Light Bar Switch Wiring Guide With Pictures! - Cali Raised & Air On Board Switches

I wanted to write a guide with pictures demonstrating wiring the switches to operate led light bars from Nilight and Auxbeam. I'm using a Cali Raised switch with the ditch lights and Air On Board switches for the bumper lights. I put off wiring the switches for weeks because I wasn't quite sure how to do it, but now that I've figured it out I'll share my knowledge and how I accomplished the task.

At a high level, this guide aims to accomplish:
1. Functioning led light bars of various brands operated via OEM switch.
2. Switch led illumination that operates with dash lights.
3. Switch led illumination when light bar is "active" and "off" when light bar is off.
5. Switch leds/light bar off when vehicle is off. (to prevent battery drain)

These are the Nilight ditch lights installed and wired to the relay with the provided wiring kit.



These are the 10" Auxbeam bumper lights installed in the lower grille area and wired to the relay using provided wiring kit. These Auxbeam lights have two light patterns - each light contains a flood and a spot beam. You can control each beam pattern separately with two switches, but I decided to connect both sets together and have all leds turn ON/OFF with the same switch.



This is the relay from the Nilight ditch light wiring kit.


Nilight Relay:
BIG RED - 12v DC power - connect either directly to the battery or with a fuse tap to the fuse box (more on this in the next step).
WHITE - Light bar 12v power - runs to led light bars and makes them bright.
BLACK - Ground - runs to led light bars, to chasis, to switch. Ground is ground is ground.

Brackets indicate wires run through firewall into cab.
[[[YELLOW - 12V DC Power - provides 12v to switch.
Small RED - Relay Trigger - provides 12v to relay FROM SWITCH, illuminates the switch LED symbol.
Small BLACK - Ground - provides a convenient ground to the switch.]]]




Cali Raised Ditch Switch and Wire Harness

General description of wire harness:
GREEN - Connect to any 12v DC power source.
RED1 - Connect to relay (typically pin 86), illuminates icon led.
RED2 - Connect to tail light circuit with add a tap, illuminates text led.
BLACK - Connect to Ground.

How to connect to Nilight wire harness to the Cali Raised Switch:

[GREEN > YELLOW]​

SWITCH [RED1 > small RED] RELAY

[RED2 > TAIL LIGHT CIRCUIT]
[BLACK > small BLACK]​

I drew up a diagram to show how everything is connected.




Auxbeam relay wire harness:
There are two relays because the bumper lights have both a spot and flood beam that you can control separately with two switches. I decided to wire both together and control them with only one switch. Instead of wiring the blue and white wires together into one relay, I ran both the white and blue relay trigger wires into the cab and connected them together at the switch. One switch controls two relays, each relay control their section of led beam, one relay for the spot beam and one relay for the flood beam.

WHITE - 12V POWER - to led light bar.
BLUE - 12V POWER - to led light bar.
BLACK - Ground to chasis and led light bar.
RED - 12V POWER - from battery or fuse box.

Brackets indicate wires run through firewall to cab and to switch:
[[[BLUE - Relay Trigger - provides 12v to relay FROM SWITCH, illuminates the switch LED symbol.
WHITE - Relay Trigger - provides 12v to relay FROM SWITCH, illuminates the switch LED symbol.
]]]




I drew up a diagram to show how everything is connected.


Air On Board Switch and Wire Harness
You'll notice right away that the wire colors for the AoB switch are different than the Cali Raised and different from the CH4x4 diagram. Don't worry! Just flip the harness clip in the same orientation as Cali Raised, and voila! It's the same.

General description of wire harness:
RED (GREEN) - Connect to any 12v DC power source.
GREEN (RED1) - Connect to relay (typically pin 86), illuminates icon led.
BLUE (RED2) - Connect to tail light circuit with add a tap, illuminates text led.
BLACK - Connect to Ground.

