Cheap, Easy headlight Reminder

[Oldman]

Courtesy MattB:

It hasn't happened yet, but Murphy's law says it will one day; I'll forget to turn off my headlights. I often find myself driving in the morning when it's dark, and getting out of the car when its light, so my lights aren't the first thing I necessarily think of. 

So to make sure that I never end up with a flat battery from leaving my lights on, I hooked up a simple headlight reminder buzzer to sound when the headlights are on and my door is open. 

There are kits you can buy from places like JayCar that essentially do the same thing, but they cost more (one at JayCar was $25), are much more complicated, take longer to make and install and require you to be able to solder circuit-work (something which not everyone can do). The JayCar kit also needed to be hooked up to your lights, doors, ignition, power and earth. 

All my solution requires is a cheap piezo buzzer, which you can get from any electronics store, and some wire or alligator clips. 

Firstly I traced the parker light power wire back from the headlights to the fusebox. On my '76 it was the second post on the first fuse as shown below. I then connected this to the positive side of my buzzer. Next I hooked up an alligator clip to the doorswitch and then connected this to the negative side of the buzzer. The result: when the parker lights are on and the door opens the buzzer sounds. When the lights are off nothing happens. 

Here are the pics:

The fusebox:
The photo's not the best but the camera was running out of battery and I couldn't get a good angle.


The buzzer:


And the doorswitch:


There are advantages to the kit I looked at though. It only went off when the ignition was off and then the door was opened with the lights on. The buzzer timed out after 10 seconds. And It could be hooked up directly to the ignition so that as soon as the ignition was off and the headlights on the buzzer sounded. None of these really appealed to me too much, and with how much simpler my solution was I'm happy with the trade off. 

It's been working great for a couple of days. All I have to do now to replace the alligator clips and solder it all in, but that's just to tidy it all up and make it less likely to accidentally earth and start buzzing for no reason. You could just wrap the exposed metal with electrical tape and keep the alligator clips if you wanted. And if you run the wires up under the dash you can't even notice it.

Anyways, I just thought I'd show anyone who was interested. I hope it stops at least one person getting a flat battery 
 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2008