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If you've ever installed any aftermarket alarm system, or door locks, or hood pop sensors, etc. you will inevitably come across a part that only works when given a ground connection.
It makes sense to me, that if I know I have to run a wire all the way from the back of the car, up to the front so that it can connect to the battery under the hood, that its arguably safer to do that with a ground wire.
Normally if a ground wire gets pinched or cut into on accident, there's no sparks, no voltage zapping things, and no popping of fuses.
Do the same thing though with a live 12v wire, and you'll have to deal with blown fuses, melted wires, sparks, and ultimately stuff just not working.
So todays video just breaks down one of the ways to use our little 5 legged friend, the Relay, do use ground to power up a very specific use case: Ghozt Lighting Sequencer powered Tail Lights.
I'm actually super pumped about building lights that have extra functions built in by using things like relays. For example, doing most tail lights, the builder would sacrifice 1 of the 2 awesome show mode functions of the Ghozt V5 Sequencer, in trade for that input being used to trigger the reverse LEDs.
Well I like to have my cake and eat it too!
That's why I started using this technique to swap power to ground, and lighting up LEDs using the existing circuit originally intended for that very thing, so I can play with Show mode 1, AND Show mode 2 on my Ghozt Sequencer ๐Ÿ™‚
Let me know how you would use this relay setup, and definitely check out my other video on relays if you want to really stretch your brain and get creative with me on my last video about them ๐Ÿ™‚
Have a great weekend!
-Chris

These sequential tail lights are dope, but i have a big problem. If i want them to do that, cool sequential, i have to find a new way to send power to the reverse lights. That's because the power going into the reverse lights is already there, but now i have to give them ground in order to turn them on. So how do we take a positive signal and turn it into ground? We're gon na use a relay.

Now, aside from this little five pin relay we're also gon na grab a couple, little female connectors and then i'm gon na get one slightly bigger version of that same exact thing and last. We need our wires. So for this i'm going to grab some black wire and i'm going to grab some white wire other than that. The only other tools i need are just these automatic wire strippers and a pair of crimpers and all i'm going to do is i'm going to strip the end of this wire and then i'm going to strip the end of this wire, cut it and then strip.

The ends of those wires as well, okay, so now we are going to take the two ends of our black wire. We are going to twist them together and we are just going to crimp this slightly bigger size connector on there. If we want to make that a little bit easier, we just do a little pre-squeeze to kind of oval it out just a little bit there, and then we should be able to crimp it into that connector nice and easy the people kindly over there at tick. Tock told me i was crimping things upside down, so i need to make sure that i do that properly.

Okay, so that is our first crimp. Second crimp is going to be a smaller little pink connector here and now half the battle has already been won. We're just going to plug these guys in at the spots i'm showing you right here i'll make a little diagram. You could download too, and that is our ground.

That's where we're all good. Now we just got to connect our power, we're going to strip both ends and we're going to crimp on this little female connector here and then last. I will explain what all of these things that we have created are actually doing. This one is just going to go in to the third spot right there and we are all set all right so with those connections i'm going to give this guy ground and that what you can actually hear is the physical sound of it changing from a power Signal to a ground signal now, let's actually use it first before we dive into that.

I want to show you the actual part that i'm working with. So this is the dual color little medallion, that's totally sequential for turn signals! That's because this is going to a european customer and in europe they can't have red turn. Signals like my typical, sequential gtr tail lights. Have so we're putting these little guys in there and they have all of the white connections bridged together.

So there's no sequential feature, but all of the amber individually have little ground channels and if i give them ground and i give the whole board power, then they will individually. Do the cool signals like i'll. Show you right now, but where that's a problem is that it already has power going into the board. So if the car sends this little thing power for the reverse lights, it doesn't change anything.
It needs to send it ground. So, that's why we're going to convert the signal using the little relay that we just built and i'm going to show you what it looks like when combined on these actual taillights all right, let me show you the madness coming off of these things, really quick. So we have our power and ground for just the reverse lights alone. If i power those things up, they look great, but the thing is this is also a ghost sequencer that needs to have power at all times, so that these things can work with the car.

