DIY Knight Rider Lights



I guess you would’ve seen the movie Knight Rider which featured a car called KITT. It was basically a high-performance sports car fitted with artificial intelligence. It featured a signature light which would move left and right when the car would scan something. As the movie was released in the 20th century, it looked quite high tech and it got me inspired, as a matter of fact that was one of my favourite PC games of that time. OK now enough of all these crap lets get to the point straightaway. As I am a circuit freak I stumbled upon the idea of building one myself for our car.

The basic concept is that:
I had to generate a clock pulse and propogate this clock pulse on each LED after every cycle, for which I used a 555 and a 4017 Decade counter.

So my circuit consists of mainly 2 blocks:


  •             The first part is a square wave generator for which I used a 555 timer in astable mode. For more information on 555 and astable mode refer to this link: 555
  •             The second part contains a 4017 Decade counter.The pin diagram of 4017 is as shown:




  • Here is the output waveform of 4017:

 


  1. In the astable mode, 555 produces a square wave output of a certain frequency which is determined by the resistors R1, R2 and capacitor C.
  2. When ever there is a clock input on the 4017 Clock pin (Pin14) the next LED glows and after 10th LED the 1st LED glows again.
  3. For normal operation of the counter Pin 13 and Pin 15 should be LOW or GROUNDED. 
  4. Connect the 555 output (Pin 3) to the clock pin of 4017 (Pin 14). Its that simple.
  5. Here’s the circuit to help you with the connections.
  6. However as we are using an LED directly with a 5V output we'll need to use a resistor in series which is of value 350Ohms to avoid blowing up the LED. 
  7. Enjoy building your Knight Rider Lights.
  8. ENJOY....HAVE FUN:-)
Here is the video of the circuit working:

Only one set of 10 LEDs being used:

 

Two sets of 10 LEDs being used:



 Full Speed: