Overview Diagram For Wiring My Lower Console To My 12 Position Fuse Block

Here is an overview diagram of my initial plan to wire my lighted lower console switches to my 12 position fuse block which is rated at 105 Amps Max, although I'm going to keep it at an even conservative 100 Amps Max. In this diagram you can see I have marked each switch circuit for what the switches are rated for and times that by the number of switches. These are simply controlling SPST Relays, I'm using a 10 AWG power wire to link up all of the switches, this wire is pretty short and then goes into a nice 16 AWG wire that is a little over 6 feet to reach the fuse block I have installed under the passenger side. According to my wiring charts it should be WAY more than I need to handle any load the lower console may consume.... even less if I eventually switch out the bulbs to LEDs. As near as I can tell this should be good.

Lower Console Lighted

I hooked up my Lower Console to my Eliminator 12V power supply to see what it will look like when installed in the car. Pretty cool I must say. Took a while to finally get all the wiring done but I knew taking the extra time to wire up Molex connectors would make installing the console easier and make removing it for any future maintenance a lot easier too.

Lower Console Buttons Wiring Diagram 2

In getting my lower console ready for wiring up to Molex connectors it is important to make sure your switches are wired correctly. The 10 coloured buttons mounted into the solder-less connection board by Jupiter Electronics are pretty simple and may only need a little customization depending on how you want the bulb to light when switch is on or off or if you want the bulb lighted all the time.

These three position white switches are a little more complex as they can turn on two devices (one at a time). So the wiring them to relays is a little more complicated. Better to have it all worked out in my wiring diagrams first to make sure the switches are going to be wired correctly than just start messing around with wires and potentially hook up the switches wrong. These are specialty switches that are a little hard to come by and you REALLY don't need to be blowing them with experimentation's that you are not sure about. So I can't stress the importance of working out good wiring diagrams first and even cross referencing those diagrams with other people in the Knight Rider community who have wired up these types of switches before. I have a lot of great people on the Face Book Knight Rider groups to thanks for all of their help in this.

The above diagram I made with some great help as I say from some awesome people on the Face Book knight Rider Community pages. The one on the left shoes the three position switches connected to common SPST Relays. In this diagram the light inside of the switch remains on at all times

Now with the wiring diagrams worked out the next job will be to start soldering my wires to the switches and connecting them to Molex Connectors in preparation for a future time when I decide what to hook the buttons up to.

Lower Console Switches Installation And Wiring Diagram

With my lower console overlay finally primed and painted and most of the buttons installed it's getting very near time to start thinking about the wiring job. The coloured buttons are from Jupiter Electronics and came with a small overlay which I was originally going to see if I could use but as it turns out it was just getting in the way of my custom switches overlay I had made out of the Lexan plastic so it hot scrapped. The buttons also came with a solderless connection board as you may recall from previous posts. It was a real bear getting all of the pins to fit into the board I can sure tell you, especially since the way I had done this I had to put the whole group of 10 switches into my overlay and insert them through the hole I had pre cut into the fibreglass console and then insert the pins from the switches into the solderless connection board. A very finicky job but I finally managed it.

Next job on my list of things to do was to carefully go over the connections on the switches to make sure they matched up with the markings on the edge of the board for "Common" or ground, "NO," and the two connections for the switch bulb. one of which on the switch is marked as "+" but no marking on the board so I had to make sure I reflect that in my wiring diagram pictured below. At first glance the solderless connection board looks a little confusing but it's not really, if you looks closely at it you'll see it makes perfect sense. I have made my wiring diagram pretty "Idiot Proof" so even I can follow it lol.

I have no real plans at the moment for what I want these buttons to do so for now they are just going to be wired up to a Molex connector which can be run to a relay board at a future time when I do have a much better idea of what to do with them.... lol I'm sure I'll find something ;)

NOTE: I made a change to the diagram as I realized that I had some connections in the wrong place, this latest one is the correct one.

