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OK, I purchased some EL Glow Gauges off of Ebay and I saw the DIY on how to install them. My problem is the power switch for this display.
As you can see, its just a flat switch that you can press on and off, and it has a sticky back to apply it somewhere on the dash. Is there a way I can buy a different flip switch from like Radio Shack or something and customize it to adapt to the plugs to turn it on? Any feedback is welcomed.
the switch has 2 wires coming out of it, right?
if so, you can go to radio shack and buy a regular SPST switch and it should work. i think the power inverter is seperate from the switch for these so there shouldn't be too much of a problem is you splice in your own switch into them.
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Originally Posted by white3ch0c0late
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yeah, the on/off switch is separate from the power inverter and just clips into a small adapter. Its wires are really flat like metal strips inside plastic. I'll check out Radio Shack tomorrow for that SPST switch. Thanks for the info!
oh btw, if you know, will that switch help enable the EL glow gauges to remain on when I turn on/off the dashlights. I'm also curious now if there's a switch I could buy that can act as a on/off switch, but also as a dimmer.
instead of a switch i say hook it up to your headlight switch, such that when you turn on your lights, it turns on like OEM. If you want to keep the switch then i say run the power to the ignition or lighter, such that if you leave the switch on when you turn off the car it will turn off.
instead of a switch i say hook it up to your headlight switch, such that when you turn on your lights, it turns on like OEM. If you want to keep the switch then i say run the power to the ignition or lighter, such that if you leave the switch on when you turn off the car it will turn off.
oooh I like the sound of that idea. Any idea what wires are connected to the headlight switch? or how would I go about hooking up the main wires to a power source and connecting the wires that were goin to be used for the switch to the headlight wires?
^ OMG you ask a question like that? This topic has beeeen covered SEVERAL times...search.
OK...first off he's asking a legit question, so back off.
Second off, this topic hasn't been covered several times before as "I" am the only person to have posted anything about those guages. And no body was able to answer my questions yet so I had to do some searching on my own.
Now let me break it down for you. Yes, you can wire your gauges to your headlights so that they come on when you turn on your lights BUT, it does not mean always on. The relay you see actually converts the Direct current power coming from your car, to alternating current to be used by the guages. If you were to take a DMM to it, you would see your 12VDc id being converted to a much higher AC voltage. Now here is the problem. The switch that comes with your set is pretty much worthless. Here is how it works. When you press down on the on/off button you are connecting the leads inside it together for a split second, just long enough to turn it off, or on. Now, if you want you can go and pick up another switch from RC, but it's not going to create an always on, or always off setting for you. If you hook up the lights to your headlights, then even without having a switch attached, you could just flip on your headlights and see the guages come on. If you try to attach it so that the unit has constant power, so all you have to do is provide it with power and they come on...not going to happen again. The relay needs to have something toggle it on or off. If your going to go for a switch, then I recommend you hook it to a constant power source, so that your switch will always mean either on, or off. If you hook it to a power source that is not constantly providing power, then sometimes when you switch on the power to that item, it will turn the lights on or off via that change in power. Which makes your switch useles, as off now means on, and vice versa. I've been trying to figure out a way to create a consant on with the headlights for about a year now. Right now I don't even have a switch hooked up to mine. I just flip my headlights on or off once or twice and the guages come on. Now if anyone here does have some experience here in Electronic's then please feel free to help me answer this question. The only other option I've come up with is to create a seperate circuit in the system, but it's just easier for me to flip the lights once or twice.
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Thanks for the positive help guys. I'll try to figure out what wires lead to the headlight switch or something. I do want to hook it up to the headlight switch so when I flip them on, the gauges will come on too like OEM style, and turn back off when I flip it off..
^ OMG you ask a question like that? This topic has beeeen covered SEVERAL times...search.
OK...first off he's asking a legit question, so back off.
Second off, this topic hasn't been covered several times before as "I" am the only person to have posted anything about those guages. And no body was able to answer my questions yet so I had to do some searching on my own.
