Beta Alp 4.0

A collection of information as it arises. There's not a lot out there!

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Connecting my route roller backlight

Before my first Long Distance Trail (LDT) I made a roller for the route from a VHS cassette carton. It's illuminated by half a dozen red LEDs, at that time white ones were pretty rare. Now I need a connection on the Beta Alp for it. I dislike damaging the OE wiring loom on motorbikes so had to find a suitable point.
The sidelight wiring
The front lighting wiring can be accessed by undoing the black bezel (3 screws) and thne removing the headlamp shell (another 3 small screws). This is also the route for chnaging the bulb. It seems that it is possible to set the headlamp for left or right hand drive by altering the bulb position.
The 'sidelight' seemed to me to be an ideal connection point as it was possible to tack tinned wires onto the copper terminals having pushed them out of their rubber housing. Also, it makes sense to have a backlight on this circuit.
As you might expect the black wire is ground and the white/blue +12VDC. The tinned wires were soldered, and heatshrinked, into a piece of audio coax as this is nice and round and very flexible. In turn, that is connected to a 2.5mm power plug.
It works too:
The LEDs work fine