An electronics and Arduino newbie here.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.