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As I imagined, I get the occasional message asking for details/updates on my "intelligent" underbody kit. Needless to say, it's a VERY slow going process as I have so many things on my plate at once. While it is still a ways off (I will only sell when it is truly ready for prime time), I thought I would post a few teaser pics
The following were taken with my crappy 2.3Mpixel camera (circa late 90's, so the quality of pics is, shall we say, lacking). These are merely stills taken from an animated light display. The colors smoothly "wash" down the length of the board, fading into each other. Made my nipples hard finally seeing it in action
The prototype board is roughly 1' long, and the section I display is roughly 1.5' wide by 1.3' high, as shown against a piece of print paper (unprinted newspaper). As you can see, brightness isn't an issue, as well as distance from the light source (the board was a mere 2" from the wall pointing upwards).
Originally Posted by tizbad2k,May 4 2005, 05:59 PM
nice, will you share the process used to change the color of the LED's ? However if its a trade secret then ofcourse you can keep it that way.
Well, I can say that it uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)... if that means something to you, great, if not, well, not much else I can say I would say this completes about 80% of the coding work on the tubes themselves. The remaining 20% will be finished as I continue developing the code for the main controller. It's the controller that takes the lion's share of the work, so it will be some time before I have a viable system... but I just love what it's able to do in just a simple state.
For the very limited selection of people who are able to see the work as it progresses, I have received some great feedback. Once finished, this will become the flagship product for Hi-Tec Designs.
Originally Posted by MacGyver,May 4 2005, 03:56 PM
Well, I can say that it uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)... if that means something to you, great, if not, well, not much else I can say I would say this completes about 80% of the coding work on the tubes themselves. The remaining 20% will be finished as I continue developing the code for the main controller. It's the controller that takes the lion's share of the work, so it will be some time before I have a viable system... but I just love what it's able to do in just a simple state.
For the very limited selection of people who are able to see the work as it progresses, I have received some great feedback. Once finished, this will become the flagship product for Hi-Tec Designs.
very interesting, means somthing to me, i may try to make my own at some point, but i wont even consider selling it, as that would get into your territory and i would hate to do that. Especially after you were kind enough to quench my curiosity regarding RF stuff.
i was just thinking that it would be pimp if these had a hookup to the speedometer and 'moved' with the speed of the vehicle...
ya know - it would be cool to run one color and then turn red when the brakes are applied
Yeah...or it switched to a solid color when you hit VTEC
Waaaay ahead of you guys
i may try to make my own at some point, but i wont even consider selling it, as that would get into your territory and i would hate to do that.
Free market being what it is, you're free to sell whatever you want, even if it's a directly competing product. If yours is better (wide open definition of "better "), yours will sell more than mine. I don't take offense, no reason I should.
By saying PWM, I have only provided you a 10,000 foot view of what's going on. Once you get into lighting LEDs, you'll quickly realize that PWM is the easiest method to use when color selection and/or fading is necessary. Of course, I'm not going to tell you how I smoothly fade out a color (any color, not just solids like red, green, or blue)... that took a lot of work/research and therefore would be like passing on a trade secret.
Besides, even with my snail's pace, I would be very surprised if you could catch up and overrun my current amount of design work. There are quite a few man months of work into this project, refining the hardware as I make changes to the software, etc. I already know there will be at least one major and one minor change to the tubes, brought on by my choice of capabilities. So far it has worked to my initial expectations, but I want it to exceed those expectations by a wide margin for my own sanity.
I doubt i could catchup at all, but i did do some research and have figured out the basic concepts of the idea. What i cant figure out at this point is how to transition colors smoothly and with a known period.
I think at this point i could probably make one which would be able to change color at what appeared to be random, but my design involves expensive components, and i doubt that i could ever get myself to produce more than what i could use.
Your idea (your version of the idea) is definately very cool, but i can tell from my preliminary work, that you must have put a lot of time and effort into it. Which is somthing that i cant spare now. I think that my cheapness is going to make me stick to single color interior accent for the time bieng.
Intelligent Underbody Kit
