Isn’t it amazing…

…how solutions come to you in a flash. Whilst filling our hot water bottles I had one of those brilliant ‘light bulb’ moments. It is way to painful to call it a light bulb moment as I’m describing why I think the indicator light bulbs on the winch switch are dim.

This picture is the closest I can come to describing how the lights on the switch are not real bright. It’s difficult as if I take the photo with the flash, it’ll appear dim, if I take it without the flash, it will appear bright.

Here is the wiring diagram. Pin 2 is the common positive, and the switch positions switch current to PIN 1 in up position, and PIN 2 in the down position.

 

When testing the pins on the switch today at work with my makeshift multimeter, I was confused as to why when I monitored pins 1,2 & 3, they would all show continuity wether the switch was in the up OR down position.

This was most confusing… until I suspected that the current was feeding back through the lights, as they are both connected for either position.

Anyway, I suspect, as I have not connected PIN 7 to earth, the only way the current could have got through, is as part of the circuit. Now welcome to year 7 science, if you hook up two bulbs in series, they each get half the voltage (not half the current)… soooo the voltage for each bulb is 6V, not the normal 12V it was designed for.

The proof will be if I earth PIN7 tomorrow, we should get a better result.