Color LED Matrix VU Meter Shows How To Use FFT With Arduino

November 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own VU meter but were scared off by the signal process you need to study this tutorial.

Hackaday Alum [Phil Burgess] developed the device using an RGB LED matrix, microphone, and an Arduino. You’ll notice that is doesn’t include an MSGEQ7 chip which we see in most of these types of projects. We have seen a few that use the Fast Fourier Transform to map the audio signal on the display as this one does. But [Phil’s] choice of an assembly language Library for ATmega chips makes this really simple to roll into your own projects.

The one drawback to the hardware choices made here is that there are only eight bits of vertical resolution. It takes a little creative interpretation to make this look good, but the use of color mixing really makes a difference. See for yourself in the demo after the break.

Continue reading “Color LED Matrix VU Meter Shows How To Use FFT With Arduino” →

Making An Audio Spectrum Analyzer With A Microcontroller

May 29, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

While [Vinod] says he’s not an expert in this sort of thing, we really like his audio spectrum analyzer build from a simple microcontroller and LCD display.

It is a well-studied fact that every audio waveform – a recording of your voice, for instance – is just the sum of many, many sine waves. These sine waves can be plucked out using Fourier analysis, using a Discrete Fourier transform. This is the principle that spectrum analyzers operate under; [Vinod] wrote a bit of code using DFT to take apart audio captured from a microphone and output their frequency on an LCD display.

To output the spectrum on his LCD, [Vinod] stacked horizontal bars up into 8 custom characters in his display. Like [Vinod]’s previous audio on an ATMega32 experiment, an LM324 amplifier is connected to the ATMega through an analog pin. [Vinod] has a very clever build on his hands with his spectrum analyzer, and a great answer to the perennial ‘how do I build a guitar tuner’ questions we’re constantly asked.

After the break, you can see [Vinod]’s spectrum analyzer in action. Be forewarned; you may want to turn down the volume.

Continue reading “Making An Audio Spectrum Analyzer With A Microcontroller” →