Here is a sample of how you can connect each switch to a Relay in order to turn on any desired device you would like to hook up to the console switches. As you can see in the diagram below that the switch makes a connection to ground completing the circuit through the Relay's magnetic coil to 12V positive energizing the magnetic coil inside of the Relay and activating it's internal switch which completes the circuit from ground to 12V positive of your desired device. Gotta love those Relays ;)

More Work On My Lower Console Switches Overlay

I'm getting closer and closer to being completed on my custom overlay for my switches on my lower console. As you can see in the top two pictures I have cut out the holes for the switches in both my Lexan plastic overlay and into the fibre glass console itself.

Next step was to give the Lexan plastic overlay a sanding before priming. Once the sanding was done I gave the overlay a good cleaning with soap and water and then dried it off with paper towels and then cleaned it once more with some rubbing alcohol before priming. Once the priming is done the final step will be to paint the over lay before installing the switches.

More Prep Work On Getting The Lower Console Electronics Installed

I'm taking a little break from the software development while the warmer weather is coming. Time to FINALLY get the ball rolling again on some of the manual labour like installing my dash, lower and upper console. Not much I can do on the upper console until I order the electronics for that, even the lower console I need the Space Matt buttons. I had a set of non functioning buttons that I recently sold off in favour of getting some functioning buttons. I made an inquiry to the fellow on Face Book I will be buying the Space Matt buttons for for the dimensions so I can pre cut my hole in the Lexan plastic overlay I am making for my buttons. I have a lot more cutting and filing o do but in the above left photo you can see the progress of my plastic overlay or bed for the buttons. Next are the buttons I got from Jupiter Electronics ready to be installed once I have finished cutting and filing my Lexan plastic mounting bed. 

K.I.T.T.s Dash Software Movie Player WIP

K.I.T.T.s Dash Software is coming along very nicely. Here is a quick screen shot of the movie player I am working on. So far I have it where it will play a movie in .ogg format from either a web address or local folder specified address and stream that movie into our movie player. I'll make it so that you can click on the preview screen and it will load up to full screen but even just viewing the movie in the preview screen I find quite enjoyable. ;) I also need to add the "Now Playing" display so that it will display the title of whatever the movie clip is called.

Alternate Music Player Option

We have an alternate music player as a choice of style of player to chose from. This music player is scripted better than the other player and uses a lot more of the UI elements Versus how the other player is laid out with 3D mesh text as music list text which in itself would be fine if I was only planning on having a few "Canned" or built in audio files. Needless to say given what I have done with this alternate player the first one will get a re-designing. Plus this one allows users to add their own music files un-like the other player I had originally made. Once redesigned the original player will have the same features that this one has, but a similar yet re-designed layout. One of the other things that was bugging me about the other player although not very apparent was the fact that the 3D "Selectable" mesh text for the songs list made it impossible for me to place my buttons under the screen that displays the music play list because it was an issue with clicking the buttons and also being able to accidentally clicking one of the songs in the list... an annoying bug I was constantly trying to find a work around for. This new player solves those issues and adds much more versatility.

Audio Spectrum Comparison Screen WIP

Work in progress on our Audio Spectrum Comparison screen. Right now I have it so two audio specimens can be compared along side each other, one above and one below. By using the "PAN" slider you can direct the audio of each clip to either the right or left speaker so long as the audio was recorded with both channels. Volume slider can control each audio clip independently. By pressing stop or pause you can freeze the spectrum data visual to have a closer visual inspection. Things that still need to be done are the audio clip duration sliders, and the audio match by comparison text indicator. Also the ability to load in a recorded voice sample, this will be done in the same way as our audio recorder screen. I may put a record option on this screen too, but have not yet decided yet. But it's coming along very nicely. I never would have thought that my K.I.T.T. dash would have quite this level of functionality. There is a lot of cool stuff I am looking into as to what can be done using the web cam live stream feature to. I already have that hooked into my Video, Laser Scope, and surveillance mode screen. From what I understand Unity can accept various inputs from Arduino controlled devices like an ultrasonic sensor, which can be used along with the surveillance system or approach warning for if a large object comes within a certain range of the sensor things can be activated inside of my K.I.T.T.s dash software. This opens a whole range of cool possibilities to trick out the dash software something crazy! :)