This is not YET a carputer Project, thatīs why I was not sure on posting on the “show off your project section”, if it applies, please let me know.
To reduce loadtimes i just added the album's thumbnail of the pics, if you wish to see the bigger ones use my album:
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/memb...rider-mod.html
Ok, this is my first post so I am not yet very experience on it.
It will be separated on a few sections:
* Where did it came from?
* What I wanted/planned.
* What I did.
* What I did not or changed my mind (in the end).
The circuit distribution box.
The translucent filter
* Where did it came from?
Well everything began with a TV show
, on march 09 I first saw the new knight rider serie ( I wonīt discuss its quality), but I loved the mustangīs design and fancy sensor scanner, so I decided to crawl internet about it, what I found was the real project done by the people of autoindulgence and some others, but the more interesting one was from John Tokash because he had a good “how to” info.
As I have never done anything with electronics and have almost no background, I talked with a few people and made some research and decided I am stubborn enough to give it a shot.
* What I wanted/planned?
Well, I wanted the warm-almost-biological glow in the front of my car, just like this.
.
To achieve it I planned to use Johnīs model adding it some tissue paper or translucent acrylic to cause the effect, so I began taking measures of my cars front grill and plan how would I put everything together, then my bro introduced me to something I have never tough, the electronic design :-p. He showed the software he used to design the circuitry I would need and bring it to the real world thus the plan began.
First took some pics of the carīs grill and draw the grillīs holes so I could superpose with Google Sketchup the drawing and the picture on an “imaginary” real seize.
The the result was this.
If you are interested on the drawing process let me know.
What I did.
Components:
First of all, being ebayīing an arduino duamilanove microcontroller, buy a breadboard, some 200Ω (40) resistors and blue LEDs (35) to test how everything works together.
Lamps:
Next made a cardboard model of the back of what would be the lamps to give an idea to the guy who was going to make the acrylic molds.
I forgot to take pics when I was joining the LEDs and the new acrylic lamps so here is a small gap but the results were this:
Cabling:
As the original project used 9 leds, I decided not to add more, just “multiply” it by for 4 so each of the digital pwm on the arduino feeds 4 leds each one with itīs respective 200Ω resistor.
With that in mind I needed at least 10 wires so I had to use 2 cat5 utp (6 wires on one and 4 wires in the other).
I found a path for the cables inside of the body, behind the tires and into the engine without having to deal with the firewall (no drill for me… yet…).
Then my cheap-o-matic connector, the 2 hanging cables are part of what whould become a digital switch for pattern change/on/off functions.
The power was taken from the cigar lighter, if It can power a piece of metal that burns things, it should be enough to power the microcontroller (mind note: the maximum power draw of the entire systems was 13 watts).
Extra feature:
The sound sensor.
I read a little bit about this idea and looked at some youtube videos, but all my attempts to do it by myself were not successful.
In the end I bought a few amplified electric mics from sparkfun electronics.
Cracked open my carīs door (the front right speaker is where the audio is fed to the mic).
And that’s it.
Coming next
What I did not or changed my mind… a very tech geeky story of things that looked complex and lacked functionality.
Linear Mode
