Underglow Installed - Civic '16 Touring 4DR

[tonton81]

Just installed underglow on my civic, came out pretty well. This will be OEM integrated eventually, once I have time to finish working on the programming ?

 

[Redonkulous]

Looks great! I really like the way it shines through all the openings in the front grill!

Could you provide some pictures of the kit itself or a link? You have me curious. Way back in the day I used some "neon" tubes to light up behind my stereo in my room. I can only imagine with LEDs nowadays this stuff is much more compact...

I've always loved the look of underglow but it's illegal in PA when you're moving so I'll just live vicariously through you folks who can have it.

 

[tonton81]

Looks great! I really like the way it shines through all the openings in the front grill!

Could you provide some pictures of the kit itself or a link? You have me curious. Way back in the day I used some "neon" tubes to light up behind my stereo in my room. I can only imagine with LEDs nowadays this stuff is much more compact...

I've always loved the look of underglow but it's illegal in PA when you're moving so I'll just live vicariously through you folks who can have it.

I am using XKGLOW underglows.
They come in 24" snap in tubes.

you need 3x 24" tubes for left and right side of our civics, 72" was a perfect fit.

For the rear you need 2x 12" tubes for bumper sides and 2x 24" snapped together for accross the bumper.

the grill is 2x 24" tubes

front bumper is 3x 24" tubes

I installed one controller under the backseat bench, and one under the hood of engine bay, can be controlled via phone app, I used 2 controllers to simplify installation on my end, so no firewall fishing is necessary and wouldn't need to run wires under the undercarriage.

Looks great! I really like the way it shines through all the openings in the front grill!

Could you provide some pictures of the kit itself or a link? You have me curious. Way back in the day I used some "neon" tubes to light up behind my stereo in my room. I can only imagine with LEDs nowadays this stuff is much more compact...

I've always loved the look of underglow but it's illegal in PA when you're moving so I'll just live vicariously through you folks who can have it.

I used the XKGLOW kit, you need a total of 13x 24x tubes, 2x 12" tubes, and 2 controllers for our cars (my sedan at least). This resulted in a clean install without passing wires around the undercarriage of the car or fishing through the firewall. one controller is at the engine fuse box which controls the grill, front wheels, and front underglow. The other controller is under the backseat bench. Honda was nice enough to leave us drill-less access from backseat bench to undercar ? The controllers are also on a dc-dc switching regulator. This prevents them from dimming when cranking the car for a smooth constant color.

Underglow is legal here, even if it is blue or red, any color is fine, as long as 3 rules apply:

1) they must not be changing colors or strobing while in movement, single colors only
2) the tubes must not be directly visible
3) they must be on a switch

I've passed cops here running the blue output they didn't even bother me ?


Below pics show the module installed under back seat, and how a loomed wire under the grommet from back seat to the tube was fished. The rear wheels and underglow for back were passed in from trunk vents.

 

[tonton81]

Also if you havn't seen my previous demo of car integration with adaptive cruise control and door ajar states, check it out:


I could do some crazy stuff like:
1) doors open, underglow goes white
2) factory arming makes them flash red 2x, then fades to off
3) disarming car makes it fade from off to on
4) changing to S gear changes color to red
5) or in your case, switching to any gear will turn the lights off

lots of possibilities for OEM integration, without rewiring, since it uses the data on the car's CAN network

 

[hobby-man]

Also if you havn't seen my previous demo of car integration with adaptive cruise control and door ajar states, check it out:


I could do some crazy stuff like:
1) doors open, underglow goes white
2) factory arming makes them flash red 2x, then fades to off
3) disarming car makes it fade from off to on
4) changing to S gear changes color to red
5) or in your case, switching to any gear will turn the lights off

lots of possibilities for OEM integration, without rewiring, since it uses the data on the car's CAN network

Honestly, underglow does nothing for me but the fact you can integrate it on the CAN bus is actually crazy. Nice work.

 

[civic2tegg]

Time to hijack some semi trucks!! Looks great!

 

[Redonkulous]

Also if you havn't seen my previous demo of car integration with adaptive cruise control and door ajar states, check it out:


I could do some crazy stuff like:
1) doors open, underglow goes white
2) factory arming makes them flash red 2x, then fades to off
3) disarming car makes it fade from off to on
4) changing to S gear changes color to red
5) or in your case, switching to any gear will turn the lights off

lots of possibilities for OEM integration, without rewiring, since it uses the data on the car's CAN network

That's awesome! Thanks for the info and the detailed writeup! I agree, very cool using the CAN bus to integrate everything.

Great job with the install!

 

[Sunbeh]

I love how integrated this is; I'd have a field day with this. How long would you say it took you to fully install?

 

[tonton81]

I love how integrated this is; I'd have a field day with this. How long would you say it took you to fully install?

the underglow i installed in about 3 days on and off, due to limited hours. This includes hiding all wiring, and no wires passing under the chasis of the car. The programming I am still gonna work on, no time yet, I just programmed the on/off via OEM stalk yesturday, it's basically this:

if speed is 0 (stopped) and brake is pressed, if i toggle auto headlights off and on 2x, after 2seconds it toggles the underglow on/off

it's using FCAN bus (OBD) for the car states to detect this sequence, and after the colors are sent to the XBT controllers over bluetooth.

Here is the quick ~20 line code used to detect this trigger:

So right now I can turn them on or off with the stalk using the sequence above.

Still need to assign colors for events, like door open white, door closed return color state, or Sport mode turns red, etc...

You can do crazy stuff too like, have remote starts have temperature color effects.
If it's winter and you remote start the car, you can have it start blue and transition slowly to red as the cabin warms up. All that is optional it just depends on how much time you spend on the code and reversing the data frames on the CAN network ?

For the hardware install it doesn't need to be me, I can integrate anyone's LED kits to OEM. I reversed engineered the bluetooth protocol for both XKGLOW and Morimoto XBT, but I use the XKGLOW tubes on the XBT because XBT has 3 channels, that and I put another XBT under the hood for the front end grill and wheel lights, so I don't have to run wires under the chasis to the entire lighting of the car. One controls back, one controls front. This drastically cuts down wiring as well as the ESP32 I use connects to all XBTs and controls then wirelessly based on CAN data

 

[atheldis]

That looks awesome.

 

[tonton81]

i decided to change the stalk toggle for a better version, which allows changing colors too: (i added red too but not in this video, adding preset colors takes few seconds)

 

[tonton81]

 

[Mlock757]

I haven't read much but I was surprised on how good it looks.. But for me I'd like to just have the front grille glow that would be crazy

 

[redder04]

Im a software engineer... and I REALLY and I mean... REALLY love this... I currently have some interior LEDS that I got on amazon, I would love to integrate it as well, then do the underglow in the future

 

[redder04]

What did you use to connect to the canbus? I've looked around and saw carloop.io was that it?

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