This VU meter project by [Daniel Naito] is a great piece of Russian electrocouture. It’s made up of 14 Nixie tubes that display seven frequency bands for the two audio channels. He found this similar project, but wanted to keep the cost low by avoiding such exotic ICs. First, the two input channels are amplified and then split using seven bandpass filters covering 60, 150, 400, 1000, 2500, 6000, and 15000Hz. Then, the AC audio is converted to DC. The final stage converts the logarithmic scale to a linear output. Besides the semirare Nixie tubes, the majority of the parts are just cheap opamps and comparators. The post is an excellent read and you can see it in action in the video below.
UPDATE: Yep, it’s a repost. I’m awesome like that. The True RMS Plasma Vu-meter seems to be new to us though.
[thanks meh]
repost! and this is getting really lame.
already been on here
http://www.hackaday.com/2008/03/27/nixie-tube-vu-meter/
I really think that hack a day was better when there were fewer authors and it really was a hack a day. At least then you knew it was a quality hack and you didn’t have to check back every ten minutes for a new thing, and when there was a new thing it was special.
ra! the good ol’ days!
Jeeze, a bit harsh are we? Give them a break, how much do we pay for this service again? Oh wait, it’s free…