Hey guys! I was hoping one of you could help me out with this issue. I work at a mobile electronics shop and we install a lot of aftermarket HID headlights in new vehicles. The problem with this is the computer recognizes that the stock incandescent bulbs are no longer installed and will turn on a "light out" indicator on the dashboard. The solution to this is to install a high wattage resistor between the two headlight leads (12v and ground when the headlight switch is in the "on" position). This works great, however, the resistors always get incredibly hot.
I was hoping to design a 12v DC circuit that could emulate the characteristics of an incandescent light bulb. More specifically, this circuit would need to allow roughly 3 amps to flow from the 12v headlight lead to the ground headlight lead to trick the computer into thinking there is a functional incandescent bulb present. Because we're dissipating 36W of energy I'm not sure if there is any way to do this without the circuit getting extremely hot but I would like to see what you experts have to say before I give up all hope. The incredibly hot resistors seem very barbaric and I hope there is a smarter solution.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and if you need any more information do not hesitate to ask.
Thanks guys!
I was hoping to design a 12v DC circuit that could emulate the characteristics of an incandescent light bulb. More specifically, this circuit would need to allow roughly 3 amps to flow from the 12v headlight lead to the ground headlight lead to trick the computer into thinking there is a functional incandescent bulb present. Because we're dissipating 36W of energy I'm not sure if there is any way to do this without the circuit getting extremely hot but I would like to see what you experts have to say before I give up all hope. The incredibly hot resistors seem very barbaric and I hope there is a smarter solution.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and if you need any more information do not hesitate to ask.
Thanks guys!