Hey PriusBros I just got 2 seat warmers and rather than drain the 12v accessory since it is being used to charge 2 phones, a dash cam, and LED lights, I've decided to tap into the fuse box on the driver side. My question is: which fuses are hot I.e. power locks? Is it possible for me to see right away if I just plug in an add a fuse and see if my seat warmers are powered while the car is off? Also, what fuse type does the 2015 Prius C take? Standard? Mini? I'm eyeballing it but can't tell. Last question: since I don't have or plan on having fog lights or sunroof, can I tap those to power my 2 seat warmers? Are those fuses hot? I don't want to accidently drain my battery because these seat warmers don't have auto off due to accidently tapping into a hot always on fuse. Thank you!
Say, in a c, isn't the aux battery itself right under the back seat or something? (I don't have a c, but I thought I remembered that.) That could be a pretty convenient place to tap for warmers in the two front seats, and you wouldn't have to decipher the front fuse/junction box. (That's kind of like most people's fuse boxes at home ... there's a cryptic label for each fuse, but usually only enough to give you a broad hint about one of the circuits that fuse feeds, and nothing about the other three or four that probably also branch off of it. I go straight to the wiring diagram whenever I need to really know what's on what fuse....) I ended up adding several fuses and a low-voltage disconnect right at the battery, in both my old Gen 1 and my current Gen 3. The low-voltage disconnect module solves the "I don't want to discharge my battery" problem and without even having to hunt down a circuit that's only powered when the car is on: the module can simply tell because it recognizes the voltage increase when the car goes to READY. In my first Gen 1 version, I kind of homebrewed the low-voltage disconnect, but later I just bought the one from InPower that I mention in the later post, which does pretty much everything I wanted. -Chap
Now that is a great idea, I was worried since the aux battery is always on it might drain its juice if the seat warmers are accidently left on. Any particularly names of items I should get to wire it to my 12v seat warmers? I'm thinking any generic low voltage cutoff thing should work as long as it has a socket connection I can connect to without having to splice my wires woop woop!
The 12V will self discharge by itself. Leaving the seats on accidently, say overnight, ABSOLUTELY will discharge the 12V battery. And likely to the point of requiring a jump start. B/C of this likely scenario, you may want to wire into a circuit that is IG-ON powered, or make a new circuit that will do this. You seem to be getting in over your head with this project. Might be safer for you to have a car stereo shop do the wiring for you.
Are the "cigarrete lighter" ports, now called 12V auxiliary port, wired to ACC or IG-ON, in your C? If so, the seat warmer could use this, assuming the amp draw is not too high. If the seat warmer does not have a cigarete end, one can be attached to it easily.
My earlier post contained links to other posts with details about how I did it both in Gen 1 and Gen 3, which should give you a lot of ideas, including the off-the-shelf low voltage disconnect I used later, which has some nice features. -Chap
