On Thursday 01 September 2005 03:13 pm, Gus Salavatore Calabrese scribbled:
> My desire is to build a product that will sell for $30-$50 max.  Less
> would be great.

Pricing will depend significantly on volume.


> The product requires NO skill to install.  If it requires power that
> could come from the
> cigarette lighter socket.  The user can put it in the back window or
> mount it anywhere
> they want.
> The desired result is to have the light FLASH to alert other drivers
> to wake up.

Be careful with this -- we looked into doing this some years ago (using a 
pedal-position sensor), but found out that there are laws against this.  In 
places that prohibit this, if you build a one-off for yourself, you'll 
probably get a warning or ticket, but as a commercial product you get sued if 
someone else gets a ticket.  Not sure what the rules are for every state 
(assuming you are in the U.S.), but I remember a law regarding flashing 
lights being on police/government vehicles only, except for things like tow 
trucks etc could have orange flashing lights only -- no blue or red.  Another 
law limits lights on vehicles to "only what is necessary" (paraphrased) for 
operation -- so in those places things like under-car neon are illegal.  We 
were also worried that if someone rear-ends a person with this flashing 
light, they could sue and claim that it was confusing.  Being non-stardard 
lighting, you'd probably lose.  You really need to check the laws for this.

Cheers,
-Neil.



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