How to wire your door locks with central locking...

Okay Guys,

When we brought inMOTION to the market, it gave you a very flexible way to manage accessories in the car that had to be reversed.  The most popular example is wiring a power window.  Another good application is wiring power door locks. 

If you are using a 5-wire lock actuator, you can use the built in switches to do central locking.  Essentially, there are no buttons in the car to work the locks.  Manually pulling up on the door lock plunger would unlock all doors.  Pressing down on the lock plunger would lock all doors. 

One of the most popular lock actuators out there is the kit by Electric-Life.  These guys are literally down the road from us and they have a great technical support team.  Here is their popular 5-wire actuator. 

There are 5 wires on these actuators.  The black wire is ground.  The red and blue wires move the plunger in and out.  The brown and purple wires are for the internal switches for central locking. 

We have created a new app note that shows you how to wire these door lock solenoids with central locking to the ISIS 2 or 3-Cell Kit with inMOTION.  

Here's what you do.  inMOTION is going to connect to the the red and blue wires going to the lock solenoids.  You are going to wire both of the solenoids in parallel with inMOTION.  You need to to a little work here to get the wires connected in the right direction.  These solenoids are designed to mount any way in the door.  That means that there is no set lock and unlock direction.  You need to reference the instructions that came with your inMOTION Cell Kit and use these as a guide. 

There are 5 outputs on inMOTION.  Pick the one that you are going to use for the locks.  The instructions show you the wire colors for the pairs of wires for each output.  After you get the lock solenoid mounted in the door, temporarily connect the output wires from inMOTION to the lock solenoid.  There are manual buttons for each output on the inMOTION Cell.  You can use these to cycle the solenoid to determine the correct direction before you permanently wire it up.  Use the picture on page 2 as a reference.  The buttons each are labeled in the picture U and D for Up and Down.  Also, the groups are switches are labeled F1 through F5.  These correspond to the output number on inMOTION. 

The solenoid should lock when you press the Down button and unlock when you press the Up button.  Imagine pulling up the plunger or pushing it down to unlock or lock the door.  If the action is reversed, flip the red and blue wires on the output wires for inMOTION. 

Once you have this done, you need to wire the MASTERCELL inputs to the brown and purple wires on the solenoids.  Just like the red and blue wires, you need to figure out which wire is for the lock and which is for unlock.  The easiest way to do this is to use a multimeter set on resistance.  Start with the purple wire and measure for resistance between it and ground.  Use your fingers to push the plunger in and out.  In one direction, the resistance will be very high or an open circuit.  In the other direction, the resistance will be low, less than 1 Ohm.  The purple wire is the switch for whichever direction has the low resistance to ground.  Repeat this process for the brown wire to check. 

The wire that shows low resistance in the lock direction should connect to the MASTERCELL input wire for the down action for the inMOTION output that you connected to the solenoid.  The wire that shows low resistance in the unlock direction on the lock solenoid should connect to the MASTERCELL input wire for the up action for the inMOTION output that you connected to the solenoid. 

So here is an example.  Let's say that you choose output 5 on inMOTION for your door locks.  You are going to connect the White and Grey wires coming off of the output harness on the inMOTION cell to the Red and Blue wires on the lock solenoids.  Orienting your inMOTION cell per the picture in the instructions, you are going to press the buttons labeled U & D in the lower left of the area under the cover to check the direction of the solenoids.  They should lock when the D button is pressed and they should unlock when the U button is pressed.  Reverse the White and Grey wires from inMOTION to the Red and Blue wires on the solenoid if necessary. 

Now for the inputs.  Let's say that the purple wire measures low resistance to ground when you press the solenoid plunger in the lock direction and the brown wire measures low resistance to ground when press the solenoid plunger in the unlock direction.  Refer back to the table in the inMOTION instructions for the MASTERCELL wire colors.  Remember that lock is down and unlock is up.  Since the purple wire connects to ground in the lock direction, that wire connects to input 36 which is the Tan wire with the Red stripe.  The brown wire connects to ground in the unlock position so that wire connects to input 37 which is the Tan wire with the Black stripe. 

Once the wiring is done, train the inMOTION cell per the instructions.  Make sure that the solenoids are in the unlocked position before you start the training sequence. 

This diagram shows the Electric-Life 2-door kit.  Wiring the 4-door kit is exactly the same, just you wire the 4 solenoids the same way as the two. 

You can down load this application note here.  You can find this note and many others in our reference library at www.isispower.com.