I had a pretty cool mod idea that I'd like to investigate, just thought I'd ask you guys for feedback (please don't steal my idea btw). Anyway, I'm a Computer Engineer w/ lots of knowledge about electronics. So what I wanted to do, is to take the back breaklights- the 3 rows of 4 LED's (or are they bulbs, I dunno), and light them incrementally as the break pedal pressure increases. It would essentially show people behind you visually and intuitively how hard you're breaking. The idea is simple in theory, intercept the electronic break pressure signal, process it, send it to the back breaklights through additional wire (or even better, find a way to piggyback it on the existing power wire), rewire the back breaklights so that they support independent bulb operation.

In practice though, I'm not particularly familiar with any of these systems. Are the back breaklights sealed, making it a bitch to rewire? How does 'hitting the break' actually work / where is the best place to intercept the break signal.

Other uses for this idea could be to display a spectrum analyser of whats playing on your radio there, etc.

Letme know if anyone has any feedback or ideas about this.

 

thats actually been done, not on a g though. i have seen that on a mustang before. its pretty kool.

 

ha ha, I figured that it was probably done before. After all, nobody can have an origional idea anymore. It's all been done before in one form or another! Anyone got a spare tale light that I can experiment on? I'm willing to pay a bit for it, just not like $500 or whatever.

 

here ya go... found 'em!!

http://www.partshopper.com/shop/Must...4-04-m129.html

not quite as elaborate as yours, but same basic idea!

 

Ah, well those only just light sequentially. They just put a short delay between the lighting of each light. The ones I was thinking of doing would actually be functional (and look way cooler). Although def. more custom and more difficult to install.

If anybody was interested, I could make the same product as the mustang one very easily (from an electronics point of view) as long as I could figure out how to rewire the physical lights. I don't know if the rear lights are sealed or whatever.

 

What are the chances of re-directing your electronic talents to the VDC system ? I feel the VDC is overly intrusive and we need some "adjustment" capablities. It would be nice to have a normal, sport and track setting. Has anyone investigated this ?

 

Well, like I said, I can pretty much build anything electronic. I can program microcontrollers and interface with just about anything. The hard part however, is knowing what to interface to- like how the cars ECU uses signals to control things. I'm sure I could intercept the signals the ECU sends to traction control stuff, if I knew how the current systems works. Would a manual for the car tell you this kind of thing? I'm kinda new to this whole car modding world.

Any other ideas for electronic enhancments? I saw that cool in door mod where you can use your remote to roll the windows back up on locking. That kinda stuff is cake to build.

 

I'm not too sure that there is an electronic signal on how hard you are braking. When you are pushing the brake pedal you are actually compressing the cylinder. It's not like that gas where it is done by wire (unless I am completely out of date or something)

 

There might not be, I don't know how it really works. Aren't our breaks power assisted or something like that? There must be some way to monitor how hard you are breaking, doesn't the ECU need to know that stuff so that it can do VDC, monitor slipping, etc?

 

This can be done by adding a pulse width modulator to the rear brake light LED circuit. This will allow you to dim/brighten the LEDs by flashing the LEDs on and off slower/faster. To the human eye the LEDs will appear to be constantly on but brighter/dimmer (Depends on your rate of turning the LEDs on and off). You can see this in action in the current generation BMW 7 Series tail lights. The LEDs appear to be "buzzing".

 

ah interesting idea. Not the same as my idea though. Pulse width modulation is a digital simulation of an analog signal (essentially). So what these BMW7's are doing is increasing/decreasing the brightness of their taillights with the amount of force put on the break? That would be a pretty easy mod for me to do to the G since it wouldn't require much rewiring of the break lights. I think my idea of independently controlled LED's is better, but more complicated.

Does anybody know what physically happens when you hit the break? Is there an electronic signal somewhere that I could process to figure out break pressure?

 

Ooops, I read your post real quickly and made a mistake. I thought you wanted to make all the LEDs fire up brighter as more braking force is applied. No offense, I don't think other drivers will notice that your incremental lighting of your tails means you are braking harder. It is just not intuitive enough.

I believe BMW investigated the idea of having the tail lights light up brighter as more braking force was applied. In panic stops the tails would flash very rapidly. I am not sure if they ever implemented this into their vehicle line.

 

If you want to work on some electronic project for the G35, how about a cheap launch control module?

 

launch control module huh? Well I'm new to the car world, and have never been to the track. If you'd tell me what a launch control module would have to do I'd be happy to consider designing it.

 

Basically, you would allow the user to set some initial rpm limit. Then he would step on the gas and the module would hold that limit. Drop the clutch and the initial rpm limit is no longer active. Not sure how you would actually enforce the initial limit though. I'd imagine you'd have to tap into the ECU and feed or deny signals to make it think the 3000 rpm (for example) signal is really 6700 rpm.