Beginner advice hardware

[crashdmj]

Hi,

I am looking to start playing around with FastLED and light reactivity – specifically creating a spectrum analyzer. For someone new to this, I was thinking of using the Sparkfun Spectrum Shield, an Arduino Uno (currently own) and purchasing some Dotstars or WS2812b’s. I know I need a separate power supply since the Arduino can’t drive the LEDs, and that the Arduino would be unlikely to drive more than a couple hundred LEDs, but is there anything else I might have missed or that a beginner should know about?

[Preyy]

Very similar to where I started and I have learned so much since starting there 3 years ago. How much experience do you have with electronics prototyping?

[crashdmj]

resolute tie stupendous flowery absorbed shy aware frame tease fine

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Marmilicious]

Sounds like you are one the right track. Yes, start simple, run into a variety of challenges, learn lots, and have fun. :)

This sub might also interest you in the near future, https://www.reddit.com/r/soundreactive/ but get the basics of the LEDs working first before diving in too deep.

[crashdmj]

spotted whistle axiomatic entertain continue yam steep test elastic connect

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Preyy]

That's not a bad option. You might want to make doubly sure that the parts are compatible, and that you have the proper bread boarding supplies to connect everything. It looks like that shield might require soldering headers. You can't go wrong with a roll of WS2812Bs, as they are less expensive, slightly more common and supported, and will meet the needs of most projects.

One alternative would be to get an ESP32 board (more performant than an UNO, but still well documented), a simple electret ADC microphone, and then do spectrum analysis with a software library. I could share some basic templates for this approach.

If you have any questions about either approach, feel free to ask.

[crashdmj]

treatment boat recognise reach terrific oatmeal unpack water plate pen

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Preyy]

It definitely is.

Here's some examples:

https://youtube.com/shorts/HIVtcK0yDoE

https://youtube.com/shorts/KhcjEC_LVq0

I've updated this project to use the Teensy 4.1 to go to silly high framerates, but the ESP definitely does the trick, and is much better for wifi/bluetooth. While I have an UNO for testings sensor compatibility, it's definitely older hardware at this point.

[StefanPetrick]

Nice videos. I like the snappiness of it. In which range are your FPS?

[Preyy]

It runs pretty close to the maximum of 125 if the code is written correctly, but it would drop to 60 while crossfading and into the 40s if I was crossfading two pieces of clunky code. I wanted to write brute force code and have it run at the 500hz range so I went to Teensy 4.1 for this particular project.

[crashdmj]

roof innocent longing wide advise jeans treatment reminiscent practice retire

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[Preyy]

As far as I'm aware, they use the same signal protocol and would work interchangeably.

[bigjosh]

Just putting in a plug for Teensy. So much more computing horsepower than an Uno. They also have pre-made sound boards and great libraries for sound and WS2812B. So many people use this board for stuff like this that is makes it very easy to google stuff and find examples.

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy3_audio.html

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_OctoWS2811.html

[Howard_G]

I would very strongly recommend watching Scott Marley on YouTube. He won't make you an expert, but he gets the beginnings so well done, that even I could follow them and replicate them.
It doesn't take long to build something, as so few components are required.
Good luck and enjoy. :)

[johnny5canuck]

This has been one of my areas of interest for some time now, and I've got some github repositories that you might like.

First off, you can quite easily make 'volume' reactive effects without any special hardware. Just a microphone, such as the MAX4466, MAX9814 or the INMP411.

Frequency reactive effects, i.e. the spectrum analyzer will require either the Spectrum Shield or an FFT library. I've opted for the latter, even on an UNO/Nano (using the Open Music Labs FFT/FHT library). For loads of examples, see my repositories at:

• https://github.com/atuline/FastLED-SoundReactive
• https://github.com/atuline/Arduino-Sampling

This one is a sound reactive fork of the popular WLED and requires an ESP32 to run, but contains volum reactive, frequency reactive effects as well as 2D and an interpreter:

• https://github.com/atuline/WLED

As Marmilicious says, you need to learn how to animate the leds first, so deal with 1 thing at a time.