I love my campsite lights. I thought could be even better if I could control them remotely. I'm not willing to carry another keychain remote though so I had to figure out how to control them with my factory GM fob. I had several ideas, most of them were horrible, before figuring out a good one. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.
My factory remote has buttons for
lock,
unlock,
remote start,
panic and
unlock only rear door. I never use the
unlock only rear door button. The guy at the dealer told me is was for when you need to load your van but you're scared someone will jump in the driver seat and steal it while you're loading. If I'm ever in that situation remind me to get a new job.
Since I never use the
unlock only rear door button (lets call it RDO from now on) I wanted to repurpose it as a switch for the roof lights. I used a combination of two 12v 5 pin relays and a latching relay logic board I got from amazon
http://www.amazon.com/ELECTRONICS-S...&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00
I found the wiring diagram for the lock and unlock circuits in the GM upfitter electric manual
https://www.gmupfitter.com/pdflists/view/34
I tapped into the fuse block under the driver seat for the CDO unlock and door unlock relay outputs. The relays are in series.
When there is a RDO unlock pulse and a pulse on the rest of the doors there is no output to the latching relay.
when there is a RDO unlock pulse and no other pulse there is an output to the latching relay.
The lock pulses are not connected to the circuit.
You can see in the video that the lights only turn on and off with the RDO button. Lock and Unlock buttons do nothing.
I stuffed it all into a black plastic project box. The two relays are under the circuit board.
And placed it behind the driver seat, above my CTEK C250S Dual & Smartpass.
