Pros / cons for different wiring options for ambient lighting?

[Hungy13]

Hey I’m new here. I received my 2023 Bronco Black Diamond soft top in December. I’ve made a few mods so far (running boards, IAG ez lift, hood struts) and I’m now ready to add ambient led lighting to the footwells / under seats. I grabbed the Govee lights on sale and have watched installs that wire the lights to the interior fuse box and another that wires the lights into an aux switch. I’m comfortable with either, but what are the differences / pros / cons to the 2 options? Ideally, I’d like the lights to come on when the Bronco doors are open and also stay on while driving (like the OEM ambient lights do when set to “on”). Thanks for any feedback you can offer.

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[Brian_B]

Doors when open - you would need to tap into the existing interior light circuit, or add your own switch to the doors. There's a guy who did the former here, you need to be comfortable with soldering.

https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/threads/transistor-irfp-9140-mosfet-for-interior-lights.66956/

I don't know of anyone that added switches to the doors, but RSE does it with a magnet for their powered steps, and hood switches are cheap if you were willing to drill somewhere - could do something similar.

To my knowledge - most things in the fuse box are either hot all the time, or only hot with ACC or Running, so they wouldn't necessarily just turn on with the door opening.

But, the lights won't stay on that method - there you would either need to use a relay latch from the first method, or wire it to a switch (or do both through diodes so that either/both would be able to turn on the lights).

Another method would be maybe contacting XBB - they make a CAN bus monitor that is primarily intended for looking for high beams - but I would be surprised if they don't have the ability to look for interior lighting as well over CAN bus.

https://www.xbb.se/en/