Wrote a three-part design/build log for an microphone + MSGEQ7 add-on board for the

Archive FastLED Archive
,
1

Wrote a three-part design/build log for an microphone + MSGEQ7 add-on board for the RGB Shades…prepare for a lot of math and even more blinky: Start with http://www.macetech.com/blog/node/138
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC6yNNpDCmg

2

Most excellent!

3

Thank you, this is super useful! I have had so many problems getting a MIC to work with my projects

4

This is amazing

5

Always nice, to see some sound-responsive animations!

6

Great write up, thanks for sharing! I just got my audio sensor board in, can’t wait to assemble and try it out on my RGB shades! Thanks!

7

Anyone know where I can get the MSGEQ7 shield or breakout board from in UK or Europe? Is Sparkfun the only manufacturer of Arduino shields with these?

8

Maybe here from Germany: http://www.watterott.com/de/Spectrum-Shield

9

I’ve used these, they’re great, not sure about shipping to UK: http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/301210655107

10

Basically all Adafruit resellers should have them, too.

11

Great work! I am very colororganocholic person, love music-to-light stuff :slight_smile: Bookmarked immediately.

12

I’ve got one of the eBay boards mentioned by @Jason_Coon ​ above, the stereo input version with twin processors, it came to the UK reasonably quickly but I haven’t had time to play with it yet

13

So, I love that ebay board…but here’s my wishlist for a sound board: Onboard microphone input with auto level sensing (meaning, turn up the gain when it’s quiet, turn it down when it gets louder…) and EQ chip to handle the heavier fourier parts. Has anyone seen this?

In fact has anyone seen an arduino-compatible auto-sensing microphone board at all? I suppose if you had that you could use it in conjunction with the ebay board to make a 2-board standalone level sensing EQ display.

I have done a fair bit of googling about this in the past, but never got very far… if anyone has a suggestion, I’m all ears.

14

@David_Evans Yeah Adafruit has one. I was considering a MAX9814 on my next version of this board, but there are other options; I’ll probably go with a controllable gain rather than auto since I might want to control the AGC behavior myself.

15

@Garrett_Mace , I suppose you could cook up some software to drive a digital pot to control the gain on a mic by some custom functions? Not sure how you plan to implement, if it’d be pure software or some hardware elements.

For my purposes I want something that will make a compelling display regardless of initial volume, and in theory, that adafruit board should do the trick by keeping the levels from peaking out too much. We’ll see. Thanks for the tip!