Sound based LED Lighting

[wcndave]

I would like to install an LED strip around the back of the cabinet, which sort of throbs to the sounds coming from the games.  I am looking for a subtle effect.

I know there are lots of LED controllers on amazon, however I was wondering if anyone had good experience of a particular one, and whether one would have it independent, or somehow linked to MAME.

If the world was just some magic place, I would have it "throb" different colours based on the game, however i am guessing that is just a mad dream really....

[ChadTower]

It wouldn't be hard to do most of that with a LED strip kit like this and a sound controller like this.  I've been poking around these products for a while now considering them for use as lighting under pins.  I haven't bought any yet but they do get pretty good reviews.

Note that gets you lighting response to all sound.  Once you start talking about further controlling it via software there is a bunch more that would need to be done.

[CoryBee]

This has been done, cool tech called "Ambilight"

Little demo



There are also a ton of videos on youtube showing the effect.

Can also make one yourself, a DIY version. If you have the right know-how anyways.

http://dhowdy.blogspot.com/2011/09/diy-arduino-ambilight-using-shiftbrites.html

[Nephasth]

Here's a few things I've done with RGB LED strips, an LEDWiz, and LEDBlinky...







There are different options you can play around with in LEDBlinky to change colors, queues, and intensities. Wonderful program, can't thank arzoo enough for it!

[wcndave]

Arghhh.... it really annoys me when i write a long reply, during which time i have been logged out, and the i cannot get to the text i wrote again, as it's blank when i click back back..

oh well, I will try a shorter version...


That video one looks cool, however not for the fainthearted.  As a programmer from an Electronic Engineering background I could work it out, however seems rather daunting right now.

Arduino i heard of, then you have ShiftBrite Shield, whatever "pins of the Arduino need to be mapped to these PWM pins on the ShiftBrite.  The Arduinoatmo Google Code site has some nice and efficient code to bitshift and use SPI" is, boblight, atmoWin, X11, Atmolight, and "boblightd talks to the serial interface on the Arduino over USB and listens for data from another program.  In this case I'm using boblight-X11 - a program that will run on the current X11 session and grab images from X11, process them, and send the information to boblightd which will in turn process it into the proper protocol (atmo) and then send the data to the specified device." 

so that seems fairly straightforward then...





Nep, yours looks like what i envisaged would be realistic to start with.

does ledwiz have a mic / sound input then?
can you do per game colour sequences?

I guess i shoudl research ledwiz and ledblinky some more, thanks for pointing me in a good direction.
are there any particular specifications i am looking for, or will any RGB LED strip do?

CoryBee, thanks for the video, i will defo save that for when I am retired / divorced, whichever is first ;-)

Thanks again guys,

Dave