Diagnostic Light

[jee7s]

Al is right, shorting the La and Lb terminals allow the DSC to control the light.

If you play around with it a bit, you find that when contacting one terminal (I forgot if it is La or Lb), the light flashes with some internal mechanism. When shorting the terminals, the light is steadily on. So, shorting La and Lb allow the pulses from the DSC to flash the light. This allows the "fast flash" (disconnected), the "slow flash" (connected but disabled), and "steady on" (connected and enabled).

Also, our light drew about 1.3A when on.

-Jeff

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by jee7s

...our light drew about 1.3A when on.

While that's a useful bit of information, it's mostly irrelevant to the question of wire size. You need to choose wire that won't melt before the circuit protection kicks in to cut off the current. Don Rotolo gave the officially correct answer (18 AWG) based on the breaker protecting the entire Digital Sidecar, though a different answer might be possible based on detailed knowledge of the light driver circuitry.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

While that's a useful bit of information, it's mostly irrelevant to the question of wire size. You need to choose wire that won't melt before the circuit protection kicks in to cut off the current. Don Rotolo gave the officially correct answer (18 AWG) based on the breaker protecting the entire Digital Sidecar, though a different answer might be possible based on detailed knowledge of the light driver circuitry.

Per the Digital Sidecar datasheet, the Robot Signal Light is protected by a PTC, at 2.2 amps

[Russ Beavis]

For reference - RSL states and meaning doc just posted on NI's website.

http://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-3120

Russ