LED Music Sync Lamp!

LED lamp that syncs to music

Now this thing freaking syncs to bass and treble beautifully after i remade it, like it was not awesome nuff. Also upped the quality of this instructable

Short video included of what this does

Blue LEDS that pulse to music, respond extremely well to bass, turn any place into a disco/dance floor :)

[THERE has been an issue in reordering steps]

dont worry about the picture, i actually made another one (based on your comments) and stuffed it inside for twice the awesomeness

Step 1 You will Need

Power Supply : 6V old nokia charger
Amplifier: 1 channel
LEDS: many ($10 worth)
NPN Transistor
LM340 voltage regulator
Soldering iron

Other stuffs:
Computer with music
Soldering equipment
Wires

Comments

[natepost]

great instructable, i use this somewhat in some car light installs for afterglow and such, another idea for people reading is if you have a subwoofer and amp within your car you can hook LED lights strait up to the amp and make them pulse to the bass. i have used this before and it gives a really nice clean pulse effect ;D

[mschult2]

I tried hooking up an LED rope straight to my 250W amplifier output (for my sub), and it didn't work :( Normally the LED rope works when plugged into a 120V DC source (I think). The rope consists of LEDs and 330 ohm resistors (I think in some kind of ladder formation?).

Do you know what's wrong?

[natepost]

This was something I had never actually attempted before, so I went ahead and tried a few things to see if I could get it working. Unfortunately I cant really help much as I was unable to get it to work. I would guess that the resistor that is in there may be the problem. Normally I make my own array of LED's bought from Oznium ( http://www.oznium.com ) Sorry I cannot help more.

[samalert]

Why am i not getting different set of blinking in left and right channel moreover am not getting so much intensity am wrking without resistors since want more brightness am hell lot of confused help.

> left as well as right channels blinking similarly
> not enough intensity of leds even on full volume on laptop
> what is exactly a amp. how does it looks like since i kwn that amp=amplifier and its too big like 2feet by 1feet

[epe996]

Hi, i built this circuit working with headphone jack, but i tried out using my motorcycle helmet mic amp. I'm not sure to say if it works or not because every time I put my 9v battery on and blow to the mic , it flashes for a moment and then it gets weaker and weaker and finaly it doesn't do anything. I'm using TIP31C and one red 3v led cord or what ever it's called :D what should I do??

and forgot to say that i tried using with a resistor and without but only got weaker with resistor.

[schumi23]

OK, this reply is a little late :) but hop eits not unwanted.
First of all, the resistor is needed, because (from what ive understood)the LED does not put a load on the power supply, so the supply, the voltage regulator will give as high an amperage as possible, until it burns out the LED.
Finally, the reason it is probably not working well is that the electric signal coming directly out of your mic is very weak, and so it is being amplified, but is so low that not much is getting amplified.
(say that the transistor has a gain of 20 (gain= by how much the input voltage is multiplied by to get the output voltage) if you put in 0.5 volts, it will give out 10 volts. However, if the input is only 0.1 volts, it will only give out 2 volts. I think that is the problem with your set-up.

[elijah_rippington]

did you ever get it working with a mic? i have been trying for a while

[Alberto Perez]

where do you conect groun of leds.

[june1234]

Wat does it mean by Nokia charger Amplifier? can i find other substition for it? care to give examples?

[Chu Guk]

He just means a cell phone charger. You just cut the end off and strip the wires, use them as a voltage transformer.

[Shubham Kushwaha]

Which amplifier output channel you used??..
the direct speaker output line or the audio signal line... ???

[lxiaol]

If I use a darlington pair, will it make my signal coming from my audio jack stronger (so I don't have to turn my volume to 100% for them to blink properly)? Or will that also result in the LEDs getting more than the 12V they get from my DC power supply?

[kacper00100]

Ok, so I want to do this but I have a 12V LED strip thing and I have a few questions:

1. Do you really need a voltage regulator?
2. If you dont can I use this transistor: BC547C

[nvysel24]

how many LEDs can this support? reason why im asking is im making a project like this on a big scale though. When i mean big scale i mean like 3000 LEDs would i need to up the power or what do i need?

