LED Color Organ Triple Deluxe

by ledartist

131K204157

Intro: LED Color Organ Triple Deluxe

*** Checkout the New & Improved version of this project: Color Organ Triple Deluxe II ***

I love lights, and I love music… Naturally a color organ is something that I always wanted to make. However the circuits are often pretty complicated, using many op amps, etc. I'm sure that many people feel the same way.

Now the wait is over. If you are a bit familiar with electronics, you can build a 3 way color organ with only 29 components. I've streamlined the circuit to the absolute minimum, using easy to obtain, inexpensive parts. In fact, if you are electronic hobbyist, you probably have all the parts sitting around already!

In case you've never heard of a color organ, it's a device that emits different colors of light based on sound. LED Color Organ Triple Deluxe divides sound into three frequency bands, and emits red, green and blue lights accordingly.

Watch the video and you'll see what it does.

STEP 1: Overview

The photo is showing the stereo version of Color Organ Triple Deluxe, which is simply the same circuit twice next to each other.

Three groups of LEDs each responds to high, mid, and low frequencies of sound.

In order to simplify the circuit, I design the Organ to connect to a headphone output of audio equipment. The power source can be a 9V battery, or a regulated AC adapter that outputs 9 V. (Most wall wort type adapters output much higher voltage than they are rated, therefore not suited.)

I'd like to thank Collin Cunningham of MAKE: Magazine for publishing his LED Color Organ. His version is a lot more sophisticated and complex (read: expensive), which led me to design a super simple version.

STEP 2: Parts

As you can see in the photo, all parts are very ordinary, easy to find types.

Here's the BOM (Bill Of Material):

3x 100 ohm resistors
1x 180 ohm resistors
1x 270 ohm resistors
2x 1k ohm resistors
4x 2.2k ohm resistors
2x 10k ohm resistors
1x 0.047 uF capacitor
1x 0.01 uF capacitor
1x 0.47 uF capacitor
1x 1 uF capacitor
1x 10 uF capacitor
1x 1N4148 diode
1x 2N2222A, 2N3904 or equivalent NPN transistor
3x 2N2907A, 2N3906 or equivalent PNP transistor
6x LED (2x Red, 2x Green, 2x Blue recommended)

All resistors can be any type of at least 1/16 W. Carbon type 1/4 W resistors shown in the photo.

All capacitors can pretty much be of any type as well. Just make sure that the voltage is rated at least 16V. However it's safer to stick to film type for smaller value ones, and aluminum electrolytic type for larger value ones. Those are the most common types anyway.

The diode can also be most any silicon diode. I'm using a switching diode 1N4148, which is the most widely available and probably the cheapest.

The transistors can also be pretty much anything. The NPN one here is a bit picky, as it deals with the audio signal (hfe needs to be reasonably high). Compatible transistors include: 2N4400, 2N4401, PN3646, MPSA06 for NPN. For PNP: 2N5401, MPSA55, MPSA56.

The LEDs can be of any color, however the resistor values are adjusted for the colors used here. If you use different colors, use 270 ohm for red, because red LED have lower forward voltage, thus need larger resistor to limit the current. The current limiting resistors for the LEDs are adjusted to achieve brightness balance between them. So your mileage might vary.

STEP 3: Construction & Circuit

Color Organ Triple Deluxe can easily built on a breadboard. In fact that's how I built it. You can use the picture of the breadboard as a guide. There's schematic as well.

I designed the custom PCB for this, however it's not ready for a couple of weeks. The board dimension is 1.8 x 1 inch. Please let me know if you are interested in purchasing the PCBs.

For those who want to make their own PCBs, you can download the Gerber files. (Please note that this PCB design has not been tested yet.)

Connection to the audio equipment (aka iPod) is via a disassembled stereo headphone cord. You will usually find three conductors in those cords - two of them carry the audio signal, and the shield/braid is the ground connection. I soldered a 3 pin header to make the connection to the breadboard easier.

A bit about the circuit

The basic idea behind the Color Organ Triple Deluxe is the same as many other circuits before it. Most color organ circuits divide audio signal into three frequency bands, and drive light sources acoording to the signal levels. My circuit combines the filter stage with the light drivers, saving a lot of parts. I won't claim that it does the same thing as more sophisticated circuits do, however it works pretty well.

STEP 4: Triple Deluxe and Beyond

Obviously a breadboard construction is not very practical. I will build a real one when the custom PCB is ready. You can also easily build this circuit on a proto-board or make your own PCB.

Once you put this color organ in a nice little case, you can take this mini light show with you anywhere. Great for outdoor activities!

It's so simple & cheap to make, you've got to try it!

What's next?

You can add a few more parts and your ingenuity to take this project further.

You can use a bit higher voltage and drive 3 LEDs in series (9 total). Or use opto-isolators to control room lighting. I think this circuit can also be used as a pre-processor to feed audio signal into Arduino or other microcontrollers to create sound activated gadgets. (Use 5V power supply if you want to interface with Arduino. You can replace the LEDs with 1k ohm resistors and take the signals from the collectors of Q2 - Q4. The voltage level is low when there's no sound.)

Have fun!

154 Comments

saritdv 3 years ago

Hi there! I know this is an old post so I hope someone will see my question! I built this circuit but I was interested in perhaps connecting and arduino to read the results and from there power seperate LED strips to change color accordingly (more variations of red,blue and green). would this be possible? I'm guessing though in this circuit there is minus voltage so I would have to convert it so the arduino would be able to read the inputs properly. Does this makes sense at all? Thanks!

loko42 10 years ago

hi,
I did thic color organ accroding your scheme, but when I put power on, then I get all leds lighting ... and they do not react on music.
What could be a problem?

Silver2107 3 years ago

You made a mistake. Carefully compare what you did to what you were supposed to do.

ShengQuanX 6 years ago

Can anybody tell me what does 0.01uf and 1uf capacitors do?

ShengQuanX 6 years ago

and smaller the capacitance then it will discharge faster right? that is why 0.047uf for High-frequency filter and 0.47uf for medium frequency filter? At high frequency there much less time to charge up so small capacitors are more sentitive?

kyosuke82 7 years ago

Hi! this is a very nice project! I've tried the attiny13a version first, but after seeing your project (and the LED response) this made me want to replicate it. I have all the parts lying around... how can I modify this to run on just 5v. hope you can accommodate my silly request..... (^_^)v

ledartist 7 years ago

It's not impossible but not that simple. Analog circuit like this work better with higher voltage than digital ones, and 5V is a bit on the low side for analog circuit. Maybe some day I might try the 5V version but not too soon...

kyosuke82 7 years ago

thanks for indulging my request... will try it though as is.. temporarily with a DC-DC converter (5v to 9v) ... or a good old reliable PP3/006P

sirhc0428 7 years ago

can someone please explain how this works through the schematic like what does each component do

ShadowArcher 7 years ago

Would this work with mosfets instead of BJTs?

vyas.autodesk.shivam 8 years ago

what is direction of current flowing?

vyas.autodesk.shivam 8 years ago

what is direction of current flow?

rizaa 9 years ago

Hi..can i ask if what is the maximum no.of LED to be used in each frequencies???..pls kindly reply...i would really like to make this on our project on circuits because it is really interesting..

lsanjaysha 9 years ago