wiring a cig lighter adapter...............

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LeonF

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have a 3 pin dri fit socket and am wiring a plug to a cigarrette lighter type socket to use with various devices. Simple question please...the cigar socket has three wire points, lugs whatever you call them..I can sort out neg and pos, but am I right in assuming the middle one is the earth ?? all three are in a straight horizontal line. Ta
 
Check with a meter on a resistance range or continuity if fitted or with a battery and bulb to see if any two are common.

If it is a car type socket it is probably illuminated in which case one of the connections is the illumination bulb. If that is the case then a multimeter will find a circuit between the bulb connection and the negative connection with a resistance of several 10s of ohms. (Assuming a bulb is fitted of course)

Make sure you use wiring that will stand the largest load you want to put on the socket and A FUSE that will just take that load as well.
 
Sure I understand about the DC bit, but why does one have a 3 pin dri fit socket on a boat then ?? They make them in two pin .. or is it to avoid reversing the polarity when plugging in ?? I've ascertained which is the pos and neg in the socket.. so know how to wire the plug, just need to know the other cig lighter end...
 
On my boat I have a 3 pin plug for the lights on the mast. A +ve pin for the steaming light, another for the tricolour and a common negative pin. I'm sure there must be many other applications. The design of the two pin plugs makes them non-reversible.


LeonF, you still havn't sorted out your avatar, what's gone wrong?
 
Well I tried reducing it using Microsoft Picture It, cropping the pic then saving it, and when I got it down to a size that I could load the blurred image is what I came up with!! Any suggestions ??
 
I don't know MS Picture It. I reduced my dragon from about 300 pixels square using PhotoStudio 2000 (that originally came with a scanner) and changed the background colour and tidied up the outline a bit with MS Paint. I could have done it all with PS 2000 I suppose but I'm more familiar with Paint.

I guess the results depend on the sharpness of the original. This digital stuff seems to loose sharpness even when it's reduced, unlike real photography and the more times you manipulate images the worse they seem to get.

You have reduced your image more than necessary. Perhaps you should crop or cut and paste the area you want then reduce it, preserving the aspect ratio, so that the largest dimension is 80 pixels.

I know very liitle about all this but perhaps one of the real experts will jump in with some decent advice.
 
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