Greetings!

Has there been any progress on other colors? I know we have seen blue and red. Any thoughts or progress with amber, green or "smoke"?

I've made green and purple buttons, and accidentally made red and white marbled buttons last night (basically mixed my plastic incorrectly or got foreign material in the mix) they kinda look cool plain, not so great with backlight. I would post more pictures but the flash on my digital camera is broken and is having adverse effects. Hopefully soon I can replace it.

Green is to come this weekend, and hopefully amber. As for smoke, I could make smoke colored buttons but the led doesn't have the same spectrum as the VFD. I want to be able to provide two different types for each color. One that matches the lens and one that mimics the lens plus VFD color.

I would like to see smoke colored buttons that deliberately did not match the spectrum of the VFD. The illumination is my car is mostly a grayish white with green hints and accents here and there. Smoke colored buttons would match my car's dash perfectly, and the greenish-cyan illumination of the VFD under the smoke faceplate matches the accents. I think it would look awesome.

Ok, for those who have kits or are ordering them, who are you going to use to do all the solder work? I'm assuming not everyone here is an expert at this sort of thing (I'm certainly not), and I'd be a little wary of touching any of my empegs with a soldering iron.

Is there a type of shop or outlet that would do this sort of thing for me?

Greg

Is there a type of shop or outlet that would do this sort of thing for me?

Unlikely. You're going to have to beg the service from good solderers on this BBS. Perhaps there can be soldering parties at every owner's meet?

A Soldering party sounds fun, anyone in Dallas handy with liquid metal?

Greg

wasn't mark offering to do them for 50 dollars or something like that ?

lopan,

Do I see 4 LEDs behind the knob? How did you do that?

Thanks..

Greetings!

I saw that too... I thought I was going nuts...

Yes, 4 LED's, basically the only thing I bought from Brian was a knob board everything else I got from digikey in bulk. So I took brians LED board checked the layout and how it worked, went to radio shack bought a PCB board, used brians board to trace and get the general shape (so it would fit) then on my newly fashioned LED board started soldering resistors and surface mount LED's, it's really kind of simple. All LED's get a 100 ohm reisistor on the positive and all share the same ground, then basically the transistor has three conectors... 5v in, signal and 5v going to the LED's, the signal is fed through a 560 ohm resistor and thats it. The biggest problem was getting all the connections made without bridging something (I have no idea how to etch a pcb) but actually got everything laid out and connected properly first try. I would suggest buying the kit from brian though, I didn't do it because I knew he was really busy and I think that kind of stuff is fun, but I ran into issues getting the right parts and all that. But I have all the part numbers now if any one wants to try it on their own.

Tracing your own pcb is actually quite easy. Doing one that SMALL may not be. ;8^)

Interesting!

I didn't plan on telling anyone I'd done this, but since we're sharing... I did something similar.

I wanted the spacing between the three LEDs to be closer to "even". There's nothing wrong with Brian's knob-board (like I said, it's a tiny little work of art), but the three LEDs are not perfectly symmetrical around the shaft. As part of my experiments in trying to make the knob glow more diffuse, I decided I would mess with the placement of the LEDs.

So I did something totally insane, which happened to work really well.

I desoldered the entire knob-board and wired the components "loose" with tiny bits of wire. Then I placed them inside a piece of clear shrink-tubing and "wrapped" that tube around the shaft of the knob. Took me only three tries to get the wire lengths correct.

Then I colored the back side of the clear shrink-tubing with black marker so that there was less light leakage into the face area. Works great. Lights are now more symmetrical around the shaft and I don't have as much of a dead spot on one side.

I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, because it's easy to get something to short out when doing this. I suppose one could fry their display board if this stuff shorted or something.

Too cool.... that does sound insane, you gotta get a picture of that up!

Can you "coat" the inside of a smoke colored button with green to achieve the effect?

Calvin

I didn't plan on telling anyone I'd done this, but since we're sharing...

If S|B now has fellows, I think that this BBS needs something like a Mad Scientist Award for stunts like this. Categories, too: Best Original Solder, Best Really-Intriguing-But-Completely-Useless Gratuitous ("I had to try it!!") Hack.

Hmmm. What would the statuette look like and what would it be called?

Brian,

Any chance of you doing a 4 LED board?

hi - this really is a message for brian - i have been hanging out for an update on this but nothing so far so i guess it doesnt hurt to ask again - but i am also interested in the possibility of a 4 led knob board? or, a slightly modified 3 led board to give more equal 'triangular' spacing...? i understand the current design allowed for the board to 'work around' the other bits and pieces it fits inbetween but after staring at it for hours i can imagine how it might have been possible to twist into a better shape

im no electronics specialist so forgive me if what im asking is just too infeasible for the cost involved - it really is only a cosmetic thing - but id still be interested to hear (from anyone) if it will be possible.

Brian's knob board is fine as-is. After messing with the LED spacing myself, it really didn't change much. I wouldn't expect Brian to make any changes in the design.

I'm quite happy with the overall lighting and diffusion of my knobs and buttons after having frosted the LEDs by griding their tops (Brian's new kits will have pre-frosted LEDs) and using the white plastic as a diffuser behind the knob.

thanks tony

any chance of a photo/closeup of your 3 LED shrinkwrap mod, and how u have diffused the knob? it sounds semi crazy but also very cool . what you have used for the 'white plastic' diffuser? i will probably go ahead and order the kit from brian but will definitely want to use the diffusion trick for the knob...

im probably assuming its alot more complex than it actually is...

Yes, I posted photos of those in another thread. Don't have the link to it ATM. Anyone else?

Is there any way to still get the button kits? I've emailed Brian several times, but have received no response.

As Brian states on his page, he will respond to the emails as kits become available. Meaning yes, he is still making kits, he's just working through the backlog in FIFO order. You will not receive an e-mail reply until such time as he's ready to fill your order.

Ah. There's my misunderstanding. My reading of that was that he'd contact those that have requested them when they become available. As I have no idea how to go about requesting them (is there a form to fill out? What's the price? How can I pay?) I figured I didn't fall into that category.

Brian, I think this is the second query we've gotten here on the BBS with essentially this same text? Perhaps a re-wording of the text on the page along the lines of:

"As kits become available, I will reply to each email request on a first-come-first-served basis. You will only receive an e-mail reply with ordering details when I am ready to fill your particular order. These button sets are cast one at a time, by hand, so there will be a delay between the time you email me and the time you get a reply."

?

Will do, I'm going to steal your text. If you want credit let me know

Cool.

No credit needed.