Add Bed Light Switch to Truck Bed

[hounddog66]

Maybe a stupid question, but will this light turn off after a period of time?  I put bed lighting in my Ram when I had it and forgot to turn it off one night. Bamm, dead battery the next day.

[UnlimitedMatt]

12 hours ago, hounddog66 said:

Maybe a stupid question, but will this light turn off after a period of time?  I put bed lighting in my Ram when I had it and forgot to turn it off one night. Bamm, dead battery the next day.

To avoid this from happening to me, I installed a timer to automatically shut my bed lights off after 10 minutes.

 

My process was:

Install 6ft of a led light strip to each side of my bed cover side rails.

Tap the constant hot power wire on my 7 wire trailer plug and add a 5 amp fuse.

Wire up the timer into a small project box with a power button and a master switch.

Mount project box under the bed rail near the tailgate with double sided tape.

 

Here is a pic of my set up in my last truck before I moved it to my Silverado.

 

 

[hounddog66]

43 minutes ago, UnlimitedMatt said:

To avoid this from happening to me, I installed a timer to automatically shut my bed lights off after 10 minutes.

 

My process was:

Install 6ft of a led light strip to each side of my bed cover side rails.

Tap the constant hot power wire on my 7 wire trailer plug and add a 5 amp fuse.

Wire up the timer into a small project box with a power button and a master switch.

Mount project box under the bed rail near the tailgate with double sided tape.

 

Thanks for the great idea.  I was also thinking of putting  a plunger switch on the tailgate. I installed LED strip lights in my old Ram and prefer them over the stock GM bed lamps as they provide much better illumination.

[Dresari702]

On 1/26/2021 at 9:18 PM, hounddog66 said:

Maybe a stupid question, but will this light turn off after a period of time?  I put bed lighting in my Ram when I had it and forgot to turn it off one night. Bamm, dead battery the next day.

I doubt it.  Looks like a simple on/off switch was used (no built-in timer). And the circuit doesn't go through the BCM, so there's no software to time-out after so many minutes.

[todd308]

I've played with 2 ways to do this, once in my 20' and once in my 21' lessons learned were applied the second time around.  I didn't like magnetic or contact switch options because there just seems like no good place to mount them in the bed.   Someone on another thread wired into the brake light power, the idea being at night the bed lights would come on whenever you locked the truck (for up to 2 minutes) and you could simply tap the keyfob to engage them again.  This sounded okay, but I wanted control of the lights in the day as well and at least on my AT4 this only works at night.   You can of course wire into the factory bed lights, but then you can only turn them on from the switch inside the truck.  

 

I ran fused Anchor marine 10ga power wire from the battery back along the main wiring harness and up through the rear drivers tail light.  Overkill for sure for bed lights, but thinking if I ever want to power something else back there I have already done the wiring.  Any connections were soldered and adhesive heat shrink tubing used to seal them.  If you haven't used the adhesive heat shrink tubing, I won't use anything else anymore.   I used a delphi weather pack sealed connector to connect the power/ground to the bed lights harness. 

 

The first time around I just used the included on/off switch included with the bed lights, it worked okay, but over the course of a year or so I ran the battery dead a couple times by leaving them on.   So I added a mini timer, which really is overkill for this need but I had one laying around and it's tiny and epoxy sealed it's weatherproof (timers.shop).  I set the delay for around 15 minutes.  So you hit the switch, and after 15 minutes the timer shuts it off, if you cycle the switch you get another 15 minutes.  This setup worked fine.  I also liked the idea of using a low voltage cut off, but I could never find one that didn't need to be put in a fairly large case to be sealed, and I also liked the idea more of just using 10-15 timer, as opposed to running the battery down a lot further to a voltage cut off, should I forget the switch on.  The timer also only drew 2ma, so it was a tiny draw where many of the low voltage cut offs were around 100ma. 

 

Timer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015Z2EQCU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Delphi Connectors (need a special crimp tool for these): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076MFXVZL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

I'm putting the same lights in my 21' but this time I'm going to mess around with a motion sensor for the lights.  It has an built in 5 min timer.   The real question will be is how reliable this will be in turning off.  I've seen motion sensors have issues with drafty areas, so if some cool/warm wind makes it into the bed will it trigger the lights, some also have problems with motion very close to the sensor.   Should it prove unreliable I'll just go back to the timer setup, but I liked the idea of having hands free bed light activation.   It draws more power than the timer, but still less than the voltage cut off.   It's definitely not weatherproof but the included housing is easy enough to seal up.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WJ9D1NH?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

 

 

[jaimeastin]

DONE!!!

 

Had the parts for a while, but finally had time to do it.  Thank you.

[CajunFlyer]

The directions for the install of the switch on Amazon show a wiring option where the blue LED light in the switch stays on all the time. Has anyone done this? How did you do it but maintain all the same functionality? I installed this mod with 2 LED strip lights in my bed over the weekend and I love it! Would be nice if the lights stayed on to make it easer to see the switch.