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Well, I bought a blue scanner for my alarm today. I snipped off the original red LED light I had on there.

The red LED had a red wire and blue wire.

The scanner has a red, blue, and black wire.

I hooked up the red to red... blue to blue... and it started ... kind of working. The first light would blink then the next two (and repeated). The ground (black wire) wasn't even hooked up.

Anyway, I dunno why it is just blinking the first three lights. I even connected the ground and it still does the same thing.

I know the scanner works, because I tested it with a battery.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you so much!

 
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does the scanner work normally when you hook it up to the battery straight?

 
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yep, it works fine. The lights "move" back and forth like it should.

 
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The scanner is not grounded properly, there is also the possibility you have the wires hooked up wrong.

 
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well, I tried grounding the black wire in several places and it still did the same thing..

Oddly, the scanner worked without even grounding the black wire at all. Like I said, I hooked up the blue and red and it made the blinking pattern I talked about

 
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Could it be something with the alarm itself? I am really stumped with this... I can't even begin to understand it. The weird thing is that when I hook the red to power and the black to ground.. it won't work, but when I hook red to power and blue to ground, it works, but I can't get the switch to work with it because the blue wire is supposed to be for the alarm switch.

 
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Do you have a blinking light? If so, the new one will not get constant current for the full 'scan' effect. Maybe try hooking 1 wire to power when the key is off, 1 wire to the alarm, and the other to the other alarm. Not totally sure.

 
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what do you mean do I have a blinking light? Do you mean the one I had hooked up before? That was just a single blinking light. The way I have it set up now.. I just get the first light to blink then the next two and it repeats.

what do you mean by the last part when you say hook the other to the alarm too?

 
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The guy at Advance Auto Parts said that the scanner is not getting enough power from the alarm. Is there anyway to fix that without getting a new alarm?

 
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If the original led only blinked, it is not getting constant power. Like an on/off switch. The new light probably requires constant power to make the scanner work.
It would need to be "jumped' to make it work. A constant power source when the alarm is on. You might not be able to use the original led wires.

 
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the alarm orriginal LED does not send a strong enough voltage to power the aftermarket scanner. The stock LED "pulse's" voltage, and isnt constant, therefor causing it not to work properly.

 
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Isn't that what I said??

 
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From what I can understand.. my alarm just unground's itself when it is off. When I hook the blue wire directly to a ground.. it works just fine. The only problem is that it is not to the alarm ground that cuts out when ever you turn off the alarm like it is supposed to. It is almost like the alarm ground is not strong enough for the scanner.. which doesn't seem to make sence to me at all..

So.. what I think is that it is not that it needs a constant power source (because the red wire is constant), but it needs a constant ground source, but only when the car is off. It is like the alarm worked by ungrounding itself every second.. and that is why it blinked..

So.. really, all I need to do is have the blue wire coming from the alarm to have a constand ground everytime the alarm is on. Is there anyway to do that?

 
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well this is getting confusing fast. but, what the others said abou the scanner not getting enough power is a possiblity. i personally dont have an alarm or a scanner so i cant be for sure. but, the way the scanner works is whenever the car is off and the alarm is armed, the blue wire gets grounded and thats when it turns on. so the "on" and "off" switch for the scanner is the ground.


if you dont want to take apart the alarm wires and what not, you could do this: leave the led that was origionally there alone and run the blue scanner wire to the radio harness. ground the black wire, get a constant power source for the red wire from the fuse box or something. and for th blue wire, hook it up to the antenna wire on your radio harness. the antenna wire gets grounded when the car is off so that will work.