Changing blue to amber on an Alpine HU

The Alpine I recently installed in GPMINI works very well but it’s bright blue buttons look somewhat out of place, so today I disassembled the Alpine display head to see what can be done …

So we can see a couple of small bright blue LEDs, and loads of tiny green LEDs – the green ones are tiny (1.6mm x 0.8mm) and I have nothing that small, but I do have some amber LEDs on spare toggle switch panel PCBs that are small enough to fit in the blue LED position (they are size PLCC-2, like these at Digikey) … let’s try one … it works! So do the other one and see what the buttons look like:


Not bad 🙂
Here’s a “before” and “after” in GPMINI:

It’s not perfect (because the buttons themselves are colored blue too) but I think it’s better … now I need to buy some tiny LEDs to replace all the green ones – that’s going to be a nightmare job because they’re so small 😦

UPDATE: Here’s “the story so far” at night:

The perfect iPod install?

When I first bought my iPod for use during MINI Takes The States I just used an AUX input (easy to install in the parking lot in Monterey!) and kept the iPod in one of the front cupholders.
But now with the Alpine HU in GPMINI, I don’t need to touch the iPod any more so I moved it to the glovebox – but connecting/disconnecting that plug behind it is tricky when there’s not much wire to play with (and I didn’t want to fill the glovebox with wire).

So I ordered an iPod dock, part of the “iRide” from MINI Mania, and it’s provided the perfect iPod install for me! I already had a glovebox organizer, so I bought the dock alone (with sleeve for my 5G 60GB video iPod) but you can also order it pre-installed to a glovebox organizer. However, installation is easy – the dock comes with a template to drill three holes in the organizer, and includes the screws too!

So now it’s easy to remove/reconnect the iPod, and it’s a great looking install too!