Book Image

Arduino BLINK Blueprints

By : Utsav Shah
Book Image

Arduino BLINK Blueprints

By: Utsav Shah

Overview of this book

Arduino is an open-source prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. Arduino has been used in thousands of different projects and applications by a wide range of programmers and artists, and their contributions have added up to an incredible amount of accessible knowledge that can be of great help to novices and experts alike. Want to build exciting LED projects with Arduino? This book will be your companion to bring out the creative genius in you. To begin with, you will get introduced to the maker movement and the open source hardware development Arduino boards. You will then move on to develop a mood lamp and a remote-controlled TV backlight. As you progress through the book, you will develop an LED cube and will learn to use sound visualization to develop a sound-controlled LED Christmas tree. You will then move on to build a persistence of vision wand. At the end of each chapter, you’ll see some common problems, their solutions, and some workarounds.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Sound visualization using Arduino


After understanding the basics of sound visualization, we will move on to implement sound visualization using Arduino. Before we develop our LED Christmas tree, we will develop sound visualization on an LED matrix.

An LED matrix is a combination of 64 LEDs connected together as shown in the following circuit. As Arduino doesn't have 64 pins, we can't connect individual pins to control each LED. Instead, we will use the concept of multiplexing:

With the use of multiplexing, we can control any number of LEDs with Arduino. For controlling an 8 x 8 LED matrix, we need one multiplexer circuit. We can use the backpack from adafruit for the multiplexer, or a MAX7219 Dot Matrix MCU Control for the multiplexer part:

So, now we do not need to use a lot of pins to control this LED matrix. Instead, we require only four pins to control this LED matrix.

You will need the following components for a music-controlled LED matrix:

  • Analog Mic Sensor

  • 8 x 8 LED matrix with backpack...