Question for battery experts.

Question for battery experts.

I built and installed my city-lights flasher setup. Right now I have the timer set for 28 seconds off, 2 seconds on, 28 seconds off, 2 seconds on..repeating...while the ignition is off (when the ignition is on a relay cuts power to the whole thing).

So, the bulbs are on for 4 seconds per minute. 4 seconds x 60 minutes (hour) = 240 seconds the bulbs are lit per hour. If I park the car at 3:30 after driving home, and I don't start it again until 7:30 the next morning, that's 17 hours. 17 hours x 240 seconds means the bulbs will be on 4080 seconds total per night. 4080 seconds / 60 seconds per minute, means the bulbs will be lit 68 minutes total per night.

The bulbs are five watts, there are two of them. 10 watts @ 12.6 volts is about 800 ma. The timer circuit itself draws about another 200ma, so make it a even 1 amp draw when the lamps are lit.

Will drawing 68 amps out of the battery overnight mean I won't be starting it the next morning?

Yeah, I know, wait until tomorrow morning and see. But if someone tells me it will drain it, I'll go pull the fuse on it now.

This is only until I find some high-bright 12V yellow LEDs. Then this would be moot.

It's working as we speak. Looks either nifty, or "ricer". :?:

But my wife called me a "geek".

Sure I'd build you one. It was somewhere around 40 bucks, without the light sockets. Toyota wanted 20 bucks A PEICE for the real city light sockets. Screw that, I found some generic sockets at AutoZone for 3 each.

I just found the LED I want to use and used a dropping resistor calculator I found on-line. So I'll be switching to white LEDs tomorrow, and won't have to worry 'bout it.

I'll give it a shot. I've got a ancient digital camera, not sure it's gonna get anything without the flash.

Not in my case. I bought a timer kit and assembled it.

http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/elec/ck1614.htm

I used a 12V 10A SPDT relay from Radio Shack to control when the flasher is active. I tapped off my corner light, when it is lit it pulls the relay in and cuts power to the timer. Put it in a Radio Shack project box and mounted it on the plastic shield under the car on the left side.

The timer is pretty nifty. You can set it to cycle from between once a second, to I think something like 4 days. Was pretty easy to assemble, took about a hour, with interruptions from my family.

Sure, I'm AlwaysOverLoaded on AIM. But I'm heading for the sack now, I'll be on IM about 8 AM tomorrow.

I'll PM you my e-mail address tomorrow also.

J

Good calculating oxy, I didn't consider doing a "average" draw.

The car fired right up. I'll get my LEDs today, so looks like I survived Johnny's Latest Frankenstien Project!

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Didn't try last night, didn't wanna dig the camera out. Probably can't tonight, since it's raining now and supposed to storm tonight. :cry:

My "new" old car will be here Sunday morning, so I'll have to get all three Toys together, stand my family in front of them and bug the neighbor to press the shutter. I'll get the city flasher pics then too.

I tried to get that pic for the avatar into my signature but couldn't finger out how to do it?