'Knight Rider' LED Chaser with the ESP32

摘要

Knight Rider was a TV action movie featuring a super intelligent car called KITT that talks and self-navigates. The series became immortal due to the light effect on the front of the car, and the associated zoomzoom sound. These lights turn on one by one in one direction, and then in the reverse direction, this movement is repeated continuously. In this little project eight LEDs are connected to the ESP32 DevKitC and the LEDs simulate the Knight Rider car lights. The block diagram of the project is pictured in Figure 1, and the circuit diagram, in Figure 2. The eight LEDs are connected to the GPIO ports through 330-ohm current limiting resistors. The project is easily built on breadboard as shown in Figure 3. The PDL (Project Description Language) of the plan is shown in Listing 1. The program listing of the project is the practical implementation of the PDL. It is very simple and is shown in Listing 2. At the beginning of the program an array called LEDs is set up to store the port numbers of the LEDs used in the project. Then, the GPIO ports that the LEDs are connected to are configured as output ports. Inside the main program two for loops are established. Inside the first for loop the LEDs from MSB to LSB are turned on for 100 ms. Inside the second loop the LEDs from LSB to MSB are turned On for 100 ms. Thus, the net effect is that the LEDs 'chase' each other in both directions.