TRAILER LIGHTING OUTAGE DETECTION CIRCUIT

摘要

A vehicle LED lighting outage detection circuit is disclosed for detecting a fault in the LED light and automatically increasing the power drawn from the light power supply in response to the fault. A complementary detection circuit is also disclosed for detecting the increased power draw and signaling a fault to an operator. The increased power draw can be selected to be in the form of a pulse that settles to a lower power draw state after a time to avoid excessive and wasteful power draw. The system can be mounted in a vehicle and, more particularly, to a semi-tractor truck, or installed as a retrofit system into an existing semi-trailer system.

主权项

1. A circuit for detecting outage of an LED, comprising:
a load element electrically coupled between a power supply and a ground reference; a detection circuit adapted to detect outage of an LED; and a control circuit responsive to one or more electrical variances of the detection circuit, the control circuit configured to induce increased electrical current flowing between the load element and the ground reference, and/or induce increased electrical current flowing between the load element and the power supply, when the detection circuit detects a failure in the LED; and a fault detection circuit electrically coupled to the load element and an LED fault signal, the fault detection circuit configured to detect the increased current flow caused by the control circuit and automatically activate the LED fault signal in response to the increased current flow.