Hi all,

I did today successfully upgrade my Empeg MK2 with the Backlight Buttons from Brian! I did some pictures during the upgrade. They are under: www.crazymelki.com

bye

Can't wait 'till i get my hands on a set! Looks marvelous!

\\Kaare

Nice photos. Congratulations!

Thanks! It was really tricky to upgrade it!

bye

Is one of your LEDs missing on the knob?

No why? There are three 3 SMD LED's! It's maybe my camera...

bye

oh I thought there were four.. Look at the pic of the knob - does it not look like there should be another though? Still it looks good..

This is not possible to put four because the display is to near to the knob bar!

Actually, I believe it was smu who modified the design to fit four.

Um.... actually it was me Here Anything is possible!

The discussion for that particular topic is here with the pics on the bottom of the previous page. Tony Fabris also did some crazy S#@! in which he desoldered all the LED bit's and stuffed all the pieces loosly (while still connected together) inside a clear plastic tube and wrapped it around his volume knob to distribute the light more evenly.... Cool..... Still waiting for pics of that but he describes his procedure a little more thoroughly than this on the link provided.

Still waiting for pics of that

Well, it looks kind of sloppy with the faceplate off. That's why I'm not posting pics. In the green-backlit shot on DarkStorm's front page, you can clearly see part of the shrink tubing to the right of the IRDA sensor.

Yeah... but you succeeded right? I'll try to get pics of mine up cause it's sloppy as hell! You can barely see the resistors from all the solder!

All right. If you show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Um.... I'm kinda shy... geez... in front of all these people??

OK

I'll see if I can't get a decent pic with my semi broken digital camera tonight after work, any opinion on a good replacement digital camera in the 300 dollar range?

I just picked up a Minolta Dimage X. It is small as hell and takes excellent pics at 1600x1200. 2 mega pixel and 3x optical zoom. Got it for $352 shipped.

The Canon S200 should be out soon. It should be a little less money than the Dimage X.

EDIT: I bought it here. They had the lowest price.

these guys have it for 318 . I was looking at a nikon cool pix 880.... But I like the size on that Dimage...

Was looking at the pics, and was wondering, what's that in pic #41? A souped-up Clio? maybe a 2.0 16V with Impreza Turbo-like wheels? Looks impressive, anyway.

Yeep, it's my Clio Sport! The wheels are from Power Tech (8x17").

Here ya go!

And lit

Sorry for the blur on these pics, as I mentioned above my digital camera just isn't what it used to be since I busted the flash on it.

Beautiful car. Is it "that" good? I mean, I've got a pair of friends who own two Clio Williams , really awesome 90's cars... Does the new Clio Sport live up to their "parents"?
Anyway, congrats. Very nice car, even an american could like such car (nothing personal, folks, but there's something about big cars that's not right... then it may be just me).

Thanks! Yes I like it and it's really live up to their parents.! I like compact cars! So I am thinking about to buy a Mini Cooper S. But the Mini is very heavy. I need 40 PS more in the Mini to have the same PS/Kg.

I didn't had any pics on my website from my car. But I did quick some thumbs...You can go straight to http://www.crazymelki.com/clio/index.html .There are some pics form last year....Not sooo cool!

bye

Crazy cool! Yeep, everything is possible!

bye

Okay, then, here is mine. Several posts coming up...

Here is the very-ugly-looking trick with the loose LEDs in the clear shrink tubing. To the right is another section of shrink tubing that houses the transitor.

Next, I have a cut-out piece of white translucent plastic from a vacu-formed package. This diffuses the light significantly.

Next, I use black tape on the back side of the lens to block the overspill from all the light under the lens.

Note that on the Smoke lens, if you have fingerprints on the sticky side of the black tape, they will show very clearly. So I had to go to great pains to make sure that my fingers did not touch the back side of the black tape during the application. Since I can't slice the tape with the X-acto knife while it's on the lens (don't want to make score marks on the lens), this is actually pretty difficult.

Also note that I leave a notch for the IR sensor and the standby LED. Don't bother with a notch for the IRDA transceiver since I don't use IRDA.

This is what the tape, diffuser, and repositioned LEDs look like all together.

And the knob in place, looking much more diffused and even than before. Still not perfect, when viewed from an off-angle, it still has "dead spots", but it's much better now.



Man, can Hugo Weaving GLARE or what? I think that's why they hire him for these movies, he always looks like he's got your number, and it's coming up next.

To help diffuse the buttons, I dremeled the tops of the LEDs in the buttons to a rough finish so that they were less lens-like and focused. I also put white translucent nail polish on the back side of the buttons:

Tony,

You are really a freak! How is pressing the Knob working? Fine or do you have there some quality loss?

bye

The result is slightly more diffuse buttons, but still not fully diffuse. The dots in the center simply spread out into more oval shapes.



All done!

How is pressing the Knob working? Fine or do you have there some quality loss?

Oh yeah, I should cover that, too.

I had to mod the knob. I had to shorten its collar so that it didn't interfere with my white diffuser, and I had to shorten its overall depth so that it doesn't stick out quite as far. Also, I had to dremel the collar so that it was thinner and didn't interfere with the hole in the lens (otherwise it tended to rub against the edge of the hole in the lens).



But now, it works perfectly, doesn't interfere with anything, and has the proper "feel" to it. And the shorter depth is actually really neat, I like it a lot.

The only trick is that since I don't have a 2A shaft, I am heavily dependent upon the collar to hold the rubber O-ring. So I had to be extremely careful not to shorten the collar too much and not to thin out its sides too much, otherwise the O-ring wouldn't work.

And the shorter depth is actually really neat, I like it a lot.

That's odd. I was just trying to figure out how to lengthen my knob (don't say it -- your mind is in the gutter!) because I feel that I have to work too hard to grab the knob without pressing it. Something like the knob that was on that Boxster replacement fascia would be cool.

Guess the difference is that I turn it by placing my fingers on the face and using the little nipples for grip (don't say it, your mind is in the gutter ) instead of trying to grab the sides.

Yeah, I kinda do that, too, I suppose, but it's too much effort for me. I have to kinda think about it. I'd really rather be able to grope over there (not for the nipples!) and just grab the damn thing. I feel like I have to overly careful now, and that's no fun.

I hate you Tony.

Give you $5/ea to make me a set of blue, real red, and green ones ;-)

Give you $5 more if you do all the soldering for me ;-)

g

Sure Greg, just drive on up to my house and we'll have a modding day.

Speaking of that, is anyone else other than Mark offering their services to do the button hack? Maybe someone in Northern CA? I'd really like to get it done, but I know that I personally don't have the soldering experience for it. And don't worry, I'd be more than happy to pay to have it done

If you're passing through the Gold Country corridor on your way to Reno/Tahoe on a weekend, contact me in advance and I'll help you out.

Thanks Tony, I'd really appreciate that. That's only about a 2 hour drive from where I am. I'm going to wait until my other empeg gets here and order 2 button kits, I'm thinking I want to have it done to both. :P

too, cool.... Looks awesome!