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[on:]

I have written a flashing LEDs construction project using the Arduino Duemilanove. The light pattern resembles the front of the K.I.T.T. car in the old Knight Rider TV series. I am hoping to develop a series of beginner and intermediate projects for Arduino fans.

Complete details with source code are at:
http://www.richardvannoy.info/arduino-lab-02.php

...and the YouTube vdeo of the flashing lights is at:


I would appreciate any comments or suggestions about this project.

[Reply #1 on:]

Good explanations.  The analog dimming looks better than this other version which just used digital lighting: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/KnightRider

[Reply #2 on:]

A couple of improvement suggestions which can greatly increase the 'wow' factor you might like to consider

1) dynamically fade out the led rather than just setting discrete brightnesses. I recently made a standalone module for adding lighting effects to models and originally coded this up myself. Then I found the SoftPWM library which will do all the fading for you!

2) Use a sine wave calculation to detemine the horizontal position of the light - that way it slows down as it reaches either end of the sweep.

You can see both of these in a video of my prototype board here

http://s113.photobucket.com/albums/n202/ants-nest/Misc/?action=view&current=LEDDriver2.flv

[Reply #3 on:]

Thanks for the additional info. I especially like Marvin's example with the variable brightening and dimming. I'll add to my article an explaination of these two links and then them to your links for further information.

I might also work out the code for the variable brightening/dimming and present that as a more advanced alternative.

[Reply #4 on:]

i like how you explained everything (i am new to programing and that helps allot) i also like the table method and i would like to see how you are going to dim it as i am working on a similar program and i need to do the same sort of thing

here is some code for a knight rider program that i made that you can dim and adjust the speed with pots
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1286297693