Introduction: Arduino LED Audio Spectrum

About: Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/s293pqrn

This is a guide using Arduino Uno to display the audio waveform of your music using a matrix of LEDs (Light emitting diodes).

Step 1: Gathering Your Materials

This is a list of all the materials you will need

1. Arduino Uno (or cheaper alternative)

2. Spectrum Shield (you may have to buy headers and solder them on yourself)

3. A Solder-less Bread Board

4. Wood or 3D Filament

5. Solder

6. A bunch of Wires

7. LED's and Resistors (I used these, The number of LED's may vary depending on how many rows and columns you want)

Step 2: Gathering Your Tools

It is important to use the right tools! This is a list of the tools you will need

1. Wooden Block

  • 1. A drill
  • 2. A 3/16 Drill Bit
  • 3. Some type of saw to cut the wood (I used a round-saw)
  • 4. Two clamp bars (optional: to hold down wood)
  • 5. A right angle ruler to measure the wood (ruler will work)
  • 6. A pen to mark the wood

OR

1. Plastic Block

  • 1. A 3D Printer

2. A Soldering Iron

3. long nose Pliers (To easily bend wires while working with soldering iron)

4. Wire Strippers/cutters

5. And of course a computer to program the Arduino using the Arduino Software

Step 3: Block

In this guide I will be making a 7 by 5 LED Matrix

7 columns, 5 rows = 35(7 * 5) LEDs and 12(7 + 5) pins

The more columns and rows you put into your matrix: the more pins you will need.

For this project there are 13 available pins so the sum of your rows and columns should not exceed 13.

Each LED should be 15mm apart from each other to ensure easy soldering

The matrix will be 90mm by 60mm we will add a 40mm margin to all sides

Wooden Block

  1. So cut a piece of wood out that is 170mm(17cm) by 140mm(14cm)
  2. Now using a ruler and a pen draw the 90mm by 60mm grid
  3. Drill a hole through each point using the 3/16 drill bit
  4. after you drill you may want to sand it down
  5. You can paint or stain the wood (I stained mine to give it a darker color)


OR

Plastic Block

  1. Download and 3D print this STL model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2865701

Step 4: LED Matrix



1. Flip your block of wood over and put an LED in each hole place each LED so that the ground pin is directed toward the bottom left corner of the wood piece.
2. Bend each ground pin straight down, make sure the ground pins are not overlapping any power pins.
3. Now bend all the power pins to the right
4. Solder all the ground pins together
5. Bend the power pins so they will not touch the ground pins and solder them together.
6. Double check to make sure no ground pin is touching a power pin!
7. If you are using hook up wire like I am, cut and strip wires for each row and column long enough to reach the Arduino
8. Solder the wires together

Step 5: Connecting Your LED Matrix to Your Arduino

  1. Connect your Spectrum Shield to your Arduino
  2. Connect row 1 wire to digital pin 6 and row 2-5 wires to Analog pins 2-5
  3. Connect columns 1-7 to the breadboard through resistors and to the Arduino digital pins 7-13
  4. Run this code to make sure all of your LEDs work, I had to swap some out

  5. Run this code I made using Multiplexing to light up to audio

Step 6: Playing Music

Use an auxiliary cord to connect your shield to any device that has an aux jack(smart phone, computer, ipod, etc)

Then use another auxiliary cord to output to speakers or plug in headphones!

I have the older DEV-10306 - Spectrum shield so both my auxiliary jacks can be used as input or output.

The newer model should specify which aux jack is input and output on the board.

You can use a 9v battery and take the LED matrix anywhere!