Musical LED lights

An electronics and Arduino newbie here. :sweat_smile:
I built a 3x3x3 LED cube and made some interesting patterns in it using Arduino. Now, I thought of lighting the LEDs based on an audio( MP3) played in my laptop. But I don't know how to send the value of the real-time amplitude of the audio signal as input to the arduino.
I don't want to mess with my sound card by directly connecting the input of Arduino to it. Is there any way to obtain real-time amplitude of the audio signal using a software and send the signal as input to Arduino via USB?

Please help me out here. Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

Is there any way to obtain real-time amplitude of the audio signal using a software and send the signal as input to Arduino via USB?

No... You'd have to program the Arduino to "look like" a soundcard. Then with the computer sending to (digital) sound to the Arduino "sound card", you wouldn't get any sound from your real soundcard.

I'm currently working on a project which achieves I think what you want. I'll upload a blog about it in a few days but essentially I use Processing to perform an FFT of the music (the Mimim library), then activate the Arduino LEDs (via USB) depending on the amplitude of a spectrum range.

Here of the details of my musical visualiser project: Musical Rainbows in the Van | John Whittington's Blog

And video overview: RGB Music Visualiser for 5050 LED Strip - YouTube

I'm always lurking, but keeping an eye on this. :stuck_out_tongue:

I have a very similar setup (to Tuna_Fish) in my bar using 2 x 5050 RGB strips with a simple button to cycle through functions such as fade, flash etc. My laptop is not always set up to play music in the bar, so am also moving towards building a contained unit with a jack to plug the laptop into when we are "entertaining" the rowdier element. :smiley:

It's interesting, I've published similar project 5 days ago :smiley:
http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/tears-of-rainbow/

Use Processing + minim to detect / measure the audio (google: processing minim visualizer)
Use Processing to send the light data to the Arduino via serial (google: processing arduino communication serial)

Cheater version:

Note that instead of manipulating the graphic display, you'd just send the appropriate levels to your arduino.

Note that instead of manipulating the graphic display, you'd just send the appropriate levels to your arduino.

What do you mean?

Glad to see this get a little more active; there is certainly lots of potential with music and LEDs! I like the look of the VU meter you made Magician, I had desire to make such a thing whilst doing my project.

Thanks, TUNA_FISH. :blush:
Working on a stereo version right now, will publish soon.