PLX08 Project - Knight Rider Car
Knight Rider
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 -
Image:ReverseLED.JPG
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. (see photo 7)
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.
