Suggestion: Arduino Based RGB Ambient light software

I've had ambient RGB LED lights set up in my rodeo for a long time, they light up the front and rear foot-wells and are controlled by a cheapy pre-programmed circuit board... kind of a drabby controller.

What I have always thought of being a GREAT idea is flash, java, or windows binary application written to control the Arduino to allow the CarPC user to use the touch screen to set colors of the RGB lights in their car, patters, and brightnesses, maybe even audio response. Making this a simple flash, java, or windows binary ... it can be easily implemented into centrafuse or roadrunner, etc..

I'm thinking the arduino would be best because is CHEAP, very versatile, USB powered, and ready to control RGB led's with variable outputs.

There are already some RGB projects with the arduino completed, but not with a pretty front-end software to control it, just basic, but TOTALLY ready to be implemented into cars!

http://www.youtube.com/v/WeYOc5O3wXw&hl=en_US&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/BAfW4zZAyAU&hl=en_US&fs=1&

http://www.youtube.com/v/tFaFUcEfImo&hl=en_US&fs=1&
BlinkM LED modules are networkable and seperately controllable RGB LED's that plug into the arduino, they hook up in parallel and can have up to 112 of them separately doing their own thing, imagine the possibilities.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6fvtWkKuFbM&hl=en_US&fs=1&

nobody's interested eh?

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Originally Posted by stevey500

nobody's interested eh?

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i interested
thenks

Those BlinkM RGB LEDs are expensive. Check out shiftbrites.

The software should be quite simple. Do you have any programming experience?

Arduino has the shiftbrite library already written. Combine that with the serial communications capabilities. Then write something real quick in C# to send whatever commands you make up on the arduino side.

I was planning on doing this for my desktop PC, but I epoxied the crap out of the shiftbrites and they overheated.

Wasn't it in Snow Crash that Stephenson described the dashboard lights inside a vehicle flashing red in response to getting pinged by radar? I always thought that would be kind of cool to implement.