Deski

What's good fellow Cherokee owners?

First time poster, but got a question for you guys. I just finished a project of replacing my headliner in my 2000 Cherokee XJ with a tapestry of a galaxy. Something different but looks real amazing! Even did the sun visors to match! After I got the headliner back in, I had this great idea to put some lights in the headliner to look like stars. What I'm looking to do is when I open the door, the lights (or stars) come on just like the dome lights. So my question is, how can I make this happen? I'm still looking into some small string LED lights to put in the headliner, but if you have any recommendations, that would be great too.

PNWjeeper

Unfortunately I can't be of any help on this but I love the idea. If you get it going I'd like to see some pics when you get it setup.

Questions I have though are
1. Are these replacing the dome lights?
2. Do you want them on only when dome lights are activated?
3. Would you have them on some type of dimmer so they can be on when cars on but regular dome lights aren't activated so they could be on for night driving?

TRCM

Get some 12v xmas style lights, and put them in the headliner. Wire them in where the existing dome light is connected, and that should work.

HYRYSC

Yep, what he said.

I replaced my interior lights with LEDs (but did not do the sparkly, night scene thing) and it was easy and a substantial upgrade in light output.

Probably the best thing to do is remove the headliner, poke some holes everywhere you want a light (maybe you could get a black light to simulate a black hole?!) and then do the christmas tree light thing on the backside, hot glue everything down, reinstall the headliner, impress your friends.

TRCM

ha ha . . . . black light . . . . . -> . . . . . black hole . . . . ha ha

extrashaky

You'll be looking for "grain of wheat" or "grain of rice" style light strings. These are much tinier than the regular Christmas lights you usually see. I believe they do come in a 12v variety.

I once worked on a commercial where a prop guy shoved a grain of rice bulb up a dead firefly's ***, mounted it inside a jar and rigged it to light up when it was placed in a specific spot on a specially rigged tree stump. In the commercial, kids were catching fireflies. At the end of the commercial, mom calls the kids in for dinner, and one of the kids puts the jar down on the stump and runs off as the firefly's *** pulses in the dim twilight.

That'll give you a good idea of how big a grain of rice bulb is.

Deski

I would keep the original dome lights because there's no reason to get rid of them. I think the "star lights" would just an extra feature to my Jeep. I think having them on all the time would be distracting so I'd leave them only when the dome light is active.

The "grain of rice" lights look exactly what I was thinking about using. Just tiny LEDs to bring a small star look.

The connector has about (number) wires and I'm not sure what is the one for turning on the dome lights. I'm alright with my soldering, just need to know which wire is the right one to connect to. Anyone know of any diagrams?

Deski

So I found these small fairy lights here and they're perfect. I bought a smaller strain so I could use it as a guinea pig. I just tried to hook them up to the back dome light. Shoving the wires into the slots of the connector and nothing. I tried just touching the wires from the lights to the metal were the bulb goes and it would light up for a tiny second but go off. I'm still not sure which wire I have to hook it up to make it work. The lights used a battery pack, using 3 AA batteries so it's only using 4.5 volts.

Is that too little for them to work off the dome light?

Here's a pic of the wires from the fairy lights



Would anyone know which of these wires to hook them up to make it work?