Dash Electronics

Originally I was going to have a friend of mine, who is an electrical engineer, build the all the electronics for me. He was excited about it and fully willing to help, but life and availability has gotten in the way, and he isn't going to be able to help me anymore on my KITT replica build. My loss. I had to move then to Plan B: Purchase dash electronics from a vendor. I looked around and found that no one builds a set of electronics that incorporate, or capable of incorporating, full functionality to all the dash gauges. Another disappointment was that most (all?) vendors do not sell all the electronics required for a single car. I will have to purchase my overhead console electronics elsewhere. Another disappointment was most vendors who do sell the overhead console electronics, are not accurate to the show.

I ended up purchasing my electronics for my KITT's dash from ZA Elettronica. They were shipped DHL and arrived fairly quickly, despite coming from Italy. There was VAT/Import taxes that needed to be paid to import these into the USA (in case anyone is wondering). I have not hooked anything up yet, but was assured that they were checked for functionality before shipping.

My first impressions: Everything is smaller than I always envisioned them to be. Looks well done and thorough. Cannot wait to get everything set up and read to go.

Some disappointments: Don't get me wrong, these were items what I was aware of before ordering and are obvious that they exist (in other words, they are not surprises to anyone).

The Green color on the Switch Pods are the wrong shade. In the show, the green buttons are much lighter than the ones that come with any vendors electronics. Everyone, has these colors wrong.

Another disappointment are the dummy electronics. I would prefer that all the electronic gauges/lights were functional and capable of being connected to sensors. It's too bad that to redesign these dash electronics would be too expensive. It would be cool if they were designed for both options. For instance, the LED lightbars can display randomly like they currently do (doesn't take much tech to do this). Flip a switch (or button) that switches between "Demo" mode to "Function mode". Then you can plug anything into the board and it would display its readout, like any off the shelf gauge. I realize that the Pontiac doesn't come stock with all the sensors required for all of the dash gauges, but they can be purchased and added to the car separately. Just need to find someone who is ambitious enough to tackle such a project.

Side-by-side comparison of shades of green

(Left is the Replica, Right is an original found Button)
Note the black text is difficult to read/see