Fred

WOW!!!

Glad you are OK and back

We were a little worried about you as you had been conspicuously absent

OMG Fred is back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D. Sorry to hear of your trouble my friend. I'm glad you are safe back home!

Welcome back. I was worried your absence was forced. Sorry you went through this.

I feel like a long lost friend just showed up at my door! Welcome home Fred, glad you made it out!

Very glad and relieved to hear that you are alive and kicking, if not yet back to your fighting weight. Sorry you had to go through that. Some would say that you just purchased a piece of your character, and that is a worthwhile investment at any price.
As for Thailand, ****************et.
Welcome back!

What, I can't write the name of a well known resort city in Thailand that rhymes with bucket?

WOW:eek: I thought you weren't around anymore because you had gotten bored with us. Glad to see that's not the case but the real reason is much worse.

So, will the wind deflectors start becoming available again? :)

Dude, give him a break. He just spent 3 months in jail.
:troll:

Well, someone had to ask....:D

Fred will let everyone know when he is back up to speed and after he get life things sorted out at home

If you read his threads, you would know the kind of stand up guy he is

Sorry to hear Fred, I'm just glad you made it back home. Take some time to decompress and get yourself back mentally and physically. I can't even imagine what you must have gone through. Great to hear from you again:cheers:

Real sorry to hear about the debacle Fred! Glad to hear you are all right and back home though, it could have been much worse. Its certainly good to have you back on here, you were missed!

Hey Fred - I'm glad to hear you survived your ordeal. :eek:

Welcome back!

Rick

and here I thought you went out and bought a Corvette! Welcome back!

Fred; Some people have have Honor, High morals and character that do not allow them to walk away from this type of human garbage. You probably have seen we have 2 marines that are fighting for their careers for doing the same thing in Iraq. It is amazing that people who do the right thing are then punished in this F'd up world we currently are living in. Take pride in knowing you did the right thing and for that I salute you. :cheers:

Welcome Back !
 

Smiles to you Fred ! So life got in your way but everyone you touched was worried and patient to hear from you. Let me know when you have more product for us ! :dance:

Couldn't agree more.

Welcome back "home", Fred :cheers:

+1
Welcome back

Welcome back!

Sounds like a horrible experience, but I'm glad to see everyone's glad you're back (I joined the site not long ago and have been reading of your projects with great interest.)

When everything gets back to some sort of normalcy, I look forward to doing business with you.

Fred - Welcome Back, glad to hear you're back home. I really used to like going to Thailand - but after hearing your story I think I will avoid it.

Best thoughts to you & your family.

Don

Welcome back Fred! Hope you recover soon

@Nine8Six,

I've read through this thread and read about your woes near the end. Unless I've missed it though, I didn't see any statements as to whether or not the Skybreaker is still available for order. My dad just bought his 2001 Boxster and this is the sort of classy add-on that I would surprise him with as a gift.

Steve

Interested
 

If you do make these available again, I will buy one!

Me too! Even though I don't how much they are/were... haven't made it through the whole thread.

SkyBreaker V2
 

Hey folks,

Wanted to revive this thread, pardon me! Let's excite the idea of prototyping the "SkyBreaker Version II" :D

A lot of you guys asked for a kit and that recently got me thinking; while waiting for production machines to free up it would be a good idea to look up at members' requests for that SkyBreaker again before cracking on another batch of those. Two of the most recurrent requests below:

1. Custom colors: A lot of you asked for RGB led. Therefore 16,777,216 possible colors.
2. Brake light/Safety add-on: Synchronizing the brake pedal action and turning ON the RED led at full brightness. 3rd brake light essentially.

Let me know what you guys think. I'm personally all up for the challenge and willing to engineer this so that Version 1 can easily be retrofitted with Version 2's hardware if anyone is interested to upgrade, or vice versa e.g. to save cost.

Price: I'm looking at getting some extra panels hard-coated in the very near future. Problem remains the mfg's "min.qty" requirement so this is why I'm going to give it my best shot and add-on those requests. Hopefully this will get a few more of you guys to join our SkyBreaker Club! Of course the Version II will cost $986.00 (LEDs and M3 screws are optional too) but in all seriousness, I really doubt it will end up costing much more than what it did before (+20~30 bucks max, I'm guessing).

Ideas, suggestions, comments, flaming, requests; All Welcome!

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1578424235.jpg

Count me in! I'd be happy just with version 1 though. I don't personally need the ability to change colors or do the brake light thing, though I can see how others would.

$986 seems appropriate :rolleyes:

If I'm reading this correctly. Syncing the lights on the skybreaker to illuminate brighter than normal, at the same time as the 3rd brake light, every time you press on the brakes?