[momsgonnafindme]

as long as you have enough amperage to power the leds its possible leds only consume miliamps of power just do the math to see what your powersupply can handle

[pyro-jim]

You don't seem to know what you are doing. I would do some serious research before you try your project or abandon it altogether.

[nvysel24]

dang thts goin to b like 36 amps for 20 miliamp led each how many amps can u put through the transistor?

[momsgonnafindme]

not sure _{look it up im sure theres specs} youll prolly need several transistors and/or power supplies

[joshr45]

ok so ive gotten partially done with this i have the LED Blinking very dimly to music i dont believe the Variable Resistor i have is working at all doesnt seem to matter one way or another, so basically without a power supply im running the 1 LED light off of the speaker, its just night time and i cant turn it up to see if it will work with my car system, the crap speakers i have put out 5v abouts, BUT the odd thing is i have a phone charger on the other end where the + and - go and its unplugged yet the light blinks, if i plug the phone charger in the wall the light is constant on.

[double_d_mfl]

try flipping the transistor around, the middle pin is the audio input, but switch the two other pins connections. i had the same problem, but once i flipped it around, good to go :)

[double_d_mfl]

lol i tried this and accidentally hooked up positive input to the input pin on LM340, and the negative to the Ground pin... D'OH! darn thing was shorting out and generating *LOADS* of heat, which i found out upon touching it...

Awesome I'ble! been wanting to do this for the *longest* of time...

[jasongroupindustries]

The LM340 form part of the same family with LM78XX.

[chris.thedrummer]

Can this be used with 40 WATT speakers? or will it blow??

[FlashElectronics]

what transistor need?

[kultingen]

Can anyone send me a link to a store who as a fitting amplifier? Live in sweden so sometimes its hard to know exactly what component is right, but I someone provide a link i should be able to find a similar here in Sweden.

[Gamernotnerd]

That is not how you connect an LM340 Voltage Regulator, you should mark the transistor with Collector, Base and Emitter, and what do you mean by "Amplifier"? Op-amp, guitar amp? You should learn to create a proper schematic before creating an instructable. At least properly show the orientation of the transistor and LM340. Try to improve next time. This would be a good instructable if it weren't for these flaws.

[tysonscott2002]

Can someone draw up a working schematic for this? i am having no luck with a power supply above 3 volts, and no luck at all adding a transistor or regulator.

[Green Geek]

Is it possible to hook this up to my bass guitar?

[Green Geek]

Or to a speaker for concert light efects?

[AirSpeedDemon]

lol, i have no idea how to use those either.thank you guys for explaining though.

[junits15]

an interesting upgrade would be to add a crossover, so as to have one set of LEDs sync to bass and the other to treble.
Its a little hard to read your schematic, you could try using a free CAD program like Egale to draw the circuit.
other than that verry good instructable I liked it alot. **** :)

[CACIOTECH]

it's interesting to upgrade such as : low pass filter blue led, bad pass filter red led, high pass filter green led all filters are active !! it may be not bad idea...

[UbuntuNinja]

Do you know how to make the filters/ have schematics for them? I have been researching passive filter methods with little success. i would be happy to test any circuits although i would appreciate it if you could give values for the components (i still don't fully understand the math behind it). Thanks, UbuntuNinja

[UbuntuNinja]

In the circuit diagram, you say that the circuit needs an amplifier. What amplifier did you use and why does the circuit need one? Also in the third picture in step 1, you say "positive goes with audio 1". What does that mean? Also i assume that you just combined the left and right channels of the audio? How could i seperate them?

[Herminator]

NEED HELP!
well i cant buy a transistor online so i found the web site of a electronics shop (similar to radio-shack) near my house and was wondering if this one would work in this circuit.

TIP 31B/C Power Transistor NPN

http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/4a6a8c36125db5042740c0a87e01067e/Product/View/Z2020

please reply asap

thx every one :D

[unmanagedtn]

Can I ad a mic instead of driving this circuit from a sound card?

[optimized4perfection]

yea,i have seen some on the internet where they put a mic instead, but i dont think it works as well

[sp33dstix]

any links for that?

[unmanagedtn]

I am working on a take off of your circuit that is standalone... Thats why I asked...

[optimized4perfection]

ok. tell me if its good, might wanna try