Mercedes Sprinter iVan - Wiring and Lighting

hi welcome back to the next episode of our Sprinter van conversion in today's video we're going to be pulling all of the cables into the van wiring up all of the sockets and lights I'm going to be using two different types of cable this black rubberized cable is a 2 cor 1.5 millimeter cable and I'm going to be using this for all of the 12 volt DC circuits and then this cable is an arctic blue cable this is a 3 core 2.5 millimeter cable and I'm going to be using this for all of the 230 volt sockets these cables are specifically designed to use in outdoor locations they've got a much wider temperature range they're very flexible and the perfect for our application of using it in this mobile home they're also used very widely in marine and the boat industry because they will obviously withstand a lot higher and lot lower temperatures we're going to pull all of the cables into the van will show you exactly what we do there and then once we've done that we'll come back into the workshop and I'm going to show you all of the lighting that we're going to have in the van and we're going to be looking at some really interesting and innovative controls for the lighting in the van we'll look at that a bit later I'll put the specification of both these cables in the description below you'll find a link there of where I purchased these cables and a link to the technical details if you want to purchase it yourself I'm going to take down this existing plastic wiring conduit this section over the door will probably go back but I'm going to remove all of these other sections right that way down through the van and then eventually that wiring harness I'll put some split conduit over it and now get concealed within the high level cupboards these are the old 12-volt power supplies that used to feed the lights in the back of the van I'm gonna remove all these clips pull this cable right the way back to this wiring harness over here and then clip it along this harness and tuck it nice and tidy li out of the way we don't need these anymore for this main wiring harness there's existing harness for the Sprinter I've got this flexible conduit which is already clean pre-split which have been easier to just wrap round it so I don't have to thread these cables through the conduit I can just wrap this over and then secure it with a few cable ties and as some of you probably think that's a little bit overkill to protect that cable but I just want to make sure that it doesn't become damaged at any stage in the future what we've done is just looped a few cable ties together on the top of the van here just to give us a cable way so we can pull the cables from its all the various lights and appliances and as we get to the end we just labeled them all up so we know what they're feeding and then all the fun on the top here I've used some of the existing clips to tie to there and on this side of cable tied into the holes that were already in the van got me a beautiful assistant in order to cable ties II and then on coming along afterwards putting the lighting cables in and zipping them up and then what we'll do is we'll splice them into that life table that I put down that side so each of these junctions I'll join these couple of cables together we've got these plastic kopecks from the top of the van so down here they're just gonna feed the cables down so that will get us from the cupboards above the bed here so we can have the LED lights and a little spotlight above the bed and they'll get us down into the garage and then I can wire across the garage back to the control panel well the first fix wirings done now we've got the back 12-volt DC cables and the blue 230 volt cables where I've run anything through the body of the van I've used this flexible conduit just a sort of future proof it get the cable a bit more protection and also if I ever did need to pull another cable in I can use that as a conduit pull the old cable out put a new one in they got through the pillar come out at the top here and then we've got the main cable loom which will run for all the cupboards at a higher level and I've made sure that they're all labeled so I know exactly what they're for all the way down the van and then we've cabled across connected up the fans they're already pre-wired and all I've done now is I've got a cable at each spotlight location already prepared so when we come to insulate we just need to cut holding the insulation pull those couple of cables through and they're all wired in all the way down the van how ready to go these are the sockets that I'm going to be using in the vein these are going to be powered by the inverter so I can plug 230 volt appliances into the 3-pin socket and I can also use these USB but what I've clean out and brought is these 12 volt USB sockets which you can just wire simply to a battery supply now to give it the same sort of feel and look throughout the van what I've done is I've purchased some blank faceplate single gang face plates the same as the sockets that I'm going to be using to the rest of the van and then what I think I can do here this faceplate is just held on by this back now we can lose that I can find out what that diameter is drill a hole in the center of this faceplate and we can mount that USB socket on that single gang faceplate put the back now on the back to hold it secure and then it will have the same appearance as the rest of the sockets in the van to help me cut the hole in the center of these blank switch plates I've just knocked together a tiny little jig with some scraps out and a scrap bin screwed these to a block of wood and then what I can do is I can slide that plate in there nice and snug that's going to hold it nice and secure in the drill press and then I've got this tungsten carbide tipped drill bit which matches exactly the diameter of those USB sockets and that's going to give me the hole through the plate let's cut a nice neat hole I'll just get a little round file and trim up these edges but let's just test fit there I take this faceplate off the USB charging point do away with that and then mount this there we go that's great USB charging points in that same style faceplate as the other face plates I just want to test these USB sockets before we wire them into the van make sure they're working I'll plug them into my bench power supply to give me 12 volts onto the back of these I'll just put a little voltmeter there just so we can see that we've got twelve point four volts coming on to the back of the USB socket I'll plug me phone in see the phone is obviously come on it's saying it's charging that's working perfectly it'll be great I want to do now if these are the spotlights that are going to be in the roof of the van I just want to test one of these just to make sure that they're working okay and see how bright they are there are an LED spotlight at 1.8 watts so the power consumption of these is very small we've already run all the cables into the van so we don't need all of this wire on here so let's just cut this off we'll strip this back plug it onto my little bench supply and then we'll see how they work okay negative obviously these work off a 12-volt DC supply so straight off the battery's switch