Variable Speed Knight Rider

by BinukYP

85924

Intro: Variable Speed Knight Rider

This is my first Instructable so please like it! It was inspired by the 1980s TV show called the Knight Rider, which had a car named KITT with a LED scanner that went back and forth like this one.

So, let's start making it!

STEP 1: Making the Connections

Do the connections according to the picture (please forgive my messy wiring) or like this:

1. Connect the Leds to the breadboard or perfboard.

2. Connect all the Leds' positive terminal to the Arduino from pins 22 to 37.

3. Connect all the ground terminals from the Leds to the ground terminal of the breadboard or perfboard.

4. Connect the two outer pins of the Potentiometer to the 5V and GND pins from the Arduino.

5. Connect the middle pin of the Potentiometer (wiper) to Analog pin 0 of Arduino.

STEP 2: Uploading the Code

I have given the Code at the bottom of the Instructable.

Download it and Upload it to the Arduino using the Arduino IDE.

STEP 3: Testing

If everything is Ok, your Kight Rider circuit should start working and when you turn the potentiometer, the speed should change.

If it works, then Congratulations! Now you have a Knight Rider circuit that changes speed when you turn the Potentiometer!

2 Comments

mycroftxxx 4 years ago

Nicely done!

The "proper" name for this circuit is a Larson Scanner, named after Glen Larson. It's presumably named after him because he used it in three TV shows: Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 80, and Knight Rider.

I once made a joke that KITT was the ancestor of the Cylons on BSG because of the scanner, but I had it backwards. The original Battlestar Galactica was set in the present, where earth was in the late 1970's. Galactica 80 was about the adventures of some of the crew on Earth during 1980. Cylons did make it to earth and were destroyed here. This means that it's far more likely that Knight Rider was an indirect sequel to Battlestar Galactica, and KITT is based on Cylon technology.

This makes sense when you consider his sensors and the fact that a fully sentient-seeming AI existed in the 1980's, but the world was otherwise as we know it - there was only enough salvaged hardware for two or three AI modules. It also explains why the prototype, KARR, was murderous. Knight Industries skunkworks hadn't completely replaced the Cylon goal-set when creating KARR.