Instrument Panel Dimmer Control

WARNING: This page is about a different car, the 2018 Jaguar XE and 2017 Jaguar XE. However, it is still accessible from the selected car via links, so may be relevant.

The instrument panel dimmer control rotary controller is located adjacent to the headlamp leveling control (when fitted) in the auxiliary lighting switch. The dimmer control provides a PWM output to control the illumination brightness of the Instrument Cluster (IC) backlight, Touch Screen (TS) backlight and ambience lighting.

The dimmer rotary thumbwheel is connected to a rheostat and a high side switch. The rheostat is a variable resistor which provides a high or low resistance according to its set position. This output is passed to a switchable capacitor or a high side switch. The high side switch uses the output from the rheostat to determine the switching frequency of the capacitor which provides the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) output of between 8 and 12V to determine the brightness of the illumination.