Modern car rear lights!

Dave Plowman (News) laid this down on his screen :

Mine uses one instrument panel mounted speaker for all of its range of noises. The noises are all triggered from the can-bus data, rather than individual wires.

Andy Burns explained on 25/05/2017 :

They don't need to paint LED's they come in a variety of colours.

The yellow paint they used to sell for painting your headlights, to go to France, used to solve lens and lamps where the colour had come off.

That's what huge plate-glass windows in supermarket entrances are for, isn't it?

But if yellow LEDs are used, how do they fade?

Rover 75. If a trailer lamp has failed, it shows a graphic of a caravan in the matrix display, with a description of exactly which actual lamp has not responded properly. It has only once been triggered in earnest, other when I first installed it and checked it out. That when a caravan indicator lamp suffered a poor connection at the lampholder. On physicay checking it, it was working fine, but the system had spotted and reported the slightly poor connection at the lamp.

I always used to check the lights were all working on the trailer before departing on a trip, but now I don't bother - the automatic system checks much more thoroughly than I could manage and its monitoring is constant.

There's also the subtle point that one thick cable (my car also has a fusebox in the boot) and plug in modules can cope with all the possible factory options without having unneeded wires in the loom, or even worse a custom loom.

Plus the ability for the BCM to substitute a failed lamp for an alternative is quite useful. If sometimes confusing :)

And I'd argue that as long as you are using the right parts, it makes wiring a trailer socket many times easier...though it obviously costs more than using generic adapters ;)

Andy Burns has brought this to us :

They cannot fade, unless the LED's were actually painted, but you can buy yellow LED's so why paint them?

Maybe made in white for a different market, then painted for the UK market.

I had a SAAB which had clear lens's, sprayed yellow on the inside to suit the UK market.

That's what I was asking, why would they do that?

I've seen clear lenses with yellow incandescent bulbs, years ago

Lee has brought this to us :

Mine can substitute a brake light fed on a lower voltage for a failed tail light.

Using the correct BMW gubbins, I had to run a single HD cable from the engine fusebox to the rear, then a data cable from the module to the LSM which monitors the entire car and trailer's road lighting system.

Replace the bulbs with orange ones?

:-)

Mike

Having just been and prodded it, the indicators aren't LEDs (unlike the tail/brake lights) so it is just an amber PY21W bulb, where the paint has started to crazed away.

I can easily get replacement painted incandescent, I wonder about LED replacement, this looks right to me

says it's CANbus ready (which I think usually means a resistor to draw sufficient power to fool it) and I require the offset pins, yet the eBay compatibility checker says not for my vehicle, what could be wrong?

Thanks - I thought that only checked the indicators on the trailer and not the rest of the lights.

It was remarkably advanced for its time to do all.

...enabling hacking by a rogue charger as USB plugs can pass data as well as power.

If you will go with chargers of dubious reputation, you should carry a USB condom ...

last month< i wasa new bus in London which included USB charging points in front of every seat - or were they sniffing for information.

I was more thinking of how to do it on the old Rover which has 'analogue' wiring. But plenty of things that buzz or click too as warnings. Big problem being you can't easily adjust the sound levels. The indicator warning (for example) is to quiet. The reversing sensor one too loud.

Years ago, my Bedford van failed with the tail lights pink. ;-) A bit of red lighting gel fitted inside the light sorted it for free.

Does my wall wart USB power supply for my phone pass on data to the leccy company? ;-)