That is cool! With a capital F!
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Awesome solution. I have a few electronics projects where these would come in handy. Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks guys!
Once I get these into the car for a mock-up and fitment with other components, I want to cut an acrylic strip into a shape that will fit the area, then solvent weld one edge of these spacers to it in order to stabilize and protect from vibration, movement or crushing. Make it Skookum as frig (for the AvE youtube fans out there).
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YES! A bit much sometimes, but nonetheless entertaining. My favorite line is “Son of diddly!” (sp?)
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Sweet! I always love to see electronics in Glowforge projects. Curious how a 3D engrave would look backlit…
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Well THAT escalated! 
Multiple iterations trying to suss out a sensor sensitivity issue that turns out was not because of the depth of the sensor “pads” in the acrylic… That dark one is some old smoke gray acrylic thats been in the garage for some 15 years I think. I was down to my last bit of thick PG acrylic and I wasn’t about to potentially waste it. Luckily it was on this iteration I discovered the issue was the colored sensor wires being too close together… and the last 3 versions are perfectly functioning now. Sigh. 
It’s OK, I have somebody that wants to market these on the automotive aftermarket so having a couple extras for demo is not a bad thing.
And here’s the actual brains that makes it work.
In the middle of the board (look for the USB cord near the middle/top) is an Arduino based Feather board from adafruit. The white board to the left is a power converter to step down the 12V automotive power to 5V for the electronics, and a row of transistors to drive the automotive relays since the Feather can not drive them directly. The relays drive the high current circuits in the car like the horn, headlamps, stereo, etc.
The panel all these bits are mounted to are also acrylic, lots of holes punched in it for mounting the components and the white board actually just slides into a 3-sided channel/pocket that I solvent welded to the base board.
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Still escalating…
“Now with 33% MORE wires!”
Oh yeah, and a second Arduino based board, and programmable NeoPixel strip (that pained me to cut it shorter and strip off the silicone covering).
So now instead of just two static blue LED’s like I had planned, there’s 42 individually addressable RGBW LED’s… and it’s completely overkill, and even running them at 1/10th of full brightness is too bright… and it’s just way too stinkin’ COOL because, the first Arduino board handles the power/relay switching, but it also talks to the second Arduino and tells it when there’s been a “button” press, so then the second Arduino pulsates the LED’s.
Eventually, this will allow me to do other things like tie in switches in the doors and have that input trigger a program that gives full power to the white portion of the LED chips, to use this as a “dome light”. It’s literally an immense flood of white light more than needed for the interior of a car. LOL!
Totally geeking out now hahaha!!
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Hey guys, do we need to stage an intervention? But seriously, this sounds like geek heaven.
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ROFL! If you don’t shoot a video of that when you get it installed and running, I’m gonna have to hunt ya down! 
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“And this, kids, is why I never finish a project.”
I’m at work, so I can only laugh so loudly. But, dude, you’re living my dream!
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I’ll definitely get some video of it assembled, it’s the only way to make sense of it hahaha!
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Great project share Mike! You’re gonna need to drop out of warp and get some rest!
We know the feeling when a project is unfolding like water running downhill. So cool!
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That escalated quickly! Can’t wait to see a video of it in action.
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OK couldnt wait for installation to snag a video.
It’s short and sweet… Oh so sweet.
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So sweet I watched it thrice.
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Not only does it look cool, but it makes an interesting sound as well!
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That’s an automotive relay firing in the background. There’s one for each “button” in the touch control, each one corresponds to a circuit in the electric car project I’ve posted in the Show and Tell thread.
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Buttons are cool. Working buttons, though… even cooler!
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I agree…I just wanna make a box of lighted buttons that make really cool sounds and effects…then play with it all day…lmao
Very impressive @mpipes!!
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