Car Brakes FINAL LED

2009 CIVIC . Final update to my car brake LED setup. I found that an AND GATE is useful though not needed. I however am putting tinting over my tail lights and need all the light output i can get. The AND GATE turns on the LED's as well as the visibility (running) light. This setup is a much more stable voltage in all scenarios and is negligible difference during strand blowout. Flip the switches and push the button to see all the scenarios. Switch on left is to turn your auxiliary lights on. The switches at the top control each set of LED's for blowout load tests. The brake button is near the bottom left. Increasing the left most transistor resistor will give you dimer auxiliary mode lights. Increasing the right most transistor resistor will decrease your brake LED brightness. Have fun, Go build! Big problem on last release, I found out that when I placed a switch to turn my auxiliary lights off the brake leds did not function because there was no power to control. So I hit the drawing board again and found it better to control the source. Read near the end of the description if you need more info on why two voltage sources etc... and hookup. Here's a fix to errors that the other revision was pestered with and overlooked. Such as led blowout would cause all lights to die when one string is blown/out and you turn the lights on with the brake engaged. Adjusted LED to the specs of what I am working with. Adjust the LED specs and resistor values in comparison to your LED values accordingly. When you have a problematic string your lights will nearly be full bright. So be aware that everyone following you may think you are braking while accelerating... These LED are being over driven with extra current, I'm okay with that, you might not be. If you don't want to overdrive them when pressing the brake then raise the right most Transistor resistor value from 2.2 ohm up to about 1k ohm. Added a capacitor for led fade when engaged and disengaged. (stay with a kinda' low value because your brake lights are suppose to all come on at the same time say most State Laws). We are now using three transistors. 1 set is an AND GATE and a common emitter. The third one is a common emitter. This is my original plan, I am not a premium member so I'm using an alternate tag to keep going and update this schematic. This is based off of the 2009 Honda Civic I have in my garage. It has two sources due to a dual filament bulb. One wire for low that is constant on when your headlights are on. Another wire for your high brightness brake filament that is only activated when you press the brake pedal. Both of the wires share a common ground. This schematic is for hacking into those three wires directly at the tail light housing.

published 10 years ago