Thread: simple yet complicated forg light switch...

umm i ment fog light switch... not a forg light switch, psssss.... i have like tons of those.... like who doesnt?


any help would be nice, the simpler the better...


here is a picture of the switch in question, like my buddy GoHybrid i will be sanding down the face, and painting the switch to say whatever i want.



there isnt any harnesses that i can buy for this switch ans soldering on terminalas is too muck work so insted i grabbed some terminals from work that fit on the tiny pins perfectly and made me up a spiffy pigtail. i heatshrunk some heatshrink on to the terminals so that they dont touch, i will be mixing up some hard plastic epoxy and filling it in, to make a removable plug, i might even go all out and grab a weather pack connector from work too...?



and here is a bunch of relays i hapen to have laying around, the ones with the big terminals are the 70A ones, the 5 pin ones are the 30A's

Well you want the simple or the geeky way?

You are on the right track with a flip-flop. But if you wire that straight to a button, the mechanical nature of the button will produce many many pulses with each push, and you will never know what state it will end up on. Like a crap shoot.

The geeky way is to build a debouncing circuit, and then a flip flop.

Debounce means take all those "bounces" of the mechanical touches and smooth them out so it is only 1 output pulse rather than how ever many hundreds.

The simple way is to buy an IC that does that already. And there are many. I did a quick google and here is one. I havent looked over the datasheet because I am going to bed, but this should get you started with a search term "debounce". It might work, I'll look at it more closely tomorrow, but at first glance, it seems like it would work.

The LTC2951. http://www.linear.com/pc/productDeta...4,C1129,P10992

I am not sure of your competancy level with IC's, but whatever you buy, make sure you buy an IC in a DIP package. Through-Hole, for easy mounting on a radioshack protoboard. Surface mount components (SMD) are very small and not very good to solder. Since you were unable to solder those pins on the switch, you will be unable to solder any SMD part.

Alright last post before bed:

About debouncing: http://www.ganssle.com/debouncing.pdf

Simple 1 IC circuit: http://www.edn.com/article/CA217664.html

This is for the geeky way.

For the super super super geeky way, dont use an IC, just a bunch of 3 lead transistors and create your own through-hole logic IC.

Check http://www.bernardiparts.com/ for the best dealer prices, I get everything for my Odyssey there 30-50% less than the local dealer.

They have a breakdown of the foglight kit that mentions a switch and micro relay.

I'm wondering if they include this in the fog light kit which they sell for $239.

Im actuly very handy with a soldering gun, i regularly solder SMD when modding buddies satilite recivers(soldering 30aug wires to the prosesors), Xbox's, soldering cellphone LEDs ect... but you are right the DIP type will be easyer to work with... but bigger HMMMM.....lol

when reading the writeups for those two circuts i was under the impretion that they had debouncers built in, the capacitors and resistors acting lind buffers, not allowing voltage under and over a certin level to pass?, granted i picked the simplest ones to use and not the most sonplex and geeky, but i might just do that and go the geeky way,

i like the super geeky way useing the transistors, i have a bunch of mosfet IRFZ's laying around from amps i have fixed, would you please make me a diagram i could follow?, as i and uncertin of their use, the center pin is signal and the two on the others are switches right?, also i have a bunch od gate type transitors laying around too.... oh and about 3-4 drowrs of spair parts...

And billmee that site wont work for me?>, I'll try it at work later, thats where i do all my best thinking .

Maybe its just me but i dont like the write up on http://www.edn.com/article/CA217664.html, but check out this site...

http://www.cpemma.co.uk/flipflop.html

here is a very simple toggle switch i used for switching my screen on/off, always powers up with relay deactivated,can get a full description off site, some very good stuff here http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Bill_Bowden/

did you notice the screen turning on and off rappidly when you pressed the switch down?, or are you useing a toggle switch???


ok well i took it apart and now i see what makes it tick, the third pin that looks like it does nothing controles another light that isnt installed, which is why is had no continuity or resistance... the switch itself is a slide mexhinism, I'll post a pic tomarow as my camera died, i might just gut it and put in a micro on off switch and two led's in it, ok well im defietly removing the bulb and putting in a led but now im also going to be controlling the second one seperatly , bit now i know what the damm third pin does... again if you could make me a diagram of how to use the three transisters that would be great... also in a compleatly simplified way couldnt i just use a capasitor, resistor and a diode to make this work just aswell, all its doing is smothing the signal out right?... well thats what capasiters do, noize supretion...