Quote:
Originally Posted by carp eat more carrots. |
i dont know about you, but when im going to bed, its dark..
anyways, i had this idea awhile back about those buttons i was complaining about.
if youve ever read any complaints people have had about button feel after they have modded them with lights, leds arent really the best way to do it, because they are bulky.
so i began to think what would be the best way to do this. i first started off with some spare fiber optics i had laying around, but the problem is i couldnt join them into a single unit so i could use just 1 led for the 6 different buttons.
that idea went out the window.
my next idea was to use clear acrylic and basically build a mold around the buttons that would provide light. if youve ever shined a light on an edge of a neon acrylic, the entire peice lights up.. but when i drilled it, it distored the light flow and looked like ass.
that idea sunk.
finally, i got the idea to use an indiglo watch backlight.
electroluminescence! its simply a peice of thin plastic coated with phosphor atoms.
so i went around looking for these watches, but never found them for free. i was looking around in a closet that i used to store all my home theater cables and extra crap, and ran across a remote that had a very similar backlight.
i took it apart, and realized that you could cut the plastic to any shape, and as long as you had a solid connection you could hook up the two electorons, and bam you have light.
because the sheet is so thin, you could put them behind the actual contact pad of the buttons.... changing nothing in the way the buttons feel.
but this has been on hold since i got my new college schedule (which is BS!)