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Fadeing interiour lights in ef's 

 

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 Post subject: Fadeing interiour lights in ef's
Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2005 11:55 pm 
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hey guys
is there anyway you can change the interior lights so they dont fade out just switch straight off.
or also
is there anything that will turn off once the voltage going into the lights drops below 12V ????
ive got it so when i unlock my car the parkers come on.
trigger wire is off the interior light. but when the lights fade out the relay ive put it goes crazy til the interior lights turn off..
need help before i start to go through to many relays. havnt gone through 1 yet but prefer not to. and i know they dont cost much...
cheers :)

 

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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 1:53 am 
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Not sure how you have wired things up for your extended parker light function but the function to fade the interior light is controlled by the BEM.
Either you need to modify the BEM and remove the fade function (not recommended) or you need some other circuit between the interior lamp wire and your relay controlling the parker lights (prefered). Such a circuit can trip the relay when the interior light comes on and turn off the relay once the volts fall below a certain threshold. Have seen a cheep jaycar kit used for other reasons that could be adapted for this, unfortunately can't remember the name of the kit :)

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 Post subject: Re: Fadeing interiour lights in ef's
Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 10:30 am 
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slimjim wrote:
ive got it so when i unlock my car the parkers come on.
http://www.fordmods.com/forums/viewtopi ... light=park So how did you finally do it ??

 

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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:26 pm 
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My guess is he's simply wired a relay into the interior light circuit. The fact that, on high-series models, the lights gradually fade out instead of going straight off as in the low series is most likely what's causing his problem. As I believe I've told him before, the smartlock system generates a signal when you lock or unlock the vehicle that's independent of the interior lights (it;s used as the basis of the auto-window winder mod outlined on this forum) which would have been a much better way of going about it.

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:00 am 
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LSD wrote:
My guess is he's simply wired a relay into the interior light circuit. The fact that, on high-series models, the lights gradually fade out instead of going straight off as in the low series is most likely what's causing his problem. As I believe I've told him before, the smartlock system generates a signal when you lock or unlock the vehicle that's independent of the interior lights (it;s used as the basis of the auto-window winder mod outlined on this forum) which would have been a much better way of going about it.
Yeah, a relay would be the simplest option, but I'd say his problem though is as light fade cuts in, the relay contacts "buzz". The light fade output from the BEM must be like a pulse, as I've noticed with my LED interior lights, they will flicker during the last few seconds of fading. Also with EL BEM's, full LED interior lights will stay on very dimmed after fading - they seem to hold around 2V, and the only way to correct this is to keep a normal bulb somewhere in the circuit - I kept key illumination as a normal bulb in my EL. Full LED interior lights in the ute seem unaffected by this problem - it runs an EF mid series BEM.

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:56 pm 
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It's probably PWM. As the lights "dim" what is actually happening is the time between each pulse is increasing. We percieve it as "dimming" because our eyes "average" the brightness. Longer "off" times give the image more time to "fade" from our minds leading to a lower average brightness and vice versa. Putting a capacitor into the circuit just after you tap the interior light circuit should help calm this down (this is the same principal "digital" audio amplifiers work on, btw) though I couldn't even speculate on what value though you'd need though.

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 2:48 pm 
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LSD wrote:
It's probably PWM. As the lights "dim" what is actually happening is the time between each pulse is increasing. We percieve it as "dimming" because our eyes "average" the brightness. Longer "off" times give the image more time to "fade" from our minds leading to a lower average brightness and vice versa. Putting a capacitor into the circuit just after you tap the interior light circuit should help calm this down (this is the same principal "digital" audio amplifiers work on, btw) though I couldn't even speculate on what value though you'd need though.
Yeah, this was the impression I'm under - I suppose a google search on light faders, etc should turn up some ideas on capacitor values or alternatives.

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 3:25 pm 
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LSD wrote:
My guess is he's simply wired a relay into the interior light circuit. The fact that, on high-series models, the lights gradually fade out instead of going straight off as in the low series is most likely what's causing his problem. As I believe I've told him before, the smartlock system generates a signal when you lock or unlock the vehicle that's independent of the interior lights (it;s used as the basis of the auto-window winder mod outlined on this forum) which would have been a much better way of going about it.

mid series BEM also does this fade out!!

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:37 pm 
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yer well i did tap off the interiour light for a trigger.
and then used a relay to switch em on
i know u said there is a wire of the bem that is specificly for unlock and lock, but which wires are they? that was the reason why i went of the interiour lights just incase i f*cked the bem
coz i persume that they arnt cheap
works perfect im happy with just the fade out making the relay buzz is wat im worried about.

mate is thinking about a voltage regulator should work but not to sure

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 8:02 pm 
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A voltage regulator would be going to far and will probably have the same sorts of trouble with the pulsed input as the relay on its own. A capacitor will do the trick and is a much simpler (and cheaper!) solution.

 

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