Would take away from the longevity of the lights?

Sounds like a great safety feature though, I'm all for it.

Thanks Gator. Sure thing, I'll get one out for you :cheers:

Something like that. If I've clearly understood what many requested...
Example:
My SkyBreaker ambient color is that superb porsche amber color and brightness dimmed down (duty cycle of 5%). When I press on the brake the led will automatically glow RED at full brightness (duty-cycle of 100%). When I release the brake this all goes back to that superb porsche amber color and brightness dimmed down (duty cycle of 5%).

25k~50k hours on the led, generally (thermally managed properly). Not sure how many years this makes, too lazy to click the MS Calculator, but I'm sure its a lot.

Counting you in man, thanks!

So if I wanted the SkyBreaker ambient color red, it would just be a dimmed red, and upon pressing the brakes, it would be full brightness red, got it!

Just a thought, what if your car's 3rd brake light is wired for the multi-pulse blinks before staying fully lit? would it effect the SkyBreaker in any way? OR..... what if the SkyBreaker was able to do that too? :eek: IDK, just coming up with ideas

We'll end up using a 32bits ST micro or those 10bits atmel avr. Not sure which but either way it will be fully programmable with gpio + a usb port where we'll be able to re-program it to do whatever-we-need-it-to-do (sense, flash, blink, pulse, fade, rainbow this, spectrum that, colors memory, preferred brightness levels, etc etc). Your creativity is the limit really...

Let's see! Might just need to tap the signal, vcc and ground wires from the brake pedal sensor just a few inches under the steering column. If some crazy custom flash is needed elsewhere I don't see any problem, yet, I'll help out with that no worries

Hell yes I can't wait :cheers:

1,986% IN

Uhhhhh...... "DUH......"!
Of COURSE i'm in!

Wicked cook stuff!
Put me on the list, please. One with all those bells and whistles.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

In. Very in.

Awesome!

Saw the original post a couple years ago... but can't recall what you're asking price was (not going to read 36 pages, sorry). Can you share with me/us what will be your asking price(s) this time around?

I could be very in. Thanks!!

Awesome. :cheers:

RGB LED pcb and circuit
 

Silver986, I'm aiming to get it out as low cost as possible. Let me estimate the number of man hours that will go into the assembly, BOM and handling and I'll revert back with a final number. One thing sure atm it has to be under $199.95 ;)
*******

So... let's get things started shall we. Spent most of yesterday's evening researching for what I thought would have been an easy find (a compatible 5mm wide RGB led strip that is) and ended up wasting nearly half day trying. Just nowhere to be found other than those monster size 1/2" wide strips (5050) that could light up a small town. All that to say; Not An Easy Start lol

What do we do when we can't find hardware? That's right, we DIY here at 986forum. So let's make our own in the exact same size and configs as the previous Ver I so all can interchangeable, keeping the same ultra-light design and all that cool stuff. Here I'm using a 1.2mm thick/2 layers stack with 12x (twelve) RGB 3528 LEDs. Identical to the previous set-up with the only exception of upgrading one color for 16 million others.

Step 1: I'm sending this out to a local PCB manufacturing later on today so this should be in-house in a few days only. I already pick-ed up the LED from my local electronic market and been told by the resident experts that they are the most reliable of them all, wide angle projection, has a diffuser overlay and the most popular by the locals. So let's give them a try and we'll move on to the driver and micro right after, and if all goes well!

I'll update with visuals as I go, same old 986forum DIY theme haha!

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1578495255.jpg
^ Circuit consist of 4 sections in parallel with each of those section consisting of 3 LED connected in series.
Requires 12VdC and pretty standard 'led strip', we aren't inventing anything here.

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1578495267.jpg
^ Identical size to the previous strip we had so no modifications is required to the existing design! I love doing
pcb but dislike routing those things... 12x 4P led didn't make that task easy on that 5mm wide board :/

http://986forum.com/forums/uploads02...1578495277.jpg
^ Final result. Although showing green on the software visual this will be manufactured in black. Just to ensure we
aren't getting that green reflection, I doubt but just in case, same price anyway.

~ 2 bills? I'd be in.

I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, that the part will be a plug-and-play... and that we'd be removing our existing windscreen and plugging in your part? Or... are we sending you our existing windscreen and you're fabricating on top of that?

I'm thinking if you're selling the complete package one might just sell their existing windscreen making the purchase of your part a no-brainer. You know... offset the expense of the "cool" part by selling the "boring" part.

Thanks! :cheers:

You already know that I'm in for v2.0, but I wanted to make it official here. :-)