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Good idea or bad idea. I'm 100% sure that I can do it. I don't know what pattern to use for the turn signal. An arrow seems good. Location is everything. I will have designs up later. First the overall idea, good or bad?

 
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good idea if you want your car to look like a ford expedition or suv hehe [IMG]i/expressions/laugh2.gif[/IMG] get some like mercedes makes on the bottom of the mirrors!!!

 
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greg you can do it!
i will love to have those turn signal mirrors!
AIM ME - peacemaker1ps

 
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no that will look nooooo good. Maybe something other than a arrow. The arrow looks cheap. Stick to the side markers

 
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Go for it Grey, but i duno if our mirrors are wide enough for it to be seen from cars behind...

 
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It would be cool of you could pull it off, but I don't think it will look good. Just my $0.02

 
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i wish i had heated mirrors...... i hate it when they fog up because they become useless.

[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG] Everyone inspire grey.

 
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Heated huh... Hmm... I could do that. I think?

 
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GREY

 
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Grey (DIY mod king) that would be tight, i'd pay ya for that. Go for it man.

 
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GOOD I DEA!!!!! I'd love to have them, i think they'd be tight as hell even if the person behind you can't see them.... be sure to post how you did it and maybe the ones that want to do them could make up our own design....

 
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my car came with heated mirrors...they are the sh.it...'specially in da winter time...

 
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Wait, do you have a switch for the heat on the power mirror control? I wonder how much that switch costs? I hear it's the most expensive switch in the car.

 
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Good idea but I agree the arrow looks cheap...if you can think up a clean design go for it

 
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Hmm... What if I had a strip at the very bottom that lit up from the inside of the car to the outside of the car? Hey, I like that idea...
Kinda harder to implement though.

What about a half arrow on the very bottom. I'll post pics tomorrow. I'll also start the DIY.

 
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A guy around me put a bunch of red LEDs on the top of his mirror that wrap around a little to the side that light up with turns. Looks ok at night when they light up but ugly during the day.

 
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I would actually have them behind the glass, so they wouldn't be visible unless they lit up.

 
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I don't know if i made myself clear, but the aren't actually on the glass, but are sticking out of the top of the plastic that holds the mirror. Looks kind fugly during the day especially since the line of them isn't that straight.

When you do it Grey you can sell eveyrone the instructions. You sould start selling those pedals for like $25 bucks and make 200% profit!!

 
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Ew, sticking out of the plastic? Yeah, that's one way to do it. [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-puke.gif[/IMG]
Nah, no need to sell the instructions. I'll just post a DIY.
The pedals on the other hand... I'm making those for certain people. Although the price is kinda high now. It all depends on how long they take me to make. If I could somehow cut that time down, then I'de sell them for less.

 
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Which one would you go for?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

 
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I vote one (1), but they would have to be white leds....red would look funnny I think.

 
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edit: 2

 
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number 2 is tight looking. it blends in with the stock shape of the mirror housing, yet still has an almost subtle arrow shape. awesome

btw, how exactly do you make those LEDs show through the mirrors like on the Ford SUV's, do you just scratch off a little dot of the mirror backing, then attach the LED with a flat diffuser?

 
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Yeah, I'll actually drill a hole in back through the plastic. Then I'll use a cylindrical sanding bit to sand out a hole. That will sand through the reflective coating on the back of the mirror. That will already make the glass kinda hazy like shower glass. This will diffuse the light from the LED enough. Plus the LED's I have are already diffused enough for this project. I will lose a little bit of the reflective coating, but it won't be a problem if it's on the outside of the mirror. I checked out how I look at the mirrors and I don't use the outside edge that much.

 
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awesome, another thing with the pattern number 2 is that it is the least intrusive on the main are of the mirror

that sounds pretty easy, i might have to do this kind of thing sometime too, cause i've been wanting to have a sidemarker for a while, but i dont want to drill a hole in my car and stuff. awesome job Grey, do post pics and stuff when you do this, it sounds pretty sweet [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-cool.gif[/IMG]

 
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Thanks. Yeah, I'm leaning towards either #2 or #5. Hopefully I can be accurate enough and get the placement of the LED's right. If I'm off by even a little bit then it'll look bad. I need a method for my madness.

I will be making the main circuit today. I want to make this look nice, so I will be making a nice little proto-board with plugs for wires and the LED's. I even have cute little on-off switches. Actually, I can make the LED's do two things with that switch. Maybe I should have a high power and a lower power mode? Just on and off? Maybe a blink rate switch? High and Low? We'll see... Going to Radio Snack today to get some supplies...

 
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well, you could make a simple PWM circuit (well, sorta simple anyway[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/IMG]) to allow adjustment of brightness of the LEDs, then you could allow for them to be like on dimly always, or just with the parking lights, then brighten up when the blinker is on. then you could allow for reverse blinking, so they are on when the other blinkers are off. of you could have it so you can have just a few LEDs are one all the time/with the parking lights and then the rest come on with the blinkers.

hmm...do you have any abilities/experience with microcontrollers (e.g. PICs) so you could make it completly customizable? that'd be friggin tight as hell--it could do literally anything one wanted it to. you could just use say a PIC16F84 for testing (hmm, the ones in the 16pin DIP pkg would work great, you could have a seperate addressable I/O line for each LED, and still some free lines for input, etc) then migrate to the non flash versions if you want it to be nice and cheap.

 
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Hmm... No, not really. Sounds like you do though! Hey, I don't want to run wires all over the place, so only hooking it up to when the turn signals active would be my choice. I don't think I want to be able to adjust the blinking rate 'cause it would be weird seeing the front and rear flash and the mirrors being out of synch. I don't know what I should control?

Even the ON/OFF switch seems kinda stupid. Although I guess I could turn them off for inspection time just in case the inspection dudes had a problem with it. I guess the ON/OFF switch is a good idea. Allright, I'm 100% sure about that. What else could I control?

What about the intensity of each LED? Could I control that through that little controller? I guess having the tip of the arrow light up brighter than the ends would be nice. Or maybe if I could have the LED's blink twice for each time the regular blinkers blinked?

What about proto-boards? Know anything about those? I would technically like to make the circuit in a program. Then print it out and etch it into a copper board. I know something like that is possible. Have you ever done it? What do I need?

 
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well, with that particular microcontroller you could most likely utilize Pulse-Width-Modulation on the outputs to make each LED appear brigher or dimmer (by varying the pulses generated), then you could have each one be as bright or as dim as you wanted.

as for the proto boards, i've never done anything with etching them and the like, but i know there are several computer programs that you can use to design the cicuit, then you can get special printer paper (for laser printers i believe) that you print the proto board layout on, then iron it on the copper clad board and it lays down etch-resistant so you can just etch the excess copper away, and you've got your circuit plan on the board.

alternatively, you could goto RadioShack and get a proto board etching kit with the etch-resist marker, the etching solution, and some copper clad boards so you can do it by hand, but those are kinda hard to use for small proto boards. for very detailed instructions on these techniques, including where to buy the parts req'd, go here. good luck

 
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Do you think people would buy a kit from me which included everything you needed? You just had to thread some wire and modify the mirrors... Plus I could include various patterns, 'cause people seem to want different things.