UPDATE (2/17/08): Added more videos to the bottom of this post.
UPDATE (2/17/08): Code is available here.
I’m making a Knight Rider (KITT) Light Bar to celebrate the premier of the new Knight Rider Made-For-TV Movie (tomorrow night on NBC). I’m using an Arduino Diecimila board and 18 LEDs.
Here’s a picture from a few hours ago. The LEDs are now much more aligned and some of the wiring has since been cleaned up, but the photo will give you the general idea.
Materials (so far): FedEx box (temporary; looking for a suitable plastic container) with black construction paper for the housing. Arduino, 18 LEDs (wired to 9 output pins on the arduino - two LEDs in parallel per pin), 9 75 ohm resistors (note, 75 is not the right value, but they were the closest I had). The faceplate is made of cardboard, tissue paper (light diffusion) and some cheap car-window-sun-shade-material I found at Target.
Here’s what it looks like in action (this vid is from the afternoon, before the housing and faceplate were ready): kitt2.mov.
If you haven’t already, consider reading this article about the guys who built the real thing!
New Video: In the box, during daylight.
New Video: Out of the box.
New Video: Arduino and wiring.
11 Comments
it looks good
tell me where and how to purchase this and how much?
very cool! any chance you will be publishing instructions for building?
I’ll definitely publish a schematic as it’s really straightforward. The code is already linked from the site.
The housing/mounting is the real challenge now.
Juan, I don’t plan on selling kits, but my final howto will have a list of materials so you can make it yourself.
you should put an animated gif to stay in the coolness attitude of this project
and show how good it works :p
… I’d love to put something like this into my toaster
I think a bike commuter version would be awesome
John,
Great project!! Very cool. I skimmed over the code and it seems you are using digital outputs and controlling the fade by “blinking them” at different frequencies, is that correct? Did you considered using a capacitor to control the fade? Thanks again, great project. Long live the Arduino.
Any progress with the schematics? I found your project from the YouTube video and it\’s definitely what I think to be the best of what I saw (exception being the one from the guys that made the one for the movie- but theirs is way more complicated).
I would really like to build one of these, but subing blue for red. Also, is 18 the max number of LED\’s the Diecimila will support?
But anyhow, only thing keeping me from ordering up a Diecimila is lack of schematics- waddya say?
What a creation!! when u planning to show how 2 do it. cant wait. superb & Nice
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