LED Strip audio driver

[E-engineer]

Hi,

I made a comparison of Led drivers that react to music. I wasn't satisfied with the commercial ones, so the middle one is designed by myself.

The self-made middle one reacts to audio frequency and volume. The other ones react to volume only.

What do you think?

 

[Spoon]

That's a nice little project.
I like the second song (that starts at 15 seconds), what's it called?

I did a 5 band led display for the brother-in-law a bit ago. He wanted it all in basic components & on breadboard.



The top board is the pre-amp and the 5 frequency filters. They output to the 5 connectors.
The other 5 boards below are the controls for each frequency that then output to the LED's.
They work on the volume of each channel.
He was still thinking of what LED's to use at the time so we just used basic ones.

 

[E-engineer]

That's a nice little project.
I like the second song (that starts at 15 seconds), what's it called?

It's Nico Staf - Fast and Run:

https://soundcloud.com/audio-library-478708792%2Ffast-and-run-nico-staf-dance-electronic-bright-audio-library-copyright-free-music

Back in the day it seems that there were dedicated chips for the function, but they didn't seem to be in active production anymore. I guess every device now has a processor anyway, so it's cheaper to utilize that.

 

[Spoon]

Back in the day it seems that there were dedicated chips for the function, but they didn't seem to be in active production anymore. I guess every device now has a processor anyway, so it's cheaper to utilize that.

There was a dedicated chip for the LED display bit. Got it for RS Components but then one was faulty and they stopped doing them so got 5 from Ebay.
You can see the chip at the bottom of the 5 LED display boards.

Thanks for letting me know the song mate. Cool track.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

I have a project like this on the back burner. You remember the 3- and 4-channel controllers of the 1980s like the Pulsar Zero-4000 which offered a choice of patterns that would chase to the beat, light chase, dark chase, sound-to-light...?

I want to make one that analyses the music style and tempo and automatically selects suitable effects and colour combinations, switches between modes for verse and chorus, adds a dramatic style change for the bridge, etc. I.e. creates a comprehensive light show as far as can be presented on four channels of running lights.

That's not impossible with a microcontroller and a bit of DSP, but the catch with mine is it has to be done with 1950s technology - valves, dekatrons, relays, uniselectors - and control four 75A 110V DC outputs for fairground ride lighting.

Spoiler: It's hard!