LED Strip control

Reactive ambient lighting

As fascinated as I am by all kinds of interactive entertaining electronic devices, I could not resist buying 25 meters of RGB LED strips.

To me, these were representing the opportunity to create an infinite number of ambient light applications — from computer or smartphone event notifying to sweet evening dimming and morning wakening light. That said, I focused my work on trying to create a control system that generates an ambient light according to the surrounding acoustic atmosphere — being able to follow the progressions of noise and music, giving a kind of new visual dimension to the human hearing sense.

In this article, I will highlight the main steps of the long development process I ran through, trying to design the most handy and pleasant system as possible.

• Arduino
  • Analog inputs
  • Python script and serial communication
  • Fast Fourier Transform
• PIC microcontroller
  • Analog inputs
  • UART serial communication
• Android smartphone
  • TCP/IP server socket
  • Bluetooth
  • Embedded Fast Fourier Transform