Re: [DMCForum] Re: Relays & current draw

["Ryan Wright" <ryanpwright@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Toby,

I'm going to answer your questions in reverse order to make things more clear:

> I will tell you that I
> considered doing something like this for the kits, and decided that the
> risk of somebody accidentally fondling the keyfob while the bird was in
> flight was minimal.  Is there a consensus that it is an issue?

Nope, this is not an issue. As it is, your setup is just fine. Here's
the issue: I am adding door launch & trunk controls as buttons in the
car, and I'm putting them where the dummy switches are by the power
window switches. This presents a problem of hitting the switches while
driving, so I needed an interlock to prevent them from working. I
chose the emergency brake rather than the ignition as there are times
when I want to use the actuators while the engine is running.

As for why I would want to do this: The trunk is obvious. Bending down
and pulling on the cable is irritating, so a nice little switch next
to my power windows is an elegant solution.

The door actuators seem silly until you start to think about how
passengers fumble to get out. They hit the locks several times and
generally yank on things while I try to explain it to them. Now, I can
just hit the "open" button and make it easy on both of us.

> done using a typical relay set up to provide +12 volt power to the
> actuators only with the engine off, but the power would be interrupted
> with the engine running.  The relay would be drawing a small current
> only when the engine is running, which shouldn't pose a problem.  Does
> this sort of solution resonate with the issue, or is there something
> else in the background of this question?

The background issue is simply the choice of emergency brake as
interlock rather than ignition.

I approached this from the wrong angle. I quickly decided a relay,
grounded via the ebrake, would be necessary to flip power on and off
to the actuators. Of course there's the problem of standby current. I
then devised a two relay solution to solve this, and then Chris
suggested something completely obvious that I hadn't noticed: Since
the actuators already use relays and are setup with a ground trigger,
I can have my switches trigger them via the ebrake ground. Perfect,
simple solution. No ebrake, no ground, switches can't trigger the
actuators.

-Ryan


 
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