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Blitz City DIY (Liz) walks through her v2.0 sound-reactive PC lights build using an Adafruit Pro Trinket (5V) and SparkFun MSGEQ7. The ‘2.0’ upgrade is a great part of this build: Liz has improved upon her soldering skill and become more comfortable with transplanting circuits from breadboard to protoboard, and took advantage of the small package profile of the Pro Trinket to make everything a bit more compact and discreet inside the PC case – and I’m really digging that black-top protoboard too!
For those that are not into PC gaming, you may not be aware that there is a large DIY PC community based around the idea that you should build your own PC to get the best price to performance for tasks like gaming, media creation and things like that. Attached to the performance benefits are also aesthetics. People spend a lot of time and money to make sure their PC looks the sleekest, whether it be a matching color theme for all of the components, cable management or one of the newer features: RGB LEDs. There’s even software and special headers on the motherboards to support the RGB craze. The issue though is that different bits of software have different features or require different hardware to control the LED strips. There are also different voltages of LED strips (12V vs. 5V depending) depending on the brand, so you end up committing to one version of a platform depending on your brand choice and of course there’s a premium for the options with the most features. The LED strips from these companies also tend to be on the shorter side, often requiring 3-4 to make it around the perimeter of your case and you’re paying a premium for the compatibility with that company’s software and/or hardware.
Controlling a strip of NeoPixels with a Pro Trinket and an MSGEQ7 chip to react to seven audio spectrum bands.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
