Lately I have been having weird, but interesting, dreams about cool inventions. One of the more realistic inventions of late that I have woken up with is the LED Indicator.
If you know anything about LEDs, or Light Emitting Diodes, you will be aware that they can display more than one colour by varying the voltage supplied to them. You may have seen examples of these in home electronic goods such as televisions and stereoes. A commercial example is the multi-coloured scrolling LED displays that shops use for advertising.
My dream/invention left me wondering why a thin sheet of Perspex isn’t inlayed with multi-coloured LEDs of white, orange and red. This could be applied to the rear of a car and used for the tail/brake lights, indicators and reverse lights.
Once this has been perfected, car manufacturers could then start getting fancy by measuring how hard the brake is applied and display a differing number of the red LEDs. E.g. every 3rd LED for sofly applying the brake, every 2nd LED for a bit harder, and every red LED for full braking.
Further applications of this invention include using the unused LEDs in the middle of the panel for advertising space, or for messaging the car behind you via a keypad in the front of the car.