Thread: utilizing steering wheel controls for winch.

Get wireless winch controller and modify the remote to work directly from the steering wheel buttons.

(or not... just use wireless, much more versatile)

Stevo

I'm not clear on what you are trying to achieve.

Obviously you don't want to control the volume of the winch. Are you wanting to control the speed of the winch drum?

No not the speed of the winch (it's a nice slow winch anyway).

I want the volume up button to winch in, and volume down to winch out.

Im not sure it's be possible to mount a remote unit within the steering wheel, as space in there is non-existant with the airbag.

Theres no unused tracks in the spiral cassete either.

My electronics knowledge is a little out of date but it sounds like the single wire to the volume control buttons has no connection to ground when no button is being pressed but provides a 4.7kΩ resistance to ground when 'up' is pressed and a 380kΩ resistance to earth when 'down' is being pressed.

You want to convert this to 12v switching signals to two relays, one for winch in and one for winch out but you also need to be sure that both won't be operated at the same time.

If, for example, you put another 380kΩ resistor from the input(sense) wire to +12v battery supply then the voltage at that sense wire would be about +12v (+10v to +14v range depending on battery state, charging and winch load) with no button pressed, +6v (+5v to +7v range) when 'down' is pressed and about 0v when 'up' is pressed.

You'd most likely use this sense wire voltage to feed into an op-amp circuit with a number of schmitt triggers to sense voltages passing thresholds.
The first circuit could detect a voltage drop below 8v which tells it that any one of the buttons has been pressed and produces a 12v output, another circuit running on the same sense input could be set to detect a voltage drop below 1v which tells it that the 'up' button has been pressed and produce a separate 12v output.

Now you have two output wires which are normally at ground but one goes to 12v if you press either button and the other only goes to 12v if you press 'up'.
The second output (only when you press 'up') could feed a SPDT micro relay and switch a higher current 12v to your control box when 'up' is pressed, when up is not pressed the relay would be inactive and the 12v supply would pass from that relay (hence the 'DT' part) to the center pole of the 'down' micro relay so that only one micro relay can possibly send 12v to the winch control box, even if both are active.


Hopefully some part of that will make sense.....