DIY Brake Light Mod

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Once upon a time, in a place far far away, I wanted to make a scanning 3rd brake light for my car. Remember the TV show Knight Rider? Remember the red lights in the hood that would scan back and forth, left to right? I wanted to put one of these for the back of my car, but nobody made one... So I made my own. The first prototype was a made on a bread board from radio shack and wired together with individual wires, no printed circuit board. The end result looked something like this

 
Wouldn't be allowed in Australia.
Way too confusing for following motorists.
Solid red bar is OK, scanning NO!
 
I posted pictures of my project (can't find them at the moment) on a car forum that I frequented and many members asked me to make one for them. I designed the printed circuit board, had them made and soldered all the stuff up to make hundreds of finished products ready to install in your car. There were 3 versions through out their productions years.

The first one scanned left to right only.

Version 2 had a speed control and a panic switch to make it function as a regular brake light if a cop was behind you.

Version 3 had several programmed patterns. There was a control module in the cabin to allow you to change the patern and see a display of what the actual brake light pastern was doing in the rear.

Here is the control box board with surface mount components
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This is the PCB that goes into the brake light housing. Please note the 4 prong flat LEDs. These are the same high powered LEDs as used by emergency vehicles and stop lights. These were all powered by transistors in the picture above.
DSC00824.JPG


This was the version 3 kit ready to go
kit.jpg



This was the mock up for the control box
control.png



I designed the PCBs (printed circuit boards) so I could get two LED light panels and 2 controller boards on one board to help keep the production costs down.
red.jpg



I wasn't sure if this belongs in the garage or tinkers table, but I wanted to share this bit of my history with y'all.
 
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