Secure a cart lift

[Sendero]

OK, i"m not totally sure on the best way to do this so I figured people here could help. Here's the situation : I have a car lift that I want to have secured. I'd like to have it setup so that a PIN is required before the lift can be lowered, so I'm open to ideas on that.

outside of that, I'm thinking of just doing a normal window sensor connected to the ELK so that the lift must be in its normal position or else the ELK is triggered.

The lift I'm looking at installing is here - http://www.completehydraulic.com/cl08000cs.html

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[DavidL]

Sendoro,
You might want to look at a high amperage contactor switch that can be turned on / off via an automateable appliance switch. The high amperage switch would be what the new car lift plugs into. So, if the appliance switch is off (triggered by MainLobby or other automation software), then no juice for the lift (for up or down). You might want to build all of this into a box so the thief couldn't just unplug the lift and plug into a standard unswitched outlet and defeat the security.

The link you provided doesn't provide an amperage for either the 110 or 220 versions as that is the info that will be needed to scale the high amperage contactor switch. I believe ELK is coming out with this type of high amp switch very soon as Spanky (David of ELK) just posted it's creation.

You could open up the current lift switch and monkey in there, but not recommended as you are then getting into a liability / warranty issue with the lift company.

Don't forget that these lifts typically also have manually triggered position stops that the car is actually resting on. There might be a padlock means to secure it already. Not as "cool", but more secure.

What I would NOT do is to automate the dropping of the vehicle. Even with lots of due diligence, it's very hard to ensure a kid isn't underneath (or your Ferrari).

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I would also consider mounting sensors such as used on the bottom of garage doors for openers to insure nobody (or thing) is underneath. I would get two and "criss-cross" them at opposing legs, then somehow interlock them with the lifts "down" operation.

 

[Sendero]

yup, I have no plans of automating the lowering of it. I just want to make sure that if someone else decides to lower it that (1) I'm made aware of that and (2) it doesn't happen when the alarm is armed. I like the idea of the contactor switch controlled by the ELK and with a full enclosure around it. Now I just need to know when it'll come out