Arduino X-mas light controller

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi everyone, I am pretty sure this has been covered before but I am unable to locate it. I am trying to make one of those music animated dancing light shows for Christmas. I would like to make an 8 channel controller and bought 8 5v relays. My question is this, how do i get the arduino to somehow hear mp3 files to control the relays? I found one instructable for this

but it does not actually have anything to do with music controlling the lights. Can anyone out there help me with this project? Thank you

2

... to somehow hear mp3 files to control the relays ...

Do you mean it has an audio input and reacts based on that? Or is it playing the music as well?

3

The arduino would probably need to react to a certain noise threshold with a piezo. Check out the code here: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/KnockSensor

4

I would prefer using outside music files and not wasting programming space with internal files

5

woo!
i did that once

I made a midi interface, mapped each relay to a note on an arduino mega, and used Cubase LE to write a midi file in sync with the music. it was pretty simple to do once everything was set up. some relays, some darlington arrays, pretty much plugged everything straight in.

6

Hey weirdo557, that looks like what i am trying to make. Do you have a blog or some sort of building and software instructions i could see.

7

i can draw up some diagrams. i didn't document things real well, but i still have my code and remember the circuits. ill post back today.