Second Proposal :: Light bar from the Knight Rider car

A lot of people might remember the old TV show from way back in the 80's about a talking car called KITT. The car had a red light bar at the front of its bonnet, the light moved left and right and back again. It kind of signalled a sense of life in the car like it was alive.



So for this second experiment I am proposing to recreate the light bar featured at the front of the Knight Rider car. Since I already have an Arduino board it could be an interesting experiment for me. I've got the board flashing one LED light and the code seems kind of easy to understand as there is plenty of help available. The developers of the Arduino also provide a forum to find or ask for help. I have modified some of the code that was provided on the Arduino website so that it could flash at a slightly different set time. At the moment I only have the one LED working but once I get some more LEDs it could get interesting, with multiple lights set to flash at differing times it should be quite easy to recreate the Knight Rider car's bar light moving left and right.

I found this on YouTube which shows exactly what I want to create
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wXE1Ja8sgZo

And this one shows how it would look once its been put inside a case
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ricvRK6Ok7U

The Arduino board once programmed can work independently of the computer. It can be powered by one of those square batteries. I think this project could be aesthetically pleasing to complete because some people will find it fascinating. I mean who doesn't want a pulsating light thingy amongst all the gadgets.

Speaking of which a company called Weston Digital that makes computer hard drives used this exact idea to incorporate a pulsing light on an external drive. The light on that drive pulsates when there some drive activity going like transferring file and stuff.