Posts

Picture of a door pin switch

Wiring Door Pin Switches

/1 Comment/in /by

This blog post is going to cover how to wire your interior and dome lights.  In most cases you want these lights to turn on when you open a door to your car.  We’ll show you the best way to wire your door pin switches and connect your POWERCELL outputs to your dome lights and interior lights.

Picture of a door pin switch

Picture of a door pin switch

Each door in your car has a pin switch.  Sometimes these are called door jamb switches.  They are very simple devices.  They have one terminal on them.  This terminal originally connected to the ground side of your dome light circuit.  The threaded metal part of the switch connected to your cars ground through the metal part of the door jamb.  These switches work backwards from most people would expect.  When the car door is open, the contact on the switch is closed to ground.  If you think about it, that is what you want.  You want the circuit completed when the door is open.  In the original wiring on most cars, you had battery power supplied to one side of your dome light.  The other side of the light was connected to ground through the door pin switch.  When you opened the door, the switch closed.  This completed the circuit to ground so the dome light came on.

The inputs to an Infinitybox MASTERCELL work the same way.  They get activated when they are connected to ground through a switch.  You can learn more about how the MASTERCELL inputs work by clicking this link.

We do not dedicate a POWERCELL output for dome lights or interior lights.  You can use any of the OPEN outputs that are listed on your configuration sheet to do this.  Simply choose an OPEN output on a POWERCELL and connect that to one side of your dome light circuit.  This link will get you more information on using OPEN outputs.  Connect the other side of your dome light circuit to ground.  Check your configuration sheet and get the MASTERCELL input that corresponds to the OPEN POWERCELL output that you picked.  That input is going to connect to your door pin switches.

In most cases, you will want to have your dome lights turn on if any of your car’s doors are opened.  This is the same if you have a 2 or 4-door car.  To do this, you are going to wire the pin switches in each of your doors in parallel.  You are going to take your MASTERCELL input and connect it to each of the terminals on your door pin switches.  You can splice off of the input wire at the MASTERCELL and run separate wires to each switch.  You can also daisy-chain from one switch to the next in the car.  This wiring diagram shows how to connect the MASTERCELL input for your dome lights to the door pin switches.

Picture of an Infinitybox wiring diagram showing how to wire door pin switches

Picture of an Infinitybox wiring diagram showing how to wire door pin switches

If you open one of your doors, the door pin switch will ground the MASTERCELL input.  The MASTERCELL will send a command to the POWERCELL to turn on the output for the dome lights.  If you open a second door, the input will still be grounded because the switches are wired in parallel.  The dome lights will not turn off until you close all of the open doors.

An added bonus of our Infinitybox system is the ability to theater dim your dome lights.  When the doors close, we can set your dome light to slowly fade away over 10 seconds.  Give our technical support team a call to get this feature on your system.

You can download a PDF copy of this wiring diagram at this link.

If you have questions on how to wire your door pin switches with our Infinitybox system, click on this link to get in touch with our technical support team.

Picture of MES 5-Wire Lock Actuators

Central Locking

/0 Comments/in /by

We created our inMOTION cell about 6 years ago to handle things that need to change direction.  From any MASTERCELL input, you can control power windows, lock actuators, exhaust cut-outs and other linear actuators.  What makes inMOTION unique is the fact that it changes polarity from within the cell.  This means that you don’t need special relays to change the polarity of the current flowing to your window motors or lock actuators.  inMOTION does that for you.  You can also control any of the inMOTION outputs from our inLINK key fobs and any smart device through inTOUCH NET.  This post is going to show you how to wire lock actuators with Central Locking to the MASTERCELL and inMOTION cell.

There are lots of ways to control door lock actuators.  In most cases, our customers want to unlock their doors when they disable security from their inLINK key fobs.  That’s easy.  From the inside of the car, they usually want switches that lock and unlock the doors.  That’s easy.  Another way to handle this is to use the central locking feature built into the MES 5-Wire Door Lock Actuator.  Our good friends at Electric-Life sell these.  You can see them at this link.

These lock actuators do two things.  First, they lock and unlock the doors.  That’s pretty basic.  They also have switches built into them to control central locking.  When you pull up on the door lock knob, it pulls on the lock actuator mechanism and closes a switch internally.  This switch sends a signal to the Infinitybox MASTERCELL to pulse the lock output on inMOTION to unlock the rest of the doors.  Pushing down on this same door lock knob closes another switch inside the actuator that closes a second switch.  This second switch is connected to another MASTERCELL input that sends a signal to inMOTION to lock the doors.  Take a look at this wiring diagram.

Image of Infinitybox wiring diagram showing how to wire 5-wire lock actuators

Image of Infinitybox wiring diagram showing how to wire 5-wire lock actuators

There are a few things to consider when using these lock actuators.

  1. Check the wiring diagrams that come with the actuators to confirm the wire colors in our drawing.
  2. Depending on how you have the actuators oriented in the car, you may have to change the wiring for the inMOTION outputs and the central locking switches.  You want the up and down directions to be the same on all actuators and you want the lock switches all in the same direction.  Check to make sure everything is working correctly before you finalize you wiring connections.
  3. You must properly adjust the linkage for the lock mechanism so that you can get full range on the actuator plungers when you pull up and push down on the lock knob.
  4. Make sure that you train the inMOTION cell correctly.  Follow the instructions that came with your inMOTION kit.

You can download a PDF of this wiring diagram by clicking this link.

Click here to contact our technical support team with any questions about wiring central locking with our Infinitybox system.