electronics guys: instrument cluster Q
 

I need help from someone with a bit more knowledge (or schematics) of electronics than I.

I want to know which terminals on the instrument cluster board operate the flashing key/security LED.

I have already followed the FSM wiring diagram and found the wiring harness pin that it says is responsible for feeding this light, but it would not work for what I wanted to do. Apparently there is something else on the board itself that interacts with the signal from the wiring harness, to make the light flash. So for my purposes, I need to access the terminals directly at the LED. But since the board won't come off the cluster, I can't tell which terminal on the back side does what. Unlike previous clusters, they are not labeled by function, only with numbers and letters.

Can anyone help?

Let me take a look at the schematic and see what I can figure out.. I'll post back this weekend.

PM to remind me if I forget.

Terminal 2F (brown/yellow) pulled to ground will light that one.

I tried to use terminal 2F and could not get the results I wanted.

Background...my truck has an aftermarket alarm with one of those bright blue flashing LED's on the A pillar. I got the "bright" idea to mimic this effect with my rx-7's factory alarm, which has a flashing yellow indicator on the console. So I extended the wires from the console to the A pillar and used a super bright blue LED, so that people will think it has an alarm and be more apt to leave it alone.

So since I have to park the rx-8 at the end of the driveway (it is the daily driver), and since I do keep a valentine one in it, I decided it might be cool to do the LED in it as well, using the flashing security indicator as the source.

I connected pin 2F to the LED and grounded it, but the LED (and the cluster indicator) then stayed lit the entire time, with a very minute break every few seconds (instead of a flash). Looking at the diagram, I cant figure out why this is, but wiring diagrams are unfortunately not my forte.

^I'm with you. The CANBUS-controlled stuff makes no sense to the Old-school me.

What I would do is simply wire a circuit from an always-on fuse (so the LED always flashes). Then interrupt the circuit with a relay (normally closed) that only completes the circuit when the ignition is off.

Ignition on = no light; ignition off = flashing light.

A little ghetto, but effective, n' c'est pas?

Ahh.
Yeah, you can't do it that way.
Wire an opto-isolator (input side) across the 2F output and the LED you are trying to drive across the output.

Thanks for the reply. I have no clue what an opto-isolator is, so I will assume it is not something that can be had at a local electronic supply store for a few dollars. I guess this idea is not worth the hassle?

Optoisolator = $2 at Digikey. Might even find it at Radio Shack.

http://www.cel.com/pdf/datasheets/ps8103.pdf