Fade out dome lights?

[somedude88]

I was thinking today and bored on night where I had insomnia and thought it would be nice if my dome light faded in and out like the new cars. So I tried to think of a simple way of doing this, and fading the light in would be too technical so I just thought of a way to just fade them out and figured that's good enough, most people want their lights instant on when they get in the car anyways.

Let me know if anyone might be interested in a short write up, it only requires a bit of soldering and takes less than 5 minutes to do and it's all in the dome light fixture.

[el_jelly]

check this, Tursaa posted a link on how to do the fade out lights: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8717&start=60

However it would be interesting to see how you did it so maybe you can post a write up in the DIY thread.

[somedude88]

Well the way I did it is non intrusive and it's self contained in the dome light but there are however two downfalls...
1. The fading is not adjustable unless you put different components in
2. You have to use an led dome light, which shouldn't be any dimmer, just have a slight blue tint instead of the orange stock bulb, but the good thing is if you leave your car door open all nite or for a long period of time, no nead to worry they draw 1/5th of the power and produce around the same light.

I haven't actually installed it yet, but it is tested outside the car, so as soon as I tweak it and install it I'll post a short video of it and post a write up and where to get the supplies, it will not cost more than 10 dollars. It's costing me 4 dollars, and that's just for the LED's, the components I'm using are common in most electronics.

The circuit I have in mind is simply using a capacitor in parallel with the dome light and also a current limiting resistor to charge the capacitor and prevent high currents and arcing inside switches that are caused from the rapid charging of the cap when first connected and prevent any delay the light would take to turn on. Upon disconnection the light would fade out at no more current than the resistor allows, I'm probably going to make it fade out over a period of about 4 seconds till it doesn't illuminate anything but the actual led's might glow for another 10, and if you look close enough they will be like an amber in a fire for the remaining 20.

Because your not using a PWM the transition will be as smooth and you will not see any type of "steps" you get on a cheaper made PWM controller.

But this is an quick and ez way of throwing on some effect to your dome light without doing drastic wiring or figuring out where to mount a board..

[el_jelly]

Ok some pics and the write up will be fine for that.

[somedude88]

Here's a video, (as if it's needed) the led's stay on for like 5 minutes in just like an amber glow state, they don't really product any light as demonstrated in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifeZInSt20g

[hondaman2980]

real fuzzy video ...but looks good ....id be REAL careful about tinting it blue ...
any light not coming from ur dash CANNOT be blue. by law blue is police ONLY so u may get to see some sex lights in ur future. I dont know the laws where u are but in MT they have 0 tolerance for blue lighting ive been pulled over just because of the blue glow from my dash ( i turn it down so its not so bright havent got popped since)
just be careful : )

no one wants to get pulled over

[somedude88]

I ordered some white replacements for the dome light, I only used these to test the circuit, I'll change them out when I get the white ones. I don't think there will be a problem, stupidly I used blue license plate lights for a month and didn't get any problems, then decided that wow that's a stupid thing to do and I don't need any tickets. Besides I don't use the dome light while I'm driving, only when stopped and the door opens, I'll be fine for now.