Soundification

Previously I was getting data input from the screen display to process and output to the LED chain.  But now it looks like it has been done before, so it is time to try something new.

I am going to go with the same concept but tweak it a bit. Instead of getting data from the screen, I am going to get data from the audio coming out of the speakers!  This can get interesting now.  There are things of course like VU Meters, which basically display the measurement of volume from an audio device.

VU Meter

So here is my new idea.  Imagine you are playing a game like Doom 3, and you are walking through a dark eerie corridor and it is deathly quiet. Suddenly you hear a monster coming towards you from the right.  You cannot see it coming after you from the right, but you can hear it, you are perceiving it darting towards you.  This is an awesome illusion that in a game we only perceive with sound.  What would it be like if we also could see the sound of it coming closer.

So what would happen is as you hear the monster coming closer to you, getting louder, lights would light up indicating how loud the audio is coming from and in which direction.  If the monster if coming from the right, you will hear it coming from the right, and the lights on the right side will be lighting up.

The first way of implementing this that I can think of is to get the loudness of the sound coming from the left and the right.  Then it would be "displayed" on an array of the LED chain.

For example, if there is a low volume noise on the left, then there will be a little light coming from the left. If there is a very loud sound coming from the left, like a gunshot, then the light coming from the left would be large, and nearly in the middle of the array.  If a large sound comes from both sides, the entire array would be nearly completely lit up.

Next I will talk about the programming side of it.

Change of Plans

I was working on getting my computer to display the overall color on the LEDs when I ran into something:

Adalight - DIY Ambient Monitor Lighting

I happen to run into this project, which was pretty much what I wanted to accomplish.  They also did it very well, I tried running the code, and its pretty incredible. This is a project created by adafruit learning system, and it is a very well written guide on how to do this. Also the video for it is incredibly cool! I would love to see how it works in games, since seeing how it looks with a performance of Blue Men Group, it would probably be sweet.

Now, I could continue what I am doing and use theirs, but that is no fun, nor is it a project that I created.

I like to do projects that as far as I know are new things, that I have never seen done. I thought no one had really done this before, other than those TVs, but now I have found there are multiple setups of it, so now I am moving on to different things.

I do highly suggest checking out the above project, it is really cool and really well done.

Time to derail this train and go track hopping! Next station, Audio Processing!!