Scrolling LED Third Brake Light!

[dmention7]

C'mon..... go big or go home.

 

[mndsm]

Agreed, but one thing at a time. I have a hard enough time with anything do do with electricity, and electronics in general, and now you want to add this too?

 

[Picklz]

Yeah my thought is define a small number of features, the core stuff. Figure that out then we can expand from there.

Right now I'm seriously considering trying to learn PIC programming - looks like those little things can do all sorts of cool stuff. Looking for a decent programmer right now, going to have to see if one of the old PC's I have has a parallel / serial port on it or not, if not I'll have to get a USB version.

 

[dmention7]

If it's cheaper, matt, you could always get one of those little USB->Serial adapters. I think those only run about $15 or so.

Also, I think one of the core features should be the ability be integrated with your stereo so that your brake light pulses with the beat. That should be easy enough.

 

[Picklz]

Most of the PIC programmers I looked at say they dont work with the USB->Serial adapters, not sure why, but i'm 99% sure I've got a serial port on one of my machines at home.

I'm thinking of ordering this programmer still doing some research though.

Good one about the light flashing to the beat of the music, maybe we could get some strobes in the headlights and some underbody neons too!

 

[mndsm]

Matt, if you need an old rig w/ a serial port, I have one. It likes to eat hard drives sometimes, but should serve your purpose. Also, my laptop may have one on it too, i'll have to look.

 

[Big Nate]

These are all very good ideas and Jay stop trying to add stuff to it.

I agree we need something working then we can add to that.

 

[Picklz]

Matt, if you need an old rig w/ a serial port, I have one. It likes to eat hard drives sometimes, but should serve your purpose. Also, my laptop may have one on it too, i'll have to look.

Thanks for the offer, I've got like 4-5 PC's at home, and I'm pretty sure one of em has a serial, just have to double check when I get home tonight. If not we can talk and maybe figure something out with a laptop or the spare box you have.

I think the fastest way to do this would be to buy one of those bike lights and modify it, but now you got me started so I think I may try and go completly custom reading about PIC programming right now.

First post has been updated a bit.

 

[Picklz]

Just found someone that posted some various projects they have done w/ a PIC (Programmable microcontroller).

The last one on this page looks like it could be adapted very well to our application, it already has different 'modes' programmed, as well as a scrolling 'column' feature which is pretty much what we are looking for. Also at the very bottom is a link to another project that has code for making patterns and such. I think with these code samples it wouldn't be all that hard to program something to our liking

http://www.ke4nyv.com/picprojects.htm

 

[dmention7]

Matt, I've always been kind of curious how all these programmable microcontrollers and stuff work, so if this project does get rolling, I'd like to meet up and actually see the process in action.

 

[Picklz]

Same here Jay, I'm sure we can meet up once I have some idea of WTF I'm doing, reading a few tutorials now as I have time, and I'm going to look through those exampes in a bit to see if I can figure out what is going on.

 

[mndsm]

Yeah, I want to be in on this as well.

 

[Big Nate]

like I said guys lets just do a mini (not the car) meet. we can look at all the different things we can do with these leds and how hard it will be to do them.

 

[mndsm]

Yeah, we should get that together.

 

[Picklz]

I would be up for that, not that we can't put our ideas in here but meeting up is cool too. I'm pretty busy the rest of this week, maybe this weekend though?

I'm trying to figure out how man LED's we'll need to have total, 2 rows of 10 or 12? Maybe more? That'll effect what Microcontroller we have to use.

I found a couple other programmers (one is USB) but I have to figure out what chip I'm looking to use before I order one.


Edit: I should clarify that, we need to decide how many 'channels' we need to be able to light up individually, for example if we had two rows of 20 LED's (40 total) and the top and bottom LED in each column was connected, so that when column 1 lights up, both the top and the bottom light up at the same time, that would only be 20 channels to control, but if we wanted each LED to be controlled individually that would take 40 channels, makes sense?

 

[spek1098]

Well if you are in need of an electrical engineer, I have a retired one sitting at home who is always asking me for projects to do. This would be a sinch for him. All he would need is what options you'd want the lights to do, how you want to control it and how you want to know what setting it's on, and I'm guessing he could have a design within a week. Let me know.

 

[Picklz]

As much as I kind of want to play around with the PIC's if he'd be willing to help out that would be pretty cool.

I guess the first thing we really need to figure out is how many / what size LED's this is going to take and exactly what pattern(s) we want?

 

[mndsm]

Well, I think the thing is there to make the determination of what will fit to maximise output/flexibility. if I could do 2X2 (4 rows 2 to each channel) that would be ideal, but I am not sure about the space constraints on the car. Mebbe I do what I said yesterday and go take it apart.

 

[Picklz]

Yep gonna have to pull it apart and see what will fit, I have a feeling more than 2 rows may not fit, I'll have to see if they make 3mm ultrabright red LED's, that'd allow for some more wiggle room than the 5mm versions.

 

[mndsm]

Well, if the 5mm ones are bright enough, and we do two single rows, that ought to be enough.