Abhay Patel (abhaysp2) - ECE 120

David Creger (dcreger2) - ECE 120

Jerry Chang (jerryc2) - ECE 110


Light Show

Introduction:

       Purpose: As enjoyable as musics is, we may elevate the listening experience by adding another sensory component, appealing to our sense of sight! What better way to do achieve this than a light show? We would like to create a light show that respond to the beat in music. In the design process we will start with a simple LED, then advance our design to a larger scale, such as a strip or a more complex design.

       Background Research: We are all music lovers and we were looking for a visual complement to a music experience. Our group also discussed building a project that would play music in response to loud neighbors as a sort of revenge. Both this and our proposed project would include a microphone to detect noise. However, with our light show, we would not produce audio, but need the device to detect different frequencies in order to respond to specific tones. In response to the differing frequencies received, the light show will output certain colors according to a calculated logic.

Design Details:

         

       An external speaker provides audio needed for the device to react to. Input is received by a microphone/frequency sensor as data for a central arduino. The arduino then uses a program to power the finite state machine and LED lights. The FSM will specify the output for the LED lights. 

Parts:

  •        Microphone
  •        Arduino
  •       LED Lights/Strip
  •       Basic Hardware
  •       Speaker (external)


Possible Challenges:

     In reviewing our construction process, we believe that there may be some difficulty in finding an appropriate range of frequencies for all music, as well as a logic design to properly implement the desired output of lights for the detected frequencies.

References:

     Simple Audio Frequency Meterhttps://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/SimpleAudioFrequencyMeter

     Arduino Light Showhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JYb8JQabMk

The Simple Audio Frequency Meter provides some useful knowledge which may be referenced for a direction in design. The video, Arduino Light Show, provides some light inspiration for possible configurations and style.



Attachments:

110 LAB FLOWCHART.png (image/png)

Comments:

Hi all, I'm really excited about this project, but a word of advice. Some groups that have tried to do similar projects in the past struggled to find a good way to convert the input from the microphone and then display it, so I recommend you all sit down as a group before hand and decide how you want to visualize the audio (color, frequency, contrast, etc). The TAs were discussing your project Friday (because we think it's cool) and we were also thinking about how important the beat is for human recognition of music.

Posted by atmarsh3 at Feb 17, 2018 20:57

Project approved (but please add which courses you guys are in)

Posted by chorn4 at Feb 21, 2018 17:20

Cool project idea!  Make sure you think through which logic component(s) you want to include to satisfy the 120 requirement and you're good to go.

Posted by mnwilso2 at Feb 22, 2018 00:01