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Gunslinger
Joined: Sat Nov 4th, 2017
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I anticipated the sequentials not having much smarts to it, but this module was more sophisticated than I thought. Turns out, it has features in it that let you run single brightness LEDs as dual brightness. No extra hardware needed, no wiring tricks.
I took the lights off the truck, cut the harness and stripped it down to the bare three plugs. I'll have more photos tomorrow.
I hooked it up with jumpers, and when I activated the park lighting circuit, I was surprised to find that the 194 was illuminated, at half brightness. I thought I was backfeeding the circuit, but after playing around, it turns out that it's meant to do that.
I tested it by hooking up the red signal wire to the major wire of the 3157s, activated the tail circuit, leaving the actual tail circuit wire floating, and saw the 3157 also illuminated at half brightness then went to full when sequential was activated.
Apparently this thing detects whether there's current being drawn on the tail circuit, and if there isn't, it incorporates it's own dimming circuit, which is PWM.
Even so, I still hooked up the 3157s with all three wires, and for the 194, just two. I was expecting to have to use a resistor in series on the tail circuit and have the signal circuit simply jump the resistor, having the same effect this does. $50 well spent.
You'll notice the modules come with a 1157 bayonet plug stock on there. They invite you to chop it off if not suitable for your application, which is what I did and replaced it with a plug of my choice. Although if I had thought about it, I could have just as easily wired on a bayonet socket onto the truck and done that instead. probably doesn't make a nickel's worth of difference at the end of the day.
The flickering on low mode is due to the PWM being picked up by my camera. Looking at it in person doesn't yield this effect.
More to come in a day or two as I make more headway.....
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1999 Ford Ranger XLT - 3.0 V6 4x4 - Loaded (Totaled) 143k. Rest in Peace, Gold Dust.