Sync lights to music?

[F1_Fan]

Please don't laugh!

My wife volunteered me to sync 4 lights to a song track. The lights will be contained inside 4 pumpkins; I will drive them with 4 SSR's attached to an USB-6008 (or whatever else I have laying around). She is the manager at a bank and wants to win the pumpkin contest; syncing lights to the things is sure to do the trick.

The big question is how in the world can I sync the output to the music track? Sure there is specific software that does this but it used propriety hardware and it is expensive for this silly use. Afterall I have labview and all kinds of DAQ's laying around the lab so there has to be a way.

Ideas?

-Chris

[Ray.R]

You could device the sound spectrum into 4 bands.

For instance Low frequencies:  20 to 250 Hz

Lower Mid Range : 250 Hz to 2500 Hz

Upper Mid Range:  2500 kHz to 6kHz

High Frequencies: 6kHz to 20 kHz

The above is an example only, you can create you own ranges of frequencies. 

The measure the band power for the spectrum for each frequency range, and use that to drive the output.  You could use it to "dim" the lights based on percentage power within the frequency range.  Of course, you would need to adjust to the maximum power in each frequency range because 1 W at High Frequencies would correspond to much higher at the lower frequency. 

Most of what you need is available within Labview.  You just need to sample the soundwave as it plays to the speakers and do some processing.  You might be able to "tap" into the API of some sound card application and obtain that information which may already exist... 

Just an idea...

R

Message Edited by JoeLabView on 09-30-2008 12:51 PM

[smercurio_fc]

Interesting application. What would you (actually, she ) win in the contest? Skiiping the mechanics, what would you want to sync to? The beat, or the melody? For instance, if you were to play a Brahms concerto as opposed to a Def Leppard, errr.. sonnet, what would the pumpkins do?

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

What JLV proposed can easily be done with a purely hardware solution, no LabVIEW required, but that would be boring 🙂

I built a few 3 channel units from some schematics I found a long time ago to add some ambiance to the dance floor of the Fraternity house.

I'm sure there are probably kits you can buy.

-AK2DM

[F1_Fan]

I need to set trigger points within the music; not just a simple "color organ" as I can do that with a simple SCR setup.

I think I may have found a simple solution; a little piece of software called "vixen" and I can use the parallel port to trigger the SSR's. Lets me insert triggers into the sound track.

If anyone knows of a way to do this in labview I'm game but I can't think of an "easy way" at this time.

As a side note some NI devotee wrote a driver for a NI DIO card.

-Chris