LCARS PANEL

This is a doc I wrote for some user of the MODDING forum on HWUPGRADE. This is a simple and cheap way to mimic behaviour and appearance of the Star Trek LCARS panels.

This tecnique is easily expandable to make more than one key.

The touch controller I've choosen is the QPROX QT110H, it handles a single key, it needs only two external components, it's cheap and can be ordered online.

Ok, let's start...

The tutorial is divided in 4 parts.

Jump to:
LCARS - the look
LCARS - electronics 1st part
LCARS - lighting and assembly
LCARS - electronics 2nd part

The look

	Go to a photo shop and ask for a slide frame for medium-format pictures. The transparent area should be about 5.5 by 4 cm. The advantage is that the glass is very thin, and thinner the glass, better the final result. The surface can be any non conductive material: glass, plexyglass, correx, wood, and so on.
	Choose what you want to display inside the transparent area. In my case, it's a ON/OFF switch. The sensor will be a single key, but I drawed two distinkt keys for ON and OFF. If you want to stick with the LCARS look, you should use only colors that are listed in this table. Many thanks to Bill Morris, author of mighty LCARS24, for the new LCARS colors table, that I have copied. You can find it following this thread: http://www.joseralat.com/forum/showthread.php?p=8396
	Here it is. I've added some decoration in LCARS style. You must create two version of the slide: a black and white one (with white where the panel should be illluminated) and a color one. This is my version.
	These are my printed slides. They're printed on the transparent sheets used for overhead projectors. If you have both a laser and a inkjet printer, I suggest to print the BW copy with the laser printer.

	Now you must find some translucent material (the plastic from a liquid whas machine detersive it's ok). Cut a piece just bigger than the printed slides, but smaller than the frame.
	With some transparent adesive tape. fix the color print to the white plastic square.
	Attach, in the same way, all but one of the black and white prints.
	Use the adesive tape to attach the last black and white slide to the inside of the frame.
	This is how the panel should look, when the white plastic square is temporary placed under the frame.
	Go to next part...

Click on the pictures to zoom.

** LCARS PANEL **

The look

LCARS PANEL