Sound Activated LEDs

Ive always wanted lights to flash with the bass in my truck but the store bought lights don't work very well so I decided to build them myself. I used 100 each of red, green, and blue LEDs. I accidentally  recorded upside down cause I had to use my ipod to record cause my camera doesn't have a mic.

Step 1 Required Materials

For this instructable you will need the following tools:

Wire cutters
Small Needle Nose Pliers
Solder
Solder gun
Solder clamp
300 LEDs (for me)
60 51 ohm resistors
Binder
Nail
Wire (I used speaker wire)

Comments

[adnan_afzal007]

stick the wires in to the amp input instead of the output they should work fine

[gruda]

wouldn't running lights off the sub blow the amp? is it safe?

[sco_oter]

No it wouldn't. I would be more concerned about the amp blowing the subs. Most amps put out well over over 12 volts to the subs. My amp puts out enough to run my computer if it wasn't A/C. I actually had to add a voltage regulator between the sub and the lights cause it outputted too much.

[Chowmix12]

Interesting idea, but i think there maybe a legal issue here. Flashing lights in the car maybe seen from the windows and other people may think your an undercover cop and other possibilities.. This is very risky.. Nice idea though.. maybe implement it somewhere else.

[sco_oter]

people already think i'm an undercover cop cop. I drive a white tahoe with black rims and dark tint with antenna's on the roof. I removed them from the truck because the subs blew a few of the LEDs out.

[Chowmix12]

Glad you didn't get in trouble!

[vonstructable]

Theres a little machine called a "light organ" that listens to your highs mids and lows and sends your adjusted settings to the lights. It'll save you from your amplifier woes. http://www.xkitz.com/catalog/color-light-organ-your-p-33.html

[sIDsleeper]

There's no drive circuitry, what did you hook the LEDs up to? Is it wired directly to the subwoofer?

[sco_oter]

Yes, they are wired directly to the sub which I found out today was a bad idea but I don't have any way of regulating the voltage from the subs to the LEDs. Yes I could put a voltage regulator on it but the voltage output to the subs can get as high as 80+ volts when the you turn it up. I don't want to fry the regulator.

[sIDsleeper]

Well you could make a scaled up verion of this http://www.instructables.com/id/Music-LED-Light-Box/step6/Building-the-circuit/ given if you find a suitable transistor that works in the specified voltage range, this way you can detach (it's not really detached, but it's enough to not fry your LEDs, OR the sub) the LEDs from the sub, and it would work as a switch! Of course, as I didn't try it, it could have other issues, but maybe it gives you some ideas on how to protect the sub, and the LEDs!

[kelseymh]

It's interesting that the LEDs are close enough together that in your video they look white! I wonder if a somewhat more complicated circuit, for example where you wire the three colors separately with delay lines (maybe as simple as an RC), could make for interesting effects.

Quite awesome!

[sco_oter]

Thanks! I had to make the projects as compact and easy to install as possible. Maybe next time i'll tackle an equalizer made of LEDs.

[kelseymh]

Hi, nice Instructable! A couple of things you might not know about the way the site's database/page generator works.

First, if you don't put a regular still image as the first image on a step, it leaves the thumbnail blank (and on your intro, that means the picture on the Recent Instructables page is blank).

Second, I see that you included an MPEG video. The Instructables site doesn't have any streaming video of its own. Instead, what they ask users to do is to upload their videos to any of the major services (YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, Flickr, and so on), and then use the "embed code" function from those sites. When you're editing a step, you'll see a button for "add video", and with that you can paste in the embed codes and the video will appear in that step. Other than those issues this is a really cool project, and nicely written up.