Light Replacement with USB Ports

We don't need both of the puck lights in the bed area (we rarely use them at all), but we do need to charge our devices there with USB ports. I decided to remove one of the puck lights and replace it with a dual USB port. It was a trivial replacement - - just snip two wires, attach two new female spade connectors, and it's done.

12-October-2020

Mood Lighting for the Galley

We don't use our RAM mount under the galley cabinet, so I repurposed it for mood lighting. These inexpensive ($11) LED light strips fit perfectly into the slot in the RAM track. 

For power, I just tapped into the USB port a few inches away, and added a simple rocker switch for turning the light strip on/off. 

Oct-11-2020

Mood Lighting Switch

I've been looking for a cleaner way to organize the various strands of USB mood lights that I've mounted in the van, and was glad to find this $9 USB switch. 

I secured it with double-sided VHB tape to the panel directly behind the driver's headrest. 

This is a good location for managing and disguising the various cords that will be involved in this mod.

We don't use the RAM track above the galley, so I also installed this color-changing LED strip directly into the recessed groove, but left the color-changing controls easily accessible.

It's getting weird in here - - just the way we like it!

Additional 12v Port

We always use a Garmin GPS as our primary device, so it dawned on me that its power supply should be up on the dash, rather than hanging a cable down to the ashtray. So we installed a new 12v receptacle here, which is almost exactly where Mercedes installs them on the passenger vans.