On with the car off anytime, so we don't want to have the power and ground connected to our reverse lights at all times. Obviously, so what we're going to do is we're going to disconnect the ground and instead we are going to take the signal from the car and send it down this little white wire. Meanwhile, this black wire can go to the ground right there on the main vehicle harness, and we can just put a connector on here to go into this relay. Let's check a couple functions.

First off, we've got our turn signals and, let's see how those things look when we have our parking lights on as well, look pretty cool all right and then the big moment of truth with all this stuff is the reverse light hey. So you can hear that relay working and we know that it's doing this so we're set and matter of fact. I think i can even try to do it. Hey that's crazy, all right! So all of those things work, our brake lights got that f1 triple flash on there.

So yeah. This was a pretty cool success. I'd say: okay, so let's go talk about this relay. I want to show you.

I want to make sure that you know all of these little pins what they do. So this is not confusing and you don't even need a diagram later gon na unplug everything really quick and we'll break it down piece by piece. Okay, so most importantly, this little dude on the bottom here is: it's marked with the number 30., so 30 is going to be whatever goes into this. This is typically what you would have connected to like a fused wire going to your battery.

In this case, it's just going to our ground wire and then that ground wire is also plugging in right here, which is usually where i ground all of my relays anyway. And the interesting thing is that, whatever comes into 30 comes straight back out this little middle pin, which is 87a, so, let's just plug this in and just know that whatever is going into the bottom pin that's also what's coming out the middle. Now this wire, our white one whenever it gets 12 volts, it's going to make this thing switch inside and now whatever was coming from 30 and coming out of 87a in the middle, is now going to start coming out of this top one which is pin 87. So that's why pin 87 is what we plugged into the tail light ground for the reverse lights.
If we just want to do a stupid little test to check continuity, we can see that if we connect the black wire right here - and we connect to this top pin, nothing happens, but when we touch this middle guy, it basically is telling me that this is The same wire it's coming in the bottom and it's coming out the relay so now when i connect the ground wire and the power wire you can hear it switch and what we can do is check continuity now between the black wire and the top. So now it's changed without that it's not connected anymore. Now, if you're interested in all of that cool sequential stuff, i am doing a bunch of free stuff for my group sequential squad sign up below it's in the description, i'm going to put it in the comment section as well, i'm also going to link up another Video about relays right here so definitely go check that out.

By Chris

12 thoughts on “How to change positive to negative”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tomimoto says:

    I would have never guessed to use a relay! Those taillights are amazing now!!

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Keith Poley says:

    This was an exceptional tutorial video Chris. I love it when you show strange circumstances videos. Please do more of these because they are the most interesting!

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Brian Crockett says:

    What dual color led medallion is that? Doing a Jeep front turn signal project and the size looks close.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Garforce II says:

    this knowledge will be great to implement

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tyrone Begay says:

    Wowww. Thats some kool lights..๐Ÿ˜ฒ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ™

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Hillbilly Hydrographics & Vinyl says:

    Great lesson, relays are a lost skill since most vehicles come factory with antitheft and remote start. They just don't get used as often. ๐Ÿ‘

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DJ Boom says:

    That looks dope๐Ÿ˜Ž๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿผ๐Ÿ‘Œ๐Ÿผ

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Fablighting says:

    Dude its only beacuse I met you I know a relay can be wired to send ground " EXPERIMENT FRIDAYS TO DA WORLD๐Ÿ’ฏ๐Ÿ’ฏ๐Ÿ’ฏ๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’š๐Ÿ’š

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars RememberBerries says:

    Keep up the great work man!

    Inspirational

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars RememberBerries says:

    Iโ€™m taking your class rn and soon will be paying for the paid course

    Watching legit all your videos and liking all your content.

    I want to start a business of my own but really only for family hahah

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Katsu Kan says:

    So a mosfet would be simpler (could go into the taillight), smaller, more energy-saving, lifelong, and actually the technically better solution

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars NAJTU GRAN LUX says:

    Thanks dude quick relay lesson.

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