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fake alarm led's

I agree that blinking LED's are very effective, w/ or w/o alarms, and
that alarms that don't have them are next to useless.  because if the
thief has to break your window to find out you have an alarm, the
damage has already been done.

I've used a 555 and a regular LED before, but 
one easier and cheap solution is to buy one of those blinking
LED's (Radio Shack used to have them), and connect a series resistor
so that 12V won't fry it (I don't remember what value offhand, but
maybe someone else on the list remembers).  The trick is to find a
wire that is hot all the time and another wire that is grounded only
when the ignition is on, and hook up between them.  In my 325e, some
of the OBC wires fit the bill, although I don't remember which.

if you're too lazy to find the right wires, another quicky solution is
to just tap off the cigarette lighter w/ a series switch to ground.
then you'll have to control the blinking LED manually via the switch.

If anyone is interested, I suppose I can go into more detail.
- -sam