I've had my Prius for a little over a year now and it's time for a slight refit of the car. Little things like fixing that darned scratch, fixing the upper glove box, and adding some interior lighting. I might add some contraption to tie in my mp3 player to the car, but that's still up in the air. Anyways I have a silver '04 (without nav) and a gray interior. I've really wanted to do interior lighting since I got the car, but I haven't had a need for it. But during the whole fire evacuation thing here in SD, it really would have been nice to have some low-level lighting in the car so I could glance at a map on the floor. After looking at some previous projects here on PC, most people seem to be using either LED or neon lighting. I was leaning toward using LED lighting until I found out about electroluminescent (EL) wire. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a cable that glows when electrical current passes through it. (It's also the same thing as the backlight in your watch.) It has the benefit of being flexible and you can cut it to length and it can run on the 12v system. Now to my color choices. I'm not going for bling, so that's why I'm keeping the colors conservative. I picked red and blue because that is what's used for nighttime bridge lighting on ships. (It has something to do with red/blue not stressing the eyes at night.) I threw in white as well just to see if people thought it was a better choice than red or blue. (Make all the political assumptions you want, that had no factor in my color choices.) I plan on using lighting made for computer cases because it's the same thing and way cheaper (newegg.com). Any how-to advice or suggestions would be helpful too.
I'd say go for it. I'm a sucker for ambient lighting. If I had the money and know-how, I'd install a thin strip (probably EL if I can't find LEDs that'll fit through a thin glass/plastic tube) and illuminate the door panels (you know how they have a little design bit that runs the entire length of the interior door panel to the door handle). blue/white or red/white sounds good. I'd go with LEDs unless you need to have a thin strip of light.
it really would have been nice to have some low-level lighting in the car so I could glance at a map on the floor. A strip of cool white LEDs under the dash aimed at the floor would be a simple answer to this. For a quick fix they make LED lights on a flexible neck that plug into the 12 volt outlet. After looking at some previous projects here on PC, most people seem to be using either LED or neon lighting. I was leaning toward using LED lighting until I found out about electroluminescent (EL) wire. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a cable that glows when electrical current passes through it. (It's also the same thing as the backlight in your watch.) It has the benefit of being flexible and you can cut it to length and it can run on the 12v system. EL comes in sheets and ribbons too. EL needs an inverter to drive it. They're all AC inside. The inverters are small and reasonably priced. I think you'd need a pretty good sized piece to have useful lighting though. I seem to recall a poster on this forum pulled the toyota logo off his trunk, tucked in some blue EL wire and drives around with an electric blue glow at night. Now to my color choices. I'm not going for bling, so that's why I'm keeping the colors conservative. I picked red and blue because that is what's used for nighttime bridge lighting on ships. Red light will not interfere with your eyes becoming dark adapted. However in a car red lights normally mean trouble, and it might make them less noticable. Turquose is the color that night vision is most sensitive to. A little goes a long way. The law would prefer that you have no red or blue lights visible from outside the car (red from rear is OK) LEDs are easy to dim. It would be nice if the new lights dimmed with the old ones. The back of the dimmer switch might be the logical place to pull power. LEDs will run best if you give them a current regulated power supply, the nominal 12 volt in cars can overdrive them. I had about eight feet of amber LED side lights on the last Prius, contact me if you have questions.
If you want light to see something, LEDs are probably the way to go. EL looks good, but it isn't too bright. While red lights mess with your night vision the least, consider the colors of your map. Any red markings on a color map will be "white" (and disappear) and the blue markings "black" under a red LED.
Is it common for blue LEDs to make things glow (similar to UV lights). I ask this because I left a paper with a bunch of highlighted notes on my desk (which has blue LED lighting) and the highlighter ink was glowing. If it is common, this could be useful for highlighting routes on maps so I spend less time trying to find where I am and more time with my eyes on the road.
More a characteristic of fluro colours when exposed to light in the violet end of the spectrum. This is just the affect that attracts bees to flowers and fluro safety vests.
