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This instructable describes how to mount a VU meter into a case of an old cd-rom drive and then put it into your pc.
On eBay I bought a bunch of VU meters based on VFD displays build in Russia. The displays where rather cheap and looked nice. I thought I'd give it a try.
It seems that the display was used in a cassette deck build by Radiotehnika Model MP7301.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcdvmk4Ifw)
When the vu meters arrived I realized that on all devices there was one transistor missing.
To make them work again you need to "repair" the vu meter ... don't panic you can easily solder a substitute transistor onto the pcb.
On eBay I bought a bunch of VU meters based on VFD displays build in Russia. The displays where rather cheap and looked nice. I thought I'd give it a try.
It seems that the display was used in a cassette deck build by Radiotehnika Model MP7301.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcdvmk4Ifw)
When the vu meters arrived I realized that on all devices there was one transistor missing.
To make them work again you need to "repair" the vu meter ... don't panic you can easily solder a substitute transistor onto the pcb.
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Signing UpStep 1Introduction
On the Internet you can find a bunch of DIY vu meters, a few of them based on vfd displays. Vfd displays look cool ... much cooler than led or lcd displays. Some of the displays are NOT vu meters. Some of them are spectrum analyzers, calling them vu meters is wrong. Some of them also do not behave like vu meters. A vu meter does display the audio level of a audio amplifier. But it does not do that in realtime ... there are some time constants build in. You should have a look at this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VU_meter .
I bought the vu-meters on eBay http://myworld.ebay.de/kalleb/ .
The vu meters are taken out of some russian tape recorder. They are rather old and not all that I bought where working completely. On one of them the counter did not work, but who cares? You don't need the counter. The schematics of this devices that you can find on the internet are wrong. They are simply for another pcb version. I needed to do some research to find out how to use them.
Basically I used the vu-meter, and some components I took from a PIR pcb, also from kalleb, and an old cd-rom drive from sony. The cd-rom drive is only used as a case. All the electronics and the mechanics are not needed here.
I bought the vu-meters on eBay http://myworld.ebay.de/kalleb/ .
The vu meters are taken out of some russian tape recorder. They are rather old and not all that I bought where working completely. On one of them the counter did not work, but who cares? You don't need the counter. The schematics of this devices that you can find on the internet are wrong. They are simply for another pcb version. I needed to do some research to find out how to use them.
Basically I used the vu-meter, and some components I took from a PIR pcb, also from kalleb, and an old cd-rom drive from sony. The cd-rom drive is only used as a case. All the electronics and the mechanics are not needed here.
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http://candelectronica.blogspot.com/2011/12/led-vu-meter-en-un-hcs08-freescale.html
But the device is still alive ... unfortunately the pc where the device is built in is broken at the moment ... and still, shame on me, I have not implemented any of the nice ideas I got as feedback because I lost somehow interrest in it while the main functionality was working ...
do you sell one?