Novice wants to add led interior lights

[Bramble94]

Hello I require a little advice. I'm looking to add some rgb led light strips to the interior of my car. I want them to power on when I open my door. That bit I know how to do. But I also want it to be powered by a switch that I can turn off

 

[Spoon]

Welcome to the forum.
From what you are saying.... correct me if I'm wrong, you want a led strip to be activated with either the door switch or a new switch you will fit???
If that is the case the can you not just add the new switch in parallel with the door switch.
Also making sure the led strip doesn't draw so much power it blows the relative fuse.

 

[SparkyChick]

Welcome to the forum.
From what you are saying.... correct me if I'm wrong, you want a led strip to be activated with either the door switch or a new switch you will fit???
If that is the case the can you not just add the new switch in parallel with the door switch.
Also making sure the led strip doesn't draw so much power it blows the relative fuse.

You might need to use a couple of diodes to prevent the interior lights also being switched by your new manual override switch, unless of course you want all the interior lights on at the same time.

 

[Bramble94]

Excellent. So basically I can hook the 2 different power inputs into the rgb controller then on the interior light wires just have a diode to stop the power also going to the interior dome light yea? I only kind of know what I'm doing ;D flying blind so all advice is actually very helpful

 

[Bramble94]

I think the rgb controller will stop it pulling too much but I'm not 100% sure

 

[littlespark]

Red for drivers door, blue for passenger and green for the boot?

Do you want the lights wired same as the courtesy light? Ie switched on/ door switch/ off?

 

[SparkyChick]

I'm thinking something like this....



The exact design would need to factor in how the interior lights are connected to the door switches and whether they simply switch to chasis, which in a lot of cases is the negative terminal of the battery (but not always).

 

[Bramble94]

I'm thinking something like this....

View attachment 45177

The exact design would need to factor in how the interior lights are connected to the door switches and whether they simply switch to chasis, which in a lot of cases is the negative terminal of the battery (but not always).

Yep thats pretty much exactly it. My car does indeed use the chasis as a negative