Solid State Flasher for LEDs

The flasher unit (that thing for turn signals and hazard lights) stopped working today. The issue is that I switched to LEDs for the signal lights. These draw much less current than the original incandescent bulbs. When a regular bulb has failed, the flasher unit detects the lower current draw and speeds up the flasher. This is to indicate to the the driver that a bulb is not working. This was the situation ever since I switched to LED bulbs, and it may have contributed to the flasher's failure.



After opening it up, and pricing a replacement, I decided to make a new one. I chose to use the venerable 555 driving two small transistors in parallel to switch the lights.

I made the PCB to solder directly on the base of the failed flasher unit, which I de-soldered from the original PCB. Sometimes the first time is the charm - it worked when installed.








It makes no noise (the clicking was the relay in the original flasher) and it was a little strange at first. Of course, the really odd thing is that LR put the turn signal lever on the left of the steering column - on a right hand drive vehicle!