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From: roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Car Battery Rechargers
Message-ID: <1990Oct8.201401.1742@phri.nyu.edu>
Date: 8 Oct 90 20:14:01 GMT
References: <1990Oct4.222556.20668@athena.mit.edu> <1990Oct8.150643.9818@athena.mit.edu>
Sender: news@phri.nyu.edu (News System)
Organization: Public Health Research Institute, New York City
Lines: 19

erspert@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) writes:
> Since my concern was from leaving my lights on and not cold weather, I am
> now considering building a device I saw [...]  Of course, learning to
> triple-check that I turned off my lights might be easier.

	Having done this on at least one or two occassions, I'm sensitive to
this issue.  I never understood why it is *possible* to do that.  Why don't
the lights go out automatically when you turn the ignition off?  All it
would take is moving the feed to the lighting circuit to after the ignition
"power on" relay (and maybe putting in a heavier relay to handle the extra
load).  For those rare times when you really do want to keep your lights on
with the motor off, you could have some sort of positive action over-ride
(say, requiring you to push or twist the light switch in some unusual way so
you don't do it by mistake).
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"Arcane?  Did you say arcane?  It wouldn't be Unix if it wasn't arcane!"