For us electronically challenged people, please do a writeup on this!!! Looks very cool!!

 

Subscribed! and hoping for a simple write up and ball park cost estimate.

 

Until I find time to do a write-up, here is the ballpark cost:

$4.29 - one Radioshack PC Board (circuit board)
$9.16 - four Radioshack hobby boxes ($2.29 each)
$3.39 - box of 4 current regulators (more on this later)
$1.29 - box of 4 resistors
$3.50 - box of molex connectors
$2.00 - inline fuse and fuse holder
$12.00 - LEDs (online)
$10 - misc wire and shrink wrap
$7 - relay (optional)

about $50 with the optional relay. All eight LEDs draw less than 0.25 amps, which is a fraction of the current draw from just the domelight, so the relay is not absolutely necessary.

 

Are you sure about that? I really mean inline, not parallel or anything. As I understand it, the only power would be the dome light grounding through the LED on it's way to the door switch. Since they are already diodes themselves, I don't see how I would get any backfeed...

 

price sounds pretty good. I too am subscribed and am lookin for a simple writeup in lamens terms and some pictures of the process as well. Please feel free to share how to do this. I get the whole wiring up lights part, ive wired up tooo many pairs of aux lights on my 4runner. I just get confused when we talk about circuit boards and resistors and diodes and ooo gooddd Got any pictures I can just like copy??

 

AHA!! I thouht I recognized that screen name on hidplanet... hahahah... great job. I'm working on etching a pcb for superfluxes.

 

I believe my 3rd gen 4Runner is wired with all four doorpins tied to a common ground, which runs through the body ECU and up to the dome light. (The rear hatch is on a separate wire with a separate dome light.) If the OEM alarm is set and the body ECU detects ground on that one wire, the alarm is sounded because it knows that at least one of the doors was opened. If yours is wired similarly and you were to give the anode constant 12V power and tie the ground to the doorpin, the entire groundpath (and all of the doorpins connected to it) should go to ground as well. I am not 100% positive, but it seems logical. It would be a fairly easy thing to test with a digital multimeter.

 

And suddenly the misunderstanding comes into focus .

I'm afraid 87 is a bit old to have anything as fancy as a body ECU. Heck, I don't even have an engine ECU, just a box 'o' electrical components that controls some emissions switches.

I think what I'm talking about will work on mine, but probably wouldn't on something newer.

 

I'll bet you a pizza that you will find ground at both doorpins when one door is opened. Even if the driver and passenger side doors had separate ground wires running up to your dome light (unlikely), let's say you open the passenger door and ground is supplied to the dome, that ground would travel back down the other wire to the driver's door pin.

I always laugh at "ECU." Most "ECUs" that you would find to control the 4Runner's rear wiper/window/gate operations, power windows, etc. consist of an integrated circuit with a few resistors, diodes and relays.

 

Edit.

 

Thanks for the writeup! Sounds easy enough. Ive been asking lots of questions in my own thread and this just clears it all up for me. Time to get to work!

 

Glad I could help. Look for a LED rock light write-up in the coming months. Rocklights with a twist though--they be manually switchable and will come on when you open the doors and will turn on for an adjustable amount of time when you unlock your doors via your keyless remote.

 

Sounds nice. Lookforward to it. Im gonna be buying enough to make some rocklights myself. Think of goin the clear resin kinda mounts like steve used. Where did you get the 2 pin molex connectors at?

 

Molex connectors came from a local electronics store, but I think Radioshack had something similar.

Radioshack used to carry all this stuff, but now they seem to care more about selling celphone plans than electronics.

 

Nice.
A sure bet for the tech library.

 

Sweet write up, now I dont have to think at all.

 

what's the advantage of using the LM317T versus using a voltage regulator like an LM7812(12V 1.5A) and the proper current limiting resistor? For example, using the specs above for the LED's, you have:
Vf = 3.3V
If = 62mA

So if I was using a LM7812 and two LED's in series,
(12V -3.3V -3.3V)/(.062A) = 87 Ohm resistor

 

hey would this guys set up work?

http://www.nifty-stuff.com/constant-current-LED.php

 

Yeup. Kinda' pricey (it's about $2-3 in parts) but the time savings can be worth it.

The downside of that is that it'll be hard to tweak once you have it in your hand. You can replace the current limiting resistor with a pot so you can tweak it, but that'll add to the cost.

 

ahhh... I see... the thing is i'm not sure what an ohm is and the only resistance that i know of usually comes from the fiance... so i figure, if i can buy it, cool, if not, maybe i'll have to learn to use a soldering gun...