How to connect to AUXBEAM wire harness to the Air On Board Switch:

[RED > 12v from relay/battery/fuse box (this I spliced to GREEN/YELLOW from Cali Raised Switch)]​

SWITCH [GREEN > WHITE + BLUE] RELAY

[BLUE > TAIL LIGHT CIRCUIT]
[BLACK > GROUND from fuse box, chasis etc. (I spliced to Ground from Cali Raised Switch]

The Auxbeam wire harness didn't have 12v/ground wires attached to the relay, they instead came as separate wires that you hook up to 12v and ground. I opted to splice into the wires from the Nilight harness.​

This is a diagram of how I wired the AoB and CR switches to share the 12v headlight power, 12v tail light power, and ground.



Connecting Everything to Power

What I did was put an add a tap into one of the headlight fuses. The two on the right are for the L and R low beams and the two on the left are for the L and R hi beams. This will only allow the led light bars to have power when the headlights or hi-beams are on, meaning you won't leave the light bars on accidentally. Our Tacomas come with a circuit that turns the headlights off after a set amount of time so the battery doesn't get drained. This is the circuit you've just tapped into.

Place add a tap into low beam fuse slot if you want led light bars to have power when headlights are on.

Place add a tap into hi-beam fuse slot if you want led light bars to have power when hi-beams are on. ADDED BONUS: If you leave the light bar switches on, you'll be able to turn the light bars ON/OFF with the hi-beam lever. Pretty sweet eh?



I placed the spade connector from the Nilight relay directly into the add a circuit connector, A) because it fit, B) because there is already and inline fuse before the relay. This will leave the splice connection open for future light installs and allow you to tap into the headlight circuit.



To power the Auxbeam relays and lights, I connected the RED power wire directly to the battery. Since we've connected the GREEN wire from the Cali Raised switch to the RED Air on Board switch, so that all light bars are controlled from the headlights, we can hook it up this way. This also provides power to the larger light bars, and won't pull too much current through the fuse box.


Testing the switch functionality.

Running lights/Tail lights/headlights off, dash illumination off, switch illumination off.



Running lights/Tail lights/headlights on (dash illumination), led text illumination on.



Hi-beams on, dash illumination on, switch text led illumination on, switches OFF position - led icon illumination off



Hi-beams on, dash illumination on, switches ON position, led icon illumination on.



Troubleshooting

If your icon led is illuminated all the time - no matter if switch in on/off position, vehicle off -- you probably have the Relay trigger wire and the 12v wire reversed. I made this same mistake with the ditch lights. I assumed the red wire was the 12v and connected to green switch wire and connected yellow to red 1 switch wire. Verify at the relay if you need to. The 12v wire will be coming from the lead that you use to connect to the battery/fuse box (larger gauge wire).

That's it for now, I'll add some night pics soon.

 

Is it possible to use an add-a-fuse strictly for illuminating the new light switch or is there more it? I already have the light bar wired up but I was hoping to wire up the switch to light up with the other buttons when the headlights turn on.

 

I don’t see why not?

I believe the Tail Fuse is only powered when the head lights are On.
Should be simple enough to test with a test light/meter?
If it is, add-a-fuse and run it for the switch illumination?

@caribe makaira will now for sure.
Let’s see what he says.

 

On the '17 you can by using an add a fuse to the PANEL fuse or the TAIL fuse in the cab fuse panel. If you require them to also dim, you'll need to tap the beige wire of any switches on the dash.
You should get the cargo lamp T harness that @kmorgan3 sells.

 

Thanks both of you! This is really helpful. I don’t think Ill hold off on the dimming but we’ll see, I’ll start with tapping into the tail fuse.

 

this will provide the juice to illuminate with the dash & the dimming.

 

This is a great write up, thanks! I had an internal debate because I was directly going to to the battery vs using a tap on the headlights and I didn't feel like having the light bar switch be a draw on the battery like that. Also, the wiring kit I had had the red and yellow wires swapped so your description help me get that ironed out and now my switch does exactly what I want it to do.

 

Great post and images, but why are you reversing polarity on 30 & 86? Based on the attached image, the positive terminals are 86 & 30 for a ground trigger. In your diagram, 86 is ground

 

Unless the relay has a diode to those terminals it matters not the direction of current for the coil to do its job.