Short Project 2: Back in Black Light Show

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In this video, one of the student teams demonstrates their project, an Arduino based light and sound