LED Lights

Individually addressable LED lights that are able to flash to the beat of any song. How is this possible? A neat chip called a MSGEQ7 receives an audio signal, measures the amplitude of the audio signal across seven different frequency ranges, and outputs the amplitude measure of each frequency band, all within less than 80 microseconds. With the help of some circuitry and C programming, an Arduino is then able to read this output and send instructions to the lights.

I started by designing a schematic for the circuit I needed to design. This involved various resistors, various ceramic capacitors, an Arduino Uno, a DIP-8 MSGEQ7 IC, a microphone board (or, in later versions, a 3.5mm TRRS jack), and a trimmer potentiometer. The schematic shown is an early prototype.

After that was done, I simply ordered custom printed circuit boards and soldered all of the components on.

The last steps were creating a wiring harness to supply 12v/Gnd to both the lights and the Arduino and programming the Arduino to control the lights; the program is available on my GitHub.