on and in how these operate is you just have to touch anywhere on the bezel wow that's bright so we decided to pick these ones because we can have as many or as few lights on as we want and whatever part of the van we're in or we have to do is touch a light and it comes on so I think it's going to be a little bit more convenient and having a single switch and the whole lock comes on it'll be too bright in there if we just want one particular spotlight on we just got to touch it and on it comes yeah they look fantastic the bedroom end of the fan we decided to have a couple of little small reading lights rather than have the main spotlights on in the roof of the van we've got these couple of little reading lights so it'll be underneath the all mounted cupboards one either side of the bed they've got any our own individual switch let's just see what these look like check that they work ok turn on the power supply again these just work off a 12-volt DC supply so again these will run off the leisure batteries it's a nice little bright light yeah they'll be great underneath the kitchen wall cupboard shining down on the kitchen work surface we want a nice bright light there when we cook in so what we've got is a LED strip light I'm gonna run this underneath the cabinet a high level and then this will shine down on the work surface let's just check this is working again these all these lights will run off 12 volts DC so they'll all work off of the leisure battery oh yeah lovely that'll give us a really nice clean white light it's a cool white not a warm white so it give us quite a bright light onto the surface of the kitchen that'll be great this would be the normal way that these LED lights would be controlled you'd have a infrared receiver this is the infrared receiver part this part would be connected to the LED lighting strip but a 12-volt power supply into that receiver and then obviously using the remote control you can turn the lights on and off and set colors and various different options I want to go for something slightly more user-friendly because obviously you got to mount this somewhere where the remote can see this device so I found these online and you can get them in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth versions this is a Wi-Fi controller basically this will connect to your smart phone you can download a free app plug in your LED light strip into this connection here 12 volt power onto here and then via Wi-Fi connect to your app and then all the control of your LED lights will be via smartphone let's get this strip down put some power on it rig up some lights and test it I've got these plugs off because I don't want plugs everywhere I want to be able to wire these in permanently this is a multicolor LED light there is a little arrow on there there's also a little arrow on the connector so that you know you've got unplugged in the right way so there's a free app called magic home that you can download when you open the app it shows all your connected devices on the front page here to add another device press the little plus symbol in the top corner and connect light to Wi-Fi network click on that and then it will search for available lights and now we're connected to the light you can see it's just come up there so we go back and now we've got control of this light we can turn it on turn it off and then if we go into the light we've got full color control here we can see you've got a little color wheel on the phone so we can go into the red blue green or any color in between it's also got preset functions like a crossfade gradual change even some strobe effects it's got microphone control so when you speak into the microphone it turns the lights on and off with the sound of your voice it's also got a music function you select the music in your phone whichever song you want and then when you play the music obviously it puts the lights on and off to the beat of the song and finally this is a fantastic feature it's got a color capture mode using the camera so you get something in the camera image predominantly orange there we'll go color capture and it will try and match the color as best as possible let's try this blue on this vice-grip their amazing feature that is as well as that obviously you've got timer functions so you can set a start and stop timer you can have the lights come on and off as and when you want them to you've also got some scene settings you can rename the light so give it a name that you can understand so if we say bedroom one for being one side of the bedroom okay and then you can add that to a group if you've got more than one light we can add both the bedroom lights to a group and then you can set scenes up as well and you can have different light colors in different areas of the van you know so you can have red at one end of the van blue another end of the van and then give that scene in a particular name and then you can simply flick between different scenes so there's bags of functions on this app and this is going to be fantastic for controlling the lights in the van these Wi-Fi controllers are really cheap I think I paid about three to four pounds each for these so you know it's amazing what they do for that price so I'll put a link in the description below to all of the lights and devices that I've shown you today if you want to purchase your own all the links you'll find in the description each one of these devices will be connected to a different light in the van and in what we can do is individually control each area of the van or I can set up scenes I can control multiple lights so it give us a great deal of functionality and a good thing about these Wi-Fi devices is I don't need line-of-sight as long as I've got a Wi-Fi signal I can put these away in a cupboard somewhere and I can still connect to that free app so that's fantastic with all those different combinations of lights in the van we're going to be able to set the scene for any occasion I'm really impressed with these Wi-Fi devices and that free smartphone app for those LED lights that's going to be great fun playing around with that when we get them installed in the next couple of videos we're going to be talking about the insulation in the van we've got all the wiring pulled in now so now it's time to insulate we're going to be looking in detail at the technical side of the insulation and doing some calculations and then obviously there will be an installation video to follow that so look out for those in the near future thanks for following this build series and please do leave me comments below I enjoy reading those and I'll get back to you as soon as I can

Channel: Greg Virgoe

Views: 352,633

Keywords: Sprinter Camper Van Conversion, Mercedes Sprinter Camper Van, Mercedes Sprinter, #vanlife, iVan, Camper Van Conversion, Campervan, Sprinter, Van Life, Greg Virgoe, Race Van, Camper conversion, panel van camper, camper, van, conversion, how to, diy, off grid, camper solar panel, Race van build, sketchup, Camper Van Electrics, Camper Van Control Panel, Camper Van Distribution Panel, Changeover Panel, WiFi LED Smartphone control, 5050 LED Strip, wiring, lights, van build, 12v wiring

Id: Ab4mNaEjJUo

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2017