PLX08 Project - Knight Rider Car

Concept

For our project we decided to replicate the light sequence from Kit, The Knight Rider car. The lights flash in a linear sequence from left to right, and then back again.

We decided that it was very likely, when in a PLX role we would buy a Maplin kit to create this effect, as their are time constraints. We decided upon a Velleman MK107 LED Running Light Kit. (See Photo 2 and 3)

The Kit consists of 8 Led's which have a changeable speed and pattern.

At the centre of this circuit is a CD4015 Dual 4-bit Shift Register

A shift register contains various storage locations and during each clock cycle the data stored in each register is moved along the chain to the next register. This process continues until the cycle is complete. This is displayed in the diagram.

This is what causes the LED's to light up sequentially and in turn follow a pattern.

Problems

Unfortunately we were unable to make the sequence run in reverse. We now know that in order to do this we could heve connected the LED's in pairs. By doing this one input from the shift register would light the LED's in the first sequence, and the other connection would light them on the return.

We also tried to recreate the voice recognition monitor from the interior of the car.

We attempted to do this using an LED Sound to Light Unit. (See Pictures 4, 5 and 6) Unfortunately, due to faulty soldering we were unable to demonstrate this in class.

This Project was created by Frazer Fyfe, Christine Orr and Lynn Wiseman

we decided that for are plx project we were going to create the front and dashboard of kitt from knight rider. the dashboard piece would require a sound to light converter so iut could flash when kitt spoke and for the front we would need a running set of leds.

for this we consultated the venue techs who pointed us to the cheap wonders of maplin where we bought the kits we needed -

sound to light converter - problems encountered - didnt work because of a mix of crap soldering and irons which therefore burnt the circuits and perhaps a bad component as is so commonly encountered with maplin kits!!

running leds -

the running led kit contained three main components that are responsible for the flashing sequence of the lights and the time they take to flash through. these were - 555 timer - dual 4 bit shifter - variable resistor

the variable resistor - this came before the 555 timer in the circuit. it was followed by two other resistors then a capacitor. as you increased the value of the resistor you lowered the current getting through to the capacitor so therefore it took longer to charge , which changed the speed that the leds flashed at.

555 timer - ours was an 8pin v package rather than the 8 pin t package. in this component is the equivelant of over 20 transistors, 15 resistors and 2 diodes. this component waiteed for the capacitors to charge and then bumped out the current as it was needed to make the lights flash.

the dual 4 bit shifter - the dual 4bit shifter was responsible for the sequence the lights flashed in. the way our leds were connected to this meant the lights could only flash in one direction - left to right - however for kitt we needed them to flash both ways....

after talking to jim he gave us this idea of how we could have connected the leds to the 8pins of the shifter to get them to flash backwards and forwards - refer to last image below.

not much but will be updated with even more exciting info soon.

Images

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