First a little background… Last year I built a color organ type project using the hackable GE RGB LED Christmas lights and the MSGEQ7 Graphic Equalizer Display Filter. The project changed the lights based on the audio signal presented to the MSGEQ7. I wrote several effects for the lights and changed them based on pressing a button.
Upon seeing the GE lights in all their glory a friend of mine thought it would be cool to have something similar for his entertainment center. I happened to have another set of GE lights, so I said sure no problem. Fast forward 6 months of both of us forgetting about it and me thinking up another use for the extra set of GE lights I had, so now I needed to source a new set of lights. After looking around at several options I decided on the 20mm Clear Digital RGB LED Pixels from Bliptronics/Adafruit. The LED Pixels are very bright and with the available Arduino library they are easy to control. In addition to a button to change effects in my old design I also added an IR receiver and mapped a few unused buttons on the standard FIOS remote, so now you can switch effects without ever leaving the couch!
While working on the new hardware I also came up with a few new effects, some of which are based on the audio running through the EQ and some of which are not. The EQ effects are mainly driven by 3 channels from the MSGEQ7 (Low, Mid, High). Each of the channels corresponds to a Red, Green or Blue LED in a pixel and the value of the channel as determined by the MSGEQ7 sets the intensity of the colors. This basic mapping makes for a great visualization of the music and theoretically the same song will always produce the same effect.
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Thanks for featuring my project. I’m a big fan of the Boarduino and use it for almost every project I build.