Aftermarket Toyota switches

Are there any aftermarket Toyota-sized switches that are illuminated similarly to a factory switch? I've used a couple of them with blue lighting, but they're obnoxious bright. I tolerated the one in my dash pretty well, but I need to find a better solution than the one I just added in the overhead console

 

Check out the Air on Board switches. The "New Blue" colored switches are what you seek.

Example: https://www.aironboard.com/online/push-switch-9c10nb-12volt-toyota-oem-air-compressor.html

 

They only make those in "fat" size, not "tall."

There's no real difference other than it's an "ice blue" LED rather than a "blue" LED.

I think the resistor needs to be replaced with a higher value than what is in these switches:

Yellow>violet>red>gold = 4.7k ohms.

@caribe makaira you're the electricity genius, (I'm 35 years gone from electricity training), any suggestions for the appropriate resistor value?

Blue LED nominal voltage is 3.1vdc, about 25mA consumption for a 5mm LED.

I have the same issue, changed out the "blue" LED to "ice blue" but want to tone it down.

 

Trial n error...adding/changing series resistor until you find your acceptable brightness. Sacrifice a switch to play with it, or get a breadboard with wires, resistors and juice the switch LED.

 

Blahhhhh... that means I need to buy a lot of resistors. Need to find a combo pack I guess. Any suggestions?

 

The two leds in a switch each have a resistor that sets max brightness. From there you can dim them using the dimmer circuit but they won’t be calibrated for brightness with your stock switches unless you replace the resistors with higher value ones. The exact value depends on the color led. Also, larger images and longer words laser etched to be backlit are unevenly illuminated and can involve some very fussy efforts to improve. I’ve seen resistor values from 1k to 3k ohms and have increased values up to 20k to achieve a decent match.

 

You can see the 4.7k ohm resistor here. Maybe I can change over to 6k ohm and see what happens I guess...

 

Magic&shell 6P 6 Color Test Probe Hook Flat Mini Grabber Logic Analyzer Testing Accessories SMD IC Test Hook Clip Jumper 300mm

https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Shell-Grabber-Analyzer-Accessories/dp/B07F69JHYK

 

I’d try 10k. Also you can bend the leads of the led to push it back away from the image and lettering to spread out the light better.
For switches that have a clear window for the switch”on” led I use 20k for that led.

 

Solved! For Cali Raised LED switch you'll need a 68k ohm 1/4 watt resistor on the LED that runs with the dome lights (blue wire):


For Air On Board switches, you'll need an SMD resistor. The pack I got from Amazon didn't include 68k ohm so I went to 75k ohm. (Note 7502 SMD resistor code) In retrospect I should have gone a bit lower (text is just a tad too dim but serviceable), my other option was 51k ohm. I recommend doing that if you go that route:

I swapped out the stock white LED with a 3mm "ice blue" one to match the console lighting. Pushing the switch activates the upper white LED at high brightness:


Hope this helps someone!

 

Interesting. I came up with 20 K Ohm with the ice blue LEDs. The Ice Blue color is still slightly off from OEM (you can see the AUTO vs the rest with ice blue):



So I took the liberty to replace the LED on the OE switches to ice blue. It’s an SMD.



Your resistance depends on how big the window is on your switch.

 

Soldering resistors on aftermarket switches seems a bit of a reach for most of us. I have your add-on harness to tap into the OEM dash light wiring. This works well, except that the aftermarket switch is a little too bright. Couldn't the appropriate resistor be added to the "+" lead of your harness? (It could be in a new section between the two parts of the quick disconnect you have just added to your design. I bet you could sell a few of these, calibrated to the color of the aftermarket switch.)

 

You would need to do it for every switch — in-line for every part of the daisy chain — otherwise you won’t get the right voltage drop across the whole circuit. It also wouldn’t do anything for the indicator LED (there’s two LEDs/switch and one is tied to the 12V source pin when the switch is depressed) and you would need different values for different color LEDs. I’ve manipulated switches for a few people now but it’s always been a one-off kinda deal due to those factors. The solution is to tell Cali-Raised to use a higher resistor

 

This also won’t work for the switch activated led since it gets powered by the output of the switch and has its resistor located after that. Installing one on the lead before the switch would drop the voltage to your relay and possibly mess with relay activation. As mentioned above the size of the symbol affects the resistance necessary and some switches have a small rectangular window that can require even more resistance to tame the led.
If all your switches require the exact same amount of additional resistance then you could place a single resistor on the ground wire after the last switch but I have found too much variation between switch symbols and print for that to be satisfactory.

 

Anybody know how to convert these switches to momentary? It looks like you just remove the latch wire visible in the triangular hole in the metal case but the question is how?

edit- you just pry out that little wire and it no longer latches. Takes a small screwdriver that is still stiff enough.