A Cold Cathode Audio Visualizer

CC

Finally, cold cathode lights can be used for much more than illuminating the inside of your computer or making your whip look like it can hover. [James] discovered if he varied the voltage going into the inverter, only a certain amount of the tube would light up. Give a hacker an interesting observation and enough time, and eventually he’ll come up with something really cool. In this case, it’s a cold cathode audio visualizer, powered by fluorescent tubes doing unexpected things.

The build details are a little scant, but we were able to coax an imgur album of [James]’ build. He’s using these 20″ CCFL lights with the stock digital inverters replaced with TDK CCFL inverters.

The digital control of this build is provided by an Arduino Mega and a custom shield. We’re guessing the graphic EQ is provided by an MSGEQ7 chip, and the inverters themselves are powered through the Mega’s PWM pins. It’s a lot like an IN-9 Nixie graphic EQ, only much, much bigger. [James] is planning a larger version of this build, dubbed the Mega speKtrum and we can’t wait to see that build along with a proper writeup.

18 thoughts on “A Cold Cathode Audio Visualizer

    1. I don’t think it does. I have one of these in a PC case i bought about 10 years ago. it came with a board that had a mic and a variable pot and does exactly this, still works perfectly to this day! Has an awesome Borg-green look to it.

    1. Hobby Lightsabers were built this way about a decade ago. They looked amazing, but you couldn’t hit anything with them without breaking the bulb, and they only ran for a minute or two.

    2. They are made exactly like this but use a dedicated high voltage power supply instead of an off the shelf CCFL driver. Most in fact go to 2000 volts instead of 1000.
      I need to find these TDK inverters…

  1. I have always wanted to do this, after I first found a CCFL that showed the ‘variable height plasma’ effect in a damaged monitor. Props to actually pulling it off!

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