Trailer lighting outage detection circuit
AssigneeGrote Industries, Inc.
InventorsTimothy W. Brooks, Eric Thorstensen, Christopher Busse
Life of this patent
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Abstract
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.
Claims11
1-11. (canceled)
A circuit for detecting outage of an LED, comprising:
- means for detecting an outage of an LED;
- the LED electrically coupled to a power supply and a ground reference wherein the LED is powered by current flowing between said power supply and the ground reference;
- and
- means for increasing current flowing between the power supply and said ground reference automatically in response to detection of the outage of an LED.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.