So, I've seen a few posts about doing foot lighting and how that can be accomplished. I decided I'd post up my research on it and as I go along getting it wired up I'll take pictures to add. It'll probably be a slow process (at least a week or more), so feel free to throw your opinions out there.

There are a few of ideas I wanted to have for my particular application:

1. The foot lighting should come on whenever I open any of the 4 doors of the 4Runner.
2. I want to have the foot lighting come on whenever I turn the overhead light on in the front (not the map lights).
3. As an added feature, I want to have the foot lighting stay on for a period of time after getting in the car and closing the door (key fumbling period).

Step One

First off, figuring out how to have all those features is half the battle (and the fun part I might add), and then wiring it up is the other half. So, looking at the interior lighting wiring diagram, we see this (note: you can click all images to see full size resolution):



You can see where the overhead switch is on there:



To cover items 1 and 2, I'll have to run power to each of the lights and then use the ground on the other side of the overhead lamp to turn them on or off. The lights are best wired in parallel so you don't have to worry about the voltage drop from LED to LED. Here's where I need to connect the ground:



Item 3 is the tricky one. My idea is to use the ground from the ignition light which stays on a few seconds after getting into the car. Let's look at this without the clutter:



If I add a second wire from my cathode of my LED light to the ground side of the ignition light, then I should be okay...



The problem with this setup is that when the ground is active while the ignition light is on, the overhead light will then also be grounded causing it to come on. That's not what I intend, but adding a diode will prevent current from flowing to the ground in that direction and you'll be good to go.



Step Two

Finding where this all is in the car is the next challenge. I wanted to keep everything on the same circuit, so I decided to pull power from the same line that the overhead light is connected to. Looking at the diagram it shows where the power comes from the drivers side kick panel:



It's on pin 3 for plug 1A:



That should be here:



Zoomed: