Yes! It's the Knight Rider satnav! The days when Michael Knight tore across the US in KITT are long gone, but Mio is keeping the memory alive with a Knight Rider inspired satnav. Knight_Rider_GPS_01 Mio's Knight Rider satnav uses the car's original 'voice'. Images courtesy of Auto Blog According to a report by car news website Autoblog.com, Mio has designed …
Liked the show and might buy this if its maps/software were upgradeable (though I don't think KITT every had a firmware upgrade during his frequent services in the back of the Knight Industries' truck or rather rolling garage) so it probably won't so I wont buy.
Can we have an anaimated anamorphic equalizer icon please El Reg because was better than anything produced by Mr Gates or Mr Jobs
I'm surpised that General Motors (company behind Pontiac) didn't capitalisemore on the show's popularity by perhaps including a light in the bonnet of their cars.
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so in every single image of the unit, the lights on the sides are in exactly the same position - do they not voorp voorp from side to side (or top to bottom in this case) like KITT's does? that's a bit lame and cheap. how much would it cost to put a small circuit in to pulse the leds in sequence?
What I want to know is when I can get a HAL navigation system for my car.
Me: Let go through the drive-thru.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Me: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Me: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
the vertical lights on this are supposed to imitate the VERTICAL lights that used to pulse in time with KITT's voice that were INSIDE the car on the centre console (either side of where the turbo boost buttons were etc) they're not supposed to imitate the one that was on the hood. Sorry i'm English I mean bonnet not hood.
So clearly the flaw with this product is that it should come with an additional set of bonnet mounted scanning lights for the full KITT experience!
oh hang on, but what about a super pursuit mode button....
Sorry Henry, although your idea is a good one - having the lights imitate KITT's vocorder (or whatever it was called) - you can clearly see that the design of the sides of the unit is intended to mimic the leading edge of KITT's bonnet. Sadly this means that the lights are indeed supposed to be the scanning thingy, and thus are indeed pants.
Sadly when zipping down the road and turning corners in the low slung mid engined sports car or the the other open air ultra light weight Lotus 7 clone powered by the Toyota or Nissan twin cam 120 cubic inch turbo charged four banger ! The biggest menace to these tiny baby but very fast agile play toys with roof lines less then forty inches(great when Hot Pants were all the rage what a birds eye view you got so as to speak !) cruising down the rain swept winter roads at a reasonable road speed are either idiots with stick on football supporter club badges trying to stick to your rear end like glue . But you laugh when you see them spin out at the round abouts or any corner as they just didn't quite make the turn at the same velocity you are traveling at , oopsie ! . So sad the simple fact is most male football club supporters with these units think they can drive like a top formula one or ace rally car driver drunk or sober !
However , the biggest menace are the planks male or female who drive these overweight crap handling wallowing fallover land barges with a nav system stuck on the windshield as they weave across eight lanes of highway so busy playing with their toy navigator they tend to ignore all traffic around them as they meander on their silly way despite the big overhead signs pointing the way miles before the turn ! A very good thing when in your lightweight toy car with grunt and fast responsive steering you pass these wowsers before they can react and weave in front of you and all they see is the top of your red Ferrari baseball cap as you zoom past in the blink of an eye and leave them behind !
Yeah those sat nav road users are truly a menace to both pedestrians and every other motorist in their destination path !
Even when stuck at the red traffic lights you still see these wankers playing with the units oblivious to their surroundings as well !
The Dodge Viper V10 now that is a great V8 baiter , but that be another tale !
Animating the lights would probably fall foul of whatever legislation it is that decrees against flashing lights on car stereos etc while the vehicle is in motion. I suspect satnavs in general only get away with it because of the questionable value of finding good deep rivers to ditch into.
Great, but they missed a trick -
Super-pursuit mode button - Fastest route ignoring speed limit.
Pursuit mode button - Fastest route with speed limit.
Cruise mode button - Shortest / Economical route.
Turbo Boost Button - A whooshing sound effect which also pumps a little bit of nitro into your engine block!
It must have the best voice recognition capabilities out there too.
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I'm liking this thing, but they should have added some extra likeness gubbins, buttons adorning the left and right of the KITT voice lights, an animation effect for voice lights, and maybe a replacement complete dash for your make of car, CRT TV screens et al.
Maybe I'm getting a bit carried away. ;-) I is luvving it!
Just a quick note, Pontiac DID capitalise on the Knight Rider popularity and produced a Trans Am in Kitt's paint job. There is a rumour they discontinued it very quickly because some idiots tried to jump tracks in front of trains and drive off cliffs.
This is only an urban legend that was mentioned on a TV programme about Knight Rider, so make of this what you will.
Not sure I'd get this though as the novelty would wear off very rapidly... It's not right without the sweeping lights though.
Sorry AF, although your idea is a good one - and you're right the sides are an imitation of the bonnet/nose of the car - as you'll see from the link below it is in fact a bastard love child amalgamation of the two things.
oh and it's vocoder not vocorder, and in fact a vocoder is the device/effect used to produce the robotic KITT voice not the lights themselves. The lights that flash in time with the speech, well, they're just lights that flash in time with the speech. Same principle as the output meter(s) on a mixing desk, though a lot lower resolution I'm sure! lol
see below.... voice sounds pretty ropey in places i reckon
http://gizmodo.com/5019065/mios-knight-rider-gps-test-drive-video-verdict-its-kittastic
funny at the end of the trip the voice does say "you have arrived at your destination thanks for not making me fly fool."
The voice from the tomtom website is marked as British !?
going OT again didn't a British man buy kitt after some californa firm coped the body for a few replicas.
##### found it http://www.carsofthestars.com/ in Keswick, Cumbria.
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Tom tom has a few very nice voice to choose from here in the Netherlands, one is an adult actress called kim holland, and she tells you to "get off" at the next turn in a very sultry voice, but it's kinda hard to translate it. Paris, because they're almost in the same line of work, only kim uses a better camera..
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