Hi All, as we know with the early Palladium Model S cars, the 'ambient lighting' is not what we thought it would be. It is simple white lighting in the door bins, under the seats and floor wells. It works well but I crave that cool coloured ambient lighting from my previous M540d so I am on it. I have seen many videos for the Model 3 and Y and there are TONS of kits out there but I have not found anything for our cars so I am taking a go at it.
The lights I chose as they are very small 'pipe lights' with a tab that tucks between the trim. These are active LED strips and not fibre tubes with a light source only at one end. It is impossible from the pictures to confirm the size of the actual light pipe but there is a very short video on Ali at this store that shows them to be what I hope they are.
I ordered a '6 in 1' kit as well as a '1 in 1' kit. These kits are ALL for the 3/Y and the dash is too wide on the S for the long piece in the '6 in 1' so my plan is to use the two long strips on the main dash and then the four doors. You can get much more complex kits from this store that have foot well lights etc but being a simple Engineer....I am going with the same program I did with the tilt screen..... select my favourite color and leave it alone. I don't need rainbows and light chasers... just a nice ambient strip light. I saw another video on Youtube where a guy designed a nice simple circuit that can tap into the existing ambient lights and trigger the new lighting system to go on and off so it then works from the touch screen. If I can buy vs build I will do it so this is on the way.
For my projects, I take power from the connector that feeds the centre console charging tray. Lots of juice there and EASY to get at. This little board will take + and - from that point and the 'trigger' will be tied to the + wire on one of the ambient lights that exist. The Tesla ambient lighting circuit is super sensitive (thus why there are NO third party replacements for the Palladium Model S ambient lights - Abstract Ocean tried for two years now an no joy) so you cannot power the new lighting system from that circuit but you can use it to turn it on and off through this little box.
It is Chinese New Year so I won't get them for probably a month but I will post updates.
INVITE ! If you have personally done an ambient lighting update to your Palladium Model S can you please post your project in this thread. I am looking to build a thread of projects that the general person can buy the parts easily and do it themselves and not have to use a professional installer or know a friend who knows a friend who can code our cars to make it work. Those threads exclude 99% of the people here so if you have done it yourself, please post links to what you purchased and any photos.
I don't have the time to video and produce a 'how to' video but I will take LOTS of photos and will create and post a 'how to' guide as I did when I figured out that one could manually tilt the screen on our early Palladium S cars with the mount that was provided but did not have motors installed.
The lights I chose as they are very small 'pipe lights' with a tab that tucks between the trim. These are active LED strips and not fibre tubes with a light source only at one end. It is impossible from the pictures to confirm the size of the actual light pipe but there is a very short video on Ali at this store that shows them to be what I hope they are.
I ordered a '6 in 1' kit as well as a '1 in 1' kit. These kits are ALL for the 3/Y and the dash is too wide on the S for the long piece in the '6 in 1' so my plan is to use the two long strips on the main dash and then the four doors. You can get much more complex kits from this store that have foot well lights etc but being a simple Engineer....I am going with the same program I did with the tilt screen..... select my favourite color and leave it alone. I don't need rainbows and light chasers... just a nice ambient strip light. I saw another video on Youtube where a guy designed a nice simple circuit that can tap into the existing ambient lights and trigger the new lighting system to go on and off so it then works from the touch screen. If I can buy vs build I will do it so this is on the way.
For my projects, I take power from the connector that feeds the centre console charging tray. Lots of juice there and EASY to get at. This little board will take + and - from that point and the 'trigger' will be tied to the + wire on one of the ambient lights that exist. The Tesla ambient lighting circuit is super sensitive (thus why there are NO third party replacements for the Palladium Model S ambient lights - Abstract Ocean tried for two years now an no joy) so you cannot power the new lighting system from that circuit but you can use it to turn it on and off through this little box.
It is Chinese New Year so I won't get them for probably a month but I will post updates.
INVITE ! If you have personally done an ambient lighting update to your Palladium Model S can you please post your project in this thread. I am looking to build a thread of projects that the general person can buy the parts easily and do it themselves and not have to use a professional installer or know a friend who knows a friend who can code our cars to make it work. Those threads exclude 99% of the people here so if you have done it yourself, please post links to what you purchased and any photos.
I don't have the time to video and produce a 'how to' video but I will take LOTS of photos and will create and post a 'how to' guide as I did when I figured out that one could manually tilt the screen on our early Palladium S cars with the mount that was provided but did not have motors installed.