knight rider online

Hello,has anyone on here bought a build your own Knight Rider VU meter from Jupiter Electronics and had success completing it and working properly? If so,please message me back. I am having a problem with it and need some help. Thanks,Dave

I bought the PC boards from Jupiter and then bought this VU meter kit from Jameco, which makes the circuit building easier and actually ends up cheaper than trying to find all the components needed:
http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... _147643_-1

I built the Jameco meter, and connected it with an 11 wire ribbon cable (ten LEDs and ground) to the Jameco LED PC board.


I don't know if this helps. Post your question and I'll see if I can help.

Chris

Chris,

do you have any video of this unit in action? How does it work exactly? I know nothing about electronics, but if it only powers 10 LEDs, do you need more than one of those circuits?

Like I said, I know NOTHING about electronics!

-Matt

The board from Jameco should be able to power all the LEDs in the Jupiter circuit. I made a similar Vu meter from scratch, using only a schematic I found on line, which ended up being wrong anyway. I found the problem and fixed it, and amended the schematic. If you've never done anything with electronics, especially if you have never soldered a board, I would recommend just buying a voicebox already made, either by Jupiter or somewhere else. They are pretty common and can be bought for under $200. Wiring a PCB board, especially for a voicebox, is pretty tricky and it takes an experienced hand.
Here's a link to my original voicebox.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW7l_fNF ... e=youtu.be

Chris

Chris,I have almost the same LED board you have from Jupiter. Mine has the Auto,Normal,Pursuit on it. But still the same setup. My thing is,I have a board from Jupiter and a picture for where to put the chips on the board.Doesn't give me specific directions. But when it is all together,some of the LEDs on the bar graphs light up and some of the others short out. He has the collector of the transistor going to ground and the emitter going to the LEDs. Everybody I spoke to said the PNP transistors emitter is always going to ground and the collector should drive the LEDs. No matter what I do,I can not get it to work like yours on your You Tube video. I don't know if there is anything else that got fried or not. I bought a new LM3915N-1 chip and more Bar Graph LEDs but haven't done anything yet because I am afraid of shorting those out as well. I can try to get some pictures of what I have and maybe you can make some sense of it..
Thanks,Dave

The voicebox I have on YouTube is not the one I used the Jupiter board for. I hand built that one from scratch using a schematic I found on the Internet, but it wasn't right and I had the same trouble you seem to be having. I bypassed the transistors out of the circuit and wired directly to the LEDs, and it works as you see it in the video. Also, the schematic originally had the common leads of the LEDs wired to ground, but they should be wired to positive. After I made those two modifications, everything worked fine. Here is my modified schematic. It still shows the transistors, but like I said, after nothing worked, I bypassed them.



Chris

Chris - do you have any pictures of the voicebox you scratch built using this schematic? Just curious to see the detail of how you put it together. I am considering doing the same.

Thanks!
Joe

Chris,
I have this diagram also. Can you show some pictures of how you have it wired please? If I can get this to work then I won't have to buy that other board from Jameco you told me about. I just want to see how you did the mod other than looking at the diagram because I'm still a little confused looking at the picture.. Thanks,Dave

Joe Huth wrote:Chris - do you have any pictures of the voicebox you scratch built using this schematic? Just curious to see the detail of how you put it together. I am considering doing the same.

Thanks!
Joe

Sure! Here are some pics while I was building it, and there's also a link to Youtube of it working:







I used clear Plexiglass that I bought in Home Depot for the overlays..Just painted them black, masking out the places that would be clear. I copied a screenshot from the show for the words and letters, put them in position and copied them onto a clear acetate sheet.
Here's the YouTube link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0C04AmP ... playnext=1

or a longer one, taken by my cell (which is why the video is sideways:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBQ7VGT ... e=youtu.be

Chris

How much will it cost for a pc board?

The voicebox group sold by Jupiter, which is where I got mine, is $30. That includes the voicebox face board (display board), the voicebox circuit board, and the 4 step countdown circuit board.

http://www.jupitere.com/k200/discontinued.htm

Chris

hi guys i am totally new to this sort of electrics but a fan of KITT. I am currently modding my bmw e36 328i which is a beauty in black and to set off the interior i am trying to get a voice box like the ones in this post but without the button i just simply want KITTS led's to jump to the sound in the car. I have spoken to maplins who tell me it cannot be done without a huge amount of stuff and chips. Now i remember the 80's and had a stereo that had a sort of graphic equalizer with lights that bounced up and down rapidly so it cant be that difficult can it? Any ideas on where to go and how to do this. Thanks in advance guys.

wilba2880 wrote:hi guys i am totally new to this sort of electrics but a fan of KITT. I am currently modding my bmw e36 328i which is a beauty in black and to set off the interior i am trying to get a voice box like the ones in this post but without the button i just simply want KITTS led's to jump to the sound in the car. I have spoken to maplins who tell me it cannot be done without a huge amount of stuff and chips. Now i remember the 80's and had a stereo that had a sort of graphic equalizer with lights that bounced up and down rapidly so it cant be that difficult can it? Any ideas on where to go and how to do this. Thanks in advance guys.

Try Jameco for an LED vu meter:

http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... _147643_-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You might need some transistors to wire in the 3 rows of LEDs instead of just the one, or you can buy 3 kits and then wire all of them to the output of your radio.

Chris

I taked a look at the circuit and realized that the emmiters from the transistors array aren't connected to a positive source of voltage (+) . The transistor array pretend to form a buffer so the led driver (LM3914) can handle the loads, i mean, the leds. This is because the integrated circuit can supply a limited amount of current at its outputs, and the transistors can handle much more. To make the circuit works as is spected, just do the connection of all emmiters to the Vcc (positive side).

Regards.