Footwell/rear seat dome light controlled LEDS MOD (LOTS OF PICS)

to each their own brother man

 

Exactly

 

Nice

 

Nice work and great write up, John.
"Chapeau!"

 

Thanks gents!! I almost feel like I need to apologize for the length of that write up if you read thru the whole thing. At least there were lots of pictures with all those words.

 

Deal

 

If you want things to fade, you probably want a circuit like this in there. There are others out there that are similar but essentially you want a circuit that uses pulse width modulation to dim the leds since some of the circuits out there just drop the voltage, which isn't good for the leds.

Something like this may work as well. I haven't tried it.

I had a similar issue in my old car where I loved the white because it lit everything up like it was day and I could find stuff, but it also ruined my night vision when I was out at night fishing. What I did was install a RGB strip instead of the white strip so that I could get white (it was that blueish white) light for everyday things, but then had the ability to switch to red when I needed my night vision. A little more work since I had to pull 4 wires to control the color instead of two wires for single color. For those who don't like the blueish white, you can also get a RGBW strip which adds the warm white color.

 

Great write up! Looks good!

 

Got my Hella Solid State Relay in today. This thing is pretty stout feeling. Pretty sure it's a metal housing. Heavier than I was expecting. It also is made in the USA which was the biggest shock of them all. Will replace the electromechanical one with this in hopes of stopping that god awful noise that sounds like the truck is going to explode due to the dimmer coming on/off. Will replace it tomorrow hopefully.

 

John did the Hella relay solve your noise problems?? Excellent write up my man!!

 

YES!!!! It absolutely did. But then there was a secondary problem of current leak. When everything would turn off there would be a faint glow that would remain due to the leakage. This is a known problem with this type of relay. You can apparently stop it but I've yet to find out how. I had to retire the ground to go back thru the switched grounds of the dome light. If I had to do it over. I'd probably just keep the original electromechanical relay and put it under the hood so I wouldn't notice it anyways I still may do that

 

Nice job on the write up! I'm sure that helps a lot of people who aren't comfortable with wiring or modding in general.

 

I have not pulled anything down yet in my Taco, but you mention the pink wire at the dome light. In looking at the picture of the connector going to the dome, I didn't see a pink wire. Is this something obvious you see once you pull the dome light down or something you have to go looking for?

Nevermind. Re-read the thread here.

 

How your lights holding up John?

 

I know it's been awhile, but you used the dome light to power the LEDs?

 

Great writeup! Any updates to the how-to before I start tackling this project?

 

I'm glad someone did something like this. My GMC Canyon had foot well lights and they were fantastic! A little caveat though is that in my experience, those strip LEDs have a tendency to dim from regular use.