Sunday 28 April 2019

Electrical, Cornering Lights


Things have been a bit slow lately, I suffered a knee injury and that meant I couldn't kneel down or really walk properly for several months.
Thankfully things are a lot better now, so i am starting to slowly get back to the build.

I wanted to fit cornering lights to the truck,  cornering lights normally work using the steering angle sensor from the ECU of the vehicle, this switches the lights on when you turn the steering wheel.

A Tatra truck hasn't got either a steering angle sensor of an ECU,  (thankfully)  So a little thinking outside the box was needed.

You will need cornering lights when it is dark and you are turning (indicating) So I designed a simple little circuit that I built inside a standard automotive relay case.

The circuit is activated by a photocell when it gets dark, then when you indicate it converts the indicator pulses to hold a solid state switch on to activate the cornering light, when you stop indicating after a short delay the cornering light goes off.

The device is solid state (No Relays) using a Mos Fet transistor, it can switch 23Amps at 24volts.