Mini Relays Board For Space Matt Buttons

I started soldering my mini Songo 12V Relays to the piece of Proto-Board I had for my Space Matt buttons yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to get the relays to sit straight on the board because the pins on the relays don't match up well with the holes in the Proto-Board, so they look like they sit at a slight angle. But it works and that's the main thing. So once this assembly is done I'll be able to wire this up to my Space Matt buttons and use some of the relays on the board to request a DTMF tone from the Knight Rider World Voice Box.

Progress, Progress, Progress!

Wow! What a busy day yesterday, at first I didn't feel like I was getting a lot accomplished but at the end of the day I realized just how much I had done, soldering of wires to connectors for connecting to Relays in the dash, hooking up ground connections, putting the shifter knob back in after testing all of the wires running through to my Lower Console, hooking the green and red "?" buttons up to Relays in the dash for turning on the LCD and GPS screens in my Knight Rider 2 TV Dash, and then putting together a video, wow! more done than I thought :)


Here on the left you can see a shot of the shifter knob reinstalled and I even added the "Knight" logo that I got from Michel Hageman a fellow Knight Rider builder friend on Face Book. I even got around to ordering the S-1 Upper Console electronics from Knight Rider World later on yesterday too.

Here's a shot of me fiddling about with all of the wires inside of the car. It's a good thing I make all of those diagrams because all of that wiring gets very confusing after a while and sometimes hard to keep track of. K.I.T.T. is going to need a Manual once he's done lol. Which kind of reminds me that I'll need to do a new diagram of how I have hooked up my Lower Console switches to power my LCD and GPS screens as they are being done through a couple of small NAIS SPST Relays switching on the power side and not the ground as I have pictured in my last diagram.

Here is a couple of shots of my Lower Console installed. You can see how I have my mounting screws going through those side "wings" (top left) I had  glassed onto the console when I made the modifications from a console that covered the e-brake to one that allows the brake to be used, which in some states and provinces is law! if your car is equipped with one it has to be accessible.

Installing And Wiring My Space Matt Buttons

"Buttons, Wires and Connectors, Oh My!"

Well I installed my make shift Space Matt buttons a little differently that I wanted too. I was going to cut out my rectangular hole a little bigger so as to sink the Space Matt buttons array into the hole so it would sit flush, but I'm a little hesitant to do that because the hole is cut to the size of the USB Space Matt Keyboard buttons that you can get from Knight Rider World, and like I say these may just be temporary buttons for me to use until I get around to ordering the USB buttons. Of course me doing it this way means that my plastic overlay I made is a little too thick for how I have the Space Matt buttons placed into the console as in they sit a little deeper down. I may make a thinner overlay out of some metal stock I have kicking around, I'll see what ends up looking good.

I had drilled in a large enough hole into the top of the fibreglass console to be able to thread in my wires for all of the buttons. I had to add a little more length to the wires so I would have a little more room to put in my Molex Connectors. I had to get a couple of 15 Pin Connectors as the electronics place did not have anything bigger. That's OK though, it just means having another connector sticking out of the wire loom ;) Each one will be clearly marked so they can't get confused so no biggie.

I have the one wire that connects all of the buttons together on the far side of the Molex Connector and then the 4 rows of individual wires for each button connection using up the remaining pins of the connector. This way I can organize them on the connectors in rows from top to bottom. Here in this picture on the left you can see I have started putting together the wires into the connector, I have the main buttons feed wire in place and the first top row of buttons wires in place, now to complete the connectors by following the same format. ;)

Upper Console Installed

I have the upper console pretty much installed. I have some tweaking to do and I want to see if I can add some more felt around the top edge to try and tidy up my install a little more. I also want to make sure my wires are tucked away neatly inside of the console, I did a pretty good job but there are a lot of wires in there so I just want to be doubly, doubly sure that there are not any pinched wires or wires that are not properly insulated that could cause a short, a short would be very bad! :(

I have the push buttons wires run down the drivers side windshield frame and under the dash to be plugged into the tone generator on the Knight Rider World Voice Box. They too can be hooked up to do things individually but that would be a whole load more wires to deal with so for now I'm OK with them just being hooked up to a tone generator when I put the Knight Rider 2 T.V. dash in. I have the rocker switches wired, the first two as mentioned before are for the front Fog Lights, the other four switches are not yet assigned for any purpose yet, not sure what I'll use them for just yet.

The headliner near the front will need some additional padding as I appear to have a gap there that needs to be filled, perhaps some 1/2" foam rubber under the headliner will do the trick? I'll see what I can do about that.

I'll follow up a little more on my install with a video as I know there are many out there who seem to like my videos.