Edge Lit H. U. D.

I was thinking about HUDs today. It seems possible to me to create a rudimentary HUD, it would be able to display maybe a dozen light up detailed / colored shapes on a curved plastic visor and bizarre enough, the HUD lights would be visible from inside and outside the visor.

This would be a combination of three separate processes: Edge lighting plastic, detailed etching with liquid etching, and some LEDs + lengths of fiberoptic wire.

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/edgelitcards
http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/gl_etched/ar...2273959,00.html
http://thefiberopticstore.com/fibersample.htm

The nature of edge lighting plastic is that the light will shine straight through to the other side without illuminating anything, unless the light crosses a non smooth surface. The etchings in the first tutorial are just scratches, the second tutorial shows how to make more detailed etchings.

The first tutorial shows multiple colors by layering the plastic, each piece of plastic has it's own light. I think if get the light tight enough, each light will only shine on a single etched shape. This is where the fiber optics come in. Not quite as tight as a laser, but the viewing angle can be quite narrow with the thinner fiber optic wires.



I don't really have the time to follow through with this idea atm, but thought I would put it out there for some brainstorming.

I was kinda thinking the same thing with the fiber optics
Just a question though, will the visor's curved shape and tint affect the light?

sounds like a fun project to do

Oh this sounds fun and expensive lol
Actually fiber otics is a nice though but you have wires which aren't lit and are rather opake so it would be hard to see where you were going.
Most HUD systems are a projection. Think like your projector at work that displays you laptop on the big screen. Now given this needs to fit into a helmet you would need to find something small enough... hmmmmm Anyone got friends ant Northrup Grumman or something lol
All in all what ever you wind up using also needs a power source. Given the space in the back torso plate and lithium Ion batteries you could almost do it.
Here are some micro projector ideas.
http://3m.com/mpro/demo.html
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jspsku...;ci_sku=9159206
http://www.microvision.com/pico_projector_displays/

These are mainly battery powered and hook up to IPODS. You could make a movie of what you want to display in a graphics program put in on loop and enjoy till the battey runs out!

VladtheRussian said:

I was kinda thinking the same thing with the fiber optics
Just a question though, will the visor's curved shape and tint affect the light?

Click to expand...

The tint might help to obscure the view from the outside looking in. The curvature is not a problem either as fiber optic cable will glow even if it's bent every whichaway. Side glow fiber optic cable might work better for doing stuff like the shield bar and radar border.

if you combined this with the double visor method. engrave on the inside one and the tint would help keep it out of sight like BFD said. then use the leds to light it.

There are handheld projectors. They are rather costly (I saw one for $250) but it seems rather cheap for a projector. Probably isn't that good.

I like those ipod movie goggle things. They shine the light directly into your eyes without a screen! They use mirrors to increase the focal length so the image isn't blurry. If you take apart the goggles and place them into a helmet, it could lead to issues with focusing on a longer length from your eyes.
Maybe you could use them to setup an augmented reality. You wear the goggles like normal, but we feed it video from a camera and use some video processing to overlay the HUD!! Depending how powerful the video processor is (full blown micro PC?) we could also update the HUD information in real time~!
I'm probably getting carried away.


I've seen an HUD attempted with a mini projector before in a motorcycle helmet. It wasn't pretty. To turn the visor into a screen, the focal length of the projector required the projector be placed about 10 inches above your head. So the helmet looked like it had a mohawk sticking out. lol

I still like my original plan best. It is flat to install, cheap, and can be placed in any existing helmet. Just add a second layer to the visor... an HUD layer... I think a double layered visor would work well. The outer visor would have the right ridges at least.
As long as the curve of the plastic is smooth and not a high angle bend, it shouldn't leak light there.

Personally, I like the idea that the HUD images can be seen from outside the helmet. Why keep something so awesome to yourself or make people have to try on your helmet to demonstrate?

That third link had some free samples of the fiber wire, pay the $1 shipping only 4 inches, but enough to do some tests. They also sell 32, 2.5 foot, lengths of fiberoptic wire for 7 bucks~!

I like this plan too. I can see that with multiple layers you could have functions that could turn on/off with different colors. It's a smart, low tech solution to something that is often made overcomplicated.

The only complication I would see is that putting a light source behind the visor would make it more transparent. The gold mirroring on these visors is very transparent.. it relies heavily on the darkness inside the helmet you install it in to create the mirror effect.

I've seen this in practice with people who install their LED's inside the helmet without blocking out the light inside. Your eyes will show through the visor as well as the HUD. Agreed it might be a cool effect.. very Iron Mannish, just don't count on the gold mirroring hiding the lights (or your face) at all.


If you want a volunteer to engrave the optic acrylic, just lemme know.

Oh darn, your right. Those golden visors are like two way mirrors. I think though, as long as you didn't get carried away with the internal lighting and we manage to light up only the HUD icons, then the mirror effect won't be ruined. From the outside you would see the mirror but be able to see through the visor around the icons.

It would just be a matter of adjusting the brightness of the lights so those translucent areas on the visor do not become too wide.

The next step I guess would be taking a screencap from the game and making an etching template. I don't have any fiberoptics right now, but I don't think that's necessary yet. Let me see if I can come up with something simple and I'll take a picture.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I really think this is something worth pursuing, and possibly the most practical way to make the HUD I've ever seen put forth.

You could always mask the front of the HUD unit to minimize (or optimize) shine-through. Mask it with layers of window tint until the desired effect is achieved.

The guy in the first tutorial used what looks like 1/8 inch, I used 1/4 inch. I would use the thinner piece of plastic next time. In mine, you can see the light beam from the LEDs and I had to get creative with an iron tool to get the cuts deep enough to break the beam path.

Just a crude first attempt. I'm betting that lighting the plastic with fiberoptics gives a prettier result. The pictures show an H3 layout and some different brightnesses on the LEDs.

That looks amazing. I think i like how the more dim version looks. The brighter one kinda blinds the details.

Keep up the good work

this will be one sweet project if you can make it just a little better than that test version!