whatever....
YES, I do use a cover if I am going to be parked for an hour or more.

Bob

Since the BS has stopped I assume you changed grocery stores :roflblack:

 

[finless]

Whatever you say Bob. Relax. Sorry you felt insulted because I called the spy5000 alarm cheap. That was my personal impression of the components. Don't take it personally...I'm glad you enjoy yours. For $89 its great if it does what you need it to. For me the $89 price made it just as easy to toss in the trash because it wasn't up to my expectations. It is what it is... Again, relax.
Oh, not that it matters, but the Spy alarms are manufactured by Guangdong LFF Technology Co., Ltd. Look them up, they manufacture a lot of security components.

Interesting.... Mine had a sticker on it saying made in Germany.

Maybe China finally cloned the thing like they always do and are selling clones?

FYI I am not upset Drew just saying mine was not cheap. Something is up here though...

Bob

 

[Bluehole]

auto re-arm

Bob, I have read the manual you supplied twice. I truly appreciate your effort in getting this manual to all of us. I still can not find any reference to deactivating the auto re-arm function permanently. The manual you posted contains 8 pages with the last being wiring diagrams. That correct?

So a few folks have asked me how to set things after installing the SPY 5000 Motorcycle Alarm.

It appears MANY did not get the full user manual with their alarm.

So first step is for me to post a scanned PDF of the user manual.
Here is a link to the SPY 5000 User manual with high resolution scans.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9BFwCzfMWZ8b1Uta1R0NVlsZ3c/view?usp=sharing

After this, if you still have questions please post them here and I will answer.

Please do not ask me via PM as no one else gets to learn using PM.

So this is my thread about this alarm and "how too's".

Bob

 

[SNOOPY]

Interesting.... Mine had a sticker on it saying made in Germany.

Maybe China finally cloned the thing like they always do and are selling clones?

FYI I am not upset Drew just saying mine was not cheap. Something is up here though...

Bob

This is one of my car alarms, but my Spyder alarm was the same.


:shocked:

.

 

[finless]

Bluehole, let me study the manual again and try it on my Spyder. It's been like a year since I did it.
I will get back to you later today with instructions.

Snoopy,

And here is my box.

No Made in China on it! I am not taking the main brain unit out of my Spyder to take a picture of the made in Germany sticker.

So it appears there maybe China clones out there.

I run a Web site about Android tablets and TV Boxes. We get many clones that start to appear with an exact match right down to the packaging!!!
This is very common lately with electronics.





Bob

 

[finless]

Bob, I have read the manual you supplied twice. I truly appreciate your effort in getting this manual to all of us. I still can not find any reference to deactivating the auto re-arm function permanently. The manual you posted contains 8 pages with the last being wiring diagrams. That correct?

OK so the instructions are not clear but page 5 gives the tips

1.21 Time Alarm Setting (actually it is more than this)

What this area does is set certain capabilities. One that is not clear is Alarm ON/OFF.
This is in fact the Auto ARM feature. Turning the Alarm off disables Auto ARM.
Forget about the Alarm> Hour and Minute. This is a stupid thing that I never understood anyway. It some kind of clock for how long it is set for or something. I gave up messing with the time as it made no sense to me. In fact even the time/min and time/h doesn't make sense.

Anyway do this:
Press the lock and unlock buttons at the same time and hold them for 1 second.
Upper left corner of the remote the lock should blink (or something like that I do not remember).
Press the lock button once and up at the top the time icon should blink allowing you to set minutes. Press lock again to set hours.
On the third press of the lock button, the alarm icon should blink. Here you can then press the unlock button and toggle between ON or OFF. Select OFF.
Now press the lock button 2 more times until the quit (EXT as I recall) icon blinks.
Now press and hold the lock and unlock buttons together for 1 second to exit setup mode.

You should now have disabled Auto Arm!

If you still cannot get it then let me know and I will shoot a video on how to do it.

Enjoy,
Bob

 

[finless]

Some more basic tips from me on using this Alarm.

Minimal hook up of wires for the Spyder:
- Red wire must be hooked to always ON 12V. Hook it to your batteries positive lead.
- Black wire must be hooked to battery negative NOT to frame ground!!!
- The black wire with the ring on it should be hooked to frame ground! Why? Because this makes the microwave antenna AND the remote Antenna work better.
The remote's antenna need frame ground so it has a ground plane. I won't go into Antenna design here but antenna's need a ground plane. That is what this wire does. If you do not hook this to frame ground your remote's range will be impacted and be much shorter.

Some what optional:
- Brown wire should be hooked to a "switched" 12v source. I hooked the brown to the Spyder's running lights. If you do not hook this up, you cannot use the "auto Arm" feature period. If you want to be lazy and not hook this up, you can get by without it but I do not recommend doing so. To get by without it, you must turn OFF the alarm (auto arm OFF) in the setup (see my post above for how to do this).
Without this brown wired hooked to a switched 12V, there is no way for the Alarm to know when you have turned the key on or off.
Here are some facts about this:
1) If you do not connect the brown wire to switched 12V and leave it floating (not connected to anything) then the alarm will think the key is always off. Out of the box Auto arm is enabled (Alarm setting ON) and thus it will constantly re-arm itself. This is pretty useless! So if you do not hook up the brown wire, you MUST turn the Alarm OFF (auto arm off se my post above). From that point you must always arm the alarm with the remote. This is a workable solution if your lazy and do not want to hook up the brown wire.
2) You cannot cheat and hook this to a always on 12V. Why? Because the alarm will think the key is always on and thus you cannot ARM the alarm!

Optional:
- The 2 yellow wires are to flash your blinkers. You do not have to hook them up but I recommend it. Helps to find your spyder in a parking lot, etc.
Now don't try and cheat and hook up both yellow wires to just the left or right turn signal! Why, because if you try that you will see that when you turn on the left or right turn signal BOTH sides will flash. Inside the alarm the yellow wires are on their own circuit and isolated from each other. So if your going to hook up the yellow wires, you must hook one to the left turn signal and one to the right.

Other wires (pink, grey, etc):
The other wires are for remote start and engine kill. We cannot use these on the Spyder due to the CAN-BUSS. Just cut them off of the connector and seal them so they cannot short to anything.

______________________

Install tips (will post pictures later)

I put the microwave sensor under the seat just behind the gas cap (stuck it to the plastic just off center of the frame). If you mount it here please make sure the seat under parts are not pressing on it.
I adjusted the microwave sensitivity so it would not go off unless someone walked into the Y of the Spyder. That is they got past the front tires and are near the seat or dash.

I ran the remote antenna up the passenger backrest and mounted it inside the trunk lid on the passenger backrest mounting bracket (where the 2 screws are that hold on the backrest). It is not in the trunk but is under the trunk lid. This puts the remote antenna up high on the Spyder for maximum range.

I mounted the main alarm box (the brain if you will) on Velcro under the left passenger handgrip panel. This box is where the motion or "shock" sensor is. When I used the stock stick tape it just was not very sensitive to shock or vibration because of the Spyder's mass. Once I put this on Velcro, it was really sensitive. Enough so that I had to go into setup of the alarm and lower the sensitivity.

___________________


Using the alarm tips:

If Alarm is turned OFF (Auto ARM off), when you turn off the key and the Spyder shuts down (takes a few seconds for the Spyder to turn everything off), you will get 3 chirps. This is just a reminder that you have not armed the alarm. You cannot disable this feature.

Regardless if you have turned the Alarm OFF (Auto ARM off) in setup.
When you arm the alarm (lock button) and then come back and press the unlock to disarm it, if you do not turn your key on right away it will arm itself again!
IF you want to disarm it and not worry about turning on the key in 25 seconds, just press the unlock once and wait for the chirp, then right away press the unlock button again. It should now not re-arm. However on mine sometimes I have to press the unlock button more than 2 times. I think this was a change to software over time. Mine takes 6 succession presses of unlock to disable it from re-arming. So try twice and if that does not work try 6 times.


Just some tips from me.... Later I will post some pics and videos as time allows.

Bob