Now let me break it down for you. Yes, you can wire your gauges to your headlights so that they come on when you turn on your lights BUT, it does not mean always on. The relay you see actually converts the Direct current power coming from your car, to alternating current to be used by the guages. If you were to take a DMM to it, you would see your 12VDc id being converted to a much higher AC voltage. Now here is the problem. The switch that comes with your set is pretty much worthless. Here is how it works. When you press down on the on/off button you are connecting the leads inside it together for a split second, just long enough to turn it off, or on. Now, if you want you can go and pick up another switch from RC, but it's not going to create an always on, or always off setting for you. If you hook up the lights to your headlights, then even without having a switch attached, you could just flip on your headlights and see the guages come on. If you try to attach it so that the unit has constant power, so all you have to do is provide it with power and they come on...not going to happen again. The relay needs to have something toggle it on or off. If your going to go for a switch, then I recommend you hook it to a constant power source, so that your switch will always mean either on, or off. If you hook it to a power source that is not constantly providing power, then sometimes when you switch on the power to that item, it will turn the lights on or off via that change in power. Which makes your switch useles, as off now means on, and vice versa. I've been trying to figure out a way to create a consant on with the headlights for about a year now. Right now I don't even have a switch hooked up to mine. I just flip my headlights on or off once or twice and the guages come on. Now if anyone here does have some experience here in Electronic's then please feel free to help me answer this question. The only other option I've come up with is to create a seperate circuit in the system, but it's just easier for me to flip the lights once or twice.
Troyfrezze
LOL! Back off??
After a simple search.... "Glow Guages" (and i'm sure it would turn up more results if you searched for other "keywords", or threads have been deleted by the mods for repetitiveness)
No, you do need to lay off. I did a search about this and all of them DO tell me how to install the Glow Gauges, but none of them are for the type I bought off from Ebay. As you can see in the pic I posted, my gauges came with this green flat panel on/off switch that when pressed turns on and off the glow lights, not a dimmer switch. If it weren't for the green panel switch, I'd just hook it up to my healights switch so when I do turn the lights on, the gauges would turn on too, but in this case, they will not and I must manually press that button to turn them on everytime. That will be really annoying. I did take the wires out of the switch and they are nothing more then 2 wire ends, that when touched together, they activate the lights, but they don't need to be connected. When they touch together again, they turn off the lights.
I'm hoping here that if anyone has the same setup as me, if they know how to get around this and hook it up without that switch, that'd be really awesome. I'm looking for positive feedback in helping with this mini project, not a flame post for asking a question.
Yes your guages are slightly different, but, what I said was in reference to your post about "thats a good idea to connect to the headlights", and asking which wires you need to connect to....in which, all of the threads that I mentions describe just this. I was not "flaming" you for not knowing what that flat switch is or if you replace, but was informing you that there is info out there on TN which will aid you in wiring them up. So no, I don't need to "back off", and you need to chill out.
Nuff said.
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Congrats on your abilty to "say" search, did either of you actually look at what was in the search...nothing to do with what he was asking.These post will inform him of where the wire is, but that was already made clear in the DIY, just the same these guages do not work like normal guages! Let me make this perfectly clear. The glow guages he bought, as did I are completly different from the other type of glow guages. The normal ones everybody else has are the type that have a rocker on off switch, and a potentiometer used for turning the lights from a blue shade, to a green shade. These do not have either of those. If you read his first post, the question was not how to install them, and he did say he read over the DIY, but that does not apply well for these lights. I too own these lights. I hooked mine up to the 12v power supply for the headlights behind my guage cluster. Problem is, when you turn on your lights, it does not always turn on the guage lights. So you have the button. Again, the button just makes contact between the positive and ground. You could just touch a bare wire between the two poles to short the setup and get the same result. Now, if you go back and look at any of the post in the "glow guage", or any other search, none of these apply to the question he asked for. The only post that apply here are the ones I made last year in reference to the same question, the only other post was by Daboolz, which I posted in then.. http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/t38744.html
Scroll towards the bottom of the first page and you will see two post by me that show the button in question better.
Simple thing is, I see way to many people that are quick to jump on someone for not searching. DK did ask about the install, but he's also read the DIY, so that would lead me to belive he overlooked something in the DIY that states which wire to connect to. Anyone could have just said, yea...hit up the Green wire with the white dash marks on it comming out of the middle connecter on the back of your guage cluster. That is helpful, but just bashing him because he didn't search, nor trying to help with the original problem. You may as well just not have posted.
wow, this "I need help installing my glow gauges" thread is goin all out now @___@ Anyways, yeah these glow gauges are really something. Maybe I should just find some other kind that are just like the ones described in the DIY.
Again thanks TroyFrezze for your help. Hopefully there's someway to get around the problem with the glow gauges we got.
*edit* I checked over that old thread ya linked and someone mentioned a "Pulse-Timer" Relay. That sounds like something that'll fix this problem...but ugh, I dun wanna go spend another $20-30 for it just to fix this. Might as well go buy a better glow gauge kit. @__@
OK new question, I found another power inverter for an EL Glow Gauge. It looks to have the same plugs, but it has the blue to green switch (possibly could use that as an on/off switch) and dimmer.
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