led lights not turning off

The Set Up: I have 6 LED strips install in my car with a switch so I can turn them on and off whenever I like. The other day I decided to also hook them up to the courtesy floor light on the drivers side so that when ever the door was open they would turn on automatically, and whenever the door was shut, they'd turn off.

Problem: When I re-attached the battery the LEDs turn on and stayed on regardless of weather the doors were open or shut. It seems that they continue to draw power from the courtesy light. I tried lots of stuff but couldn't figure out how to solve this problem.

If anyone could help me figure out what's wrong, that would be great.

use a relay. have your courtesy light trigger a relay and send positve current to you leds.

I just worked on it for about an hour. I found that if i attach the [+] and [-] of the LED light directly to the [+] and [-] of the courtesy light, it works correctly. Problem is, that was only 1 LED strip, all the other LED strips are grounded in all sorts of different locations on the car, and it'd be way to much work to get them to all plug into the [-] of the courtesy light. I also have a switch hooked up to these LED lights so that I can turn them on and off whenever I want, but I think there's the possibility of the switch being disabled if I were to ground all the [-] wires to the courtesy light. Does anybody know of any other options? And [cleeker] could you explain to me what a relay is?