Hey, guys..
Yes, its legal.. As long as the brake light turns on as fast as normal, at D.O.T certified speeds, then its legal.. Once you remove the brake, who cares if it fades, or goes straight out, you aren't stopping, so its gonna go out, eventually anyway..
There is no effect to the light-up..
Actually, it isn't just a cap.. that would either cause no change (no ground path for the cap, so no light up..) or, if it were small enough, it would cause the light to fade on and off..
This is actually an op-amp controlled circuit, and the op-amp is a voltage follower, the output being the same as the voltage across a capacitor. Once the IC has a high, the transistor being fed by said IC saturates, turning the bulbs on instantly.
On power off, the cap discharges, slowly, through VR1 and a 10K, hence the output of the opamp decreases slowly, and thus decreasing the base current of Q1, producing a slowly fading bulb..
Key features of this are the fact that you can manually adjust the initial brightness of the brakes at power-on, and also adjust the timing of the fade-out, at any point.
I will host a schematic soon, and would be willing to make them, as well.. I also have circuits for brake flashing on power-on, etc, etc etc..
I'm an electronics technician in the US Navy. I am certified in Diagnosis, Troubleshooting, Repair, and Miniature/Micro-Miniature soldering (to 400x). Experience in Multilayer, flex-print, and SOP(Small Outline Package) components.
Anyway.. its whatever..
Ray
