The only real big complaint I have about the 02 Altima is the lack of illumination for the steering wheel control buttons for stereo and cruise control. The other night I had to wait for freeway lights to pass by while I tried to figure out the buttons for the cruise control. I was thinking just then if only the buttons were somewhat illuminated...then it hit me. Glow in the dark material! I wondered if there was some glow in the dark stick-on material that can be cut to cover the lettering and symbols that are laid out on those controls.
Did some searching on the net and found some good leads. One place here -
http://www.glo-net.com/glow/index.html
has material in sticker, powder, and paint form. What is interesting is the paint form, when covered with a protective epoxy coating, will allow the glow material to last 10 years. Problem is this stuff is expensive. They offer sample kits, but at $188 for the baby green color kit it would be a very expensive experiment.
The sticker form is more managable in cost at $30 for a Sample Sheet = 0.5 meter width by 1 meter length. I'm thinking of trying this to see how thick the material is and how good it can take abuse from my thumbs. If this stuff holds up to my tests then I may look into mass producing the layout for those controls. Only problem I have is figuring out how to make a custom cutting templates to stamp out the layouts on these glow sheets - any ideas out there? I can tell you right now that looking at the size of the lettering on those buttons it is going to take some steady hands and lots of patience to get the entire buttons layout completed. If anyone wants to take this project on be my guest. If you make money on it, patent it, turn it in to a multi-million dollar business that is fine with me - just give me due credit as to who first thought of it. My time is quite limited and I can't guarantee project results in a timely manner. Or if anyone else out there has better ideas on how to make those buttons glow I would love to hear them.
Keep in mind the purpose of these glow in the dark materials is so we don't not have to wire any lights.
Did some searching on the net and found some good leads. One place here -
http://www.glo-net.com/glow/index.html
has material in sticker, powder, and paint form. What is interesting is the paint form, when covered with a protective epoxy coating, will allow the glow material to last 10 years. Problem is this stuff is expensive. They offer sample kits, but at $188 for the baby green color kit it would be a very expensive experiment.
The sticker form is more managable in cost at $30 for a Sample Sheet = 0.5 meter width by 1 meter length. I'm thinking of trying this to see how thick the material is and how good it can take abuse from my thumbs. If this stuff holds up to my tests then I may look into mass producing the layout for those controls. Only problem I have is figuring out how to make a custom cutting templates to stamp out the layouts on these glow sheets - any ideas out there? I can tell you right now that looking at the size of the lettering on those buttons it is going to take some steady hands and lots of patience to get the entire buttons layout completed. If anyone wants to take this project on be my guest. If you make money on it, patent it, turn it in to a multi-million dollar business that is fine with me - just give me due credit as to who first thought of it. My time is quite limited and I can't guarantee project results in a timely manner. Or if anyone else out there has better ideas on how to make those buttons glow I would love to hear them.
Keep in mind the purpose of these glow in the dark materials is so we don't not have to wire any lights.