knight rider online

Does anyone have a wiring schematic to make a simple KITT/KARR scanner using LEDs?

I've always wanted to make one (just to show off, of course), and I've heard that it can be done with just a battery, some LEDs, and 2 capacitors, but I've never even seen one before in person, nor have I even tried to build one.

You have been misinformed.

A minimum requirement first is a square wave oscillator made up of two transistors in a multivibrator arrangement and the second is a CD 4017 decade counter IC to drive the leds.

If this sounds greek to you then you may want to look for a simple kitset.

For a simple arrangement, you will need a NE555 timer chip, CD4017 decade counter, a few rectifiers to enable the return scan on the latter counts, a 9 volt regulator and the LEDs...

Do a google search on knight rider scanner circuit

When Knight Rider first aired and I wanted to make a scanner for my car, I came up with an idea: A motor spinning a contact that would touch a sequence of contacts in a circle. I only used seven lights, and if you number the lights, I had 12 contacts in the circle, numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-6-5-4-3-2. That way, as the main central contact was spun by the motor, it would illuminate those lights in the back and forth sequence, over and over again.

Of course, I had problems with the contacts sticking or wearing out, so I eventually changed it to a motor slowly spinning a magnet around a circle of magnetic reed switches, with the reed switches going to the lights in the same sequence.

Now, I just use an electronic scanner that I ordered from the JC Whitney catalog. I've thought about adding diodes and capacitors to that scanner to get a better trailing effect as the light moves, but I haven't tried that yet.