LEDs controlled by sound

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Development
1

Hello everyone.
I know this subject has been discussed before but after looking and reading I ended up more confused. Information overload.

Is there any example online (circuit and code) that uses audio to control LEDs fading in and out? I'm working on a garment that will have surfaced mounted LEDs stitched to it and this little guys will react to music.

Can you point me to a direction to start building some prototypes? I don't have a big knowledge of physical computing but I can get my way around it.

Thank you.

2

that uses audio to control LEDs fading in and out?

The problem is that the dynamic range of sound is so big compared to the dynamic range you can fade an LED, this means you will probably be disappointed by how it actually works.
Start off simply by writing a program to fade an LED:-
http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Fading

3

Hello Grumpy_Mike,
thank you for your quick response. You're right, it's going to be hard to get the LEDs to fade out/in with sound. For now, I'll just work on the idea of make them turn on/off with music.
Any suggestions?

Thank you for the link. I have done that before and it works just fine.

4

First you need to get the sound into the arduino. Look at the front part of the hardware interface from this page:-

http://interface.khm.de/index.php/labor/experimente/arduino-realtime-audio-processing/

You might also want to consider putting a diode and capacitor just before the analogue input so you get an envelope generator rather than the signal samples.

Also have a look at this:-
http://www.andregoncalves.info/ag_blog/?page_id=61
I think it is the sort of thing you want.