Glowpads

[Chakotay]

You know those things? Some kind of mousepads, with LEDs in them, so that they emit light from the sides and from engraved images. If you're interested, I wrote a tutorial on how to make them:

Part 1

Part 2

I admit, mine isn't very good looking, but maybe someone can do better

Picture here

 

[MrBond]

That is cool as hell!

Where did you get your LEDs?

 

[Chakotay]

Still had em laying around somewhere here, but you can get em at every electronics shop. I believe radio schack is a big one in the USA

 

[MrBond]

Doh, of course, the most obvious place possible, Radio Shack . I need a couple for my car, if I can pick up a piece of plexiglass, i may have to build one of these glowpads as well

 

[pm]

About the only thought that occurs to me to improve this would be to use a thick enough chunk of plexiglass that you could drill into the side of it and then glue-gun the LED's in place, then you can run the wires across the top edge of the plexiglass sheet off to either the top right or left and then move off from there. This would allow the duct tape to be removed and still have everything stay approximately in place. As a simpler idea, I'd recommend using a single piece of long black electrical tape to hold it together. It would look more professional.

Another idea would be to put one blue LED (and swap out the red one there) in the center LED position - this should make an interesting shade of purple. Or just use blue LED's instead of the red.

Nice thinking on using the USB port.

Interesting project. Thanks for the post.

 

[CTho9305]

cool idea. My friend and I are going to try making a plexiglass case with at least one side a glowpad this weekend. We only have dremels though... so we'll see how it turns out.

 

[Chakotay]

pm: yeah the tape is a bit crappy, but I didn't have anything better... Blue leds was also an idea, but I only had red leds when I was making it, forgot to buy some

Ctho: it's possible, I also cut the plexiglass with a dremel... But gluing to pieces together with a dremel is more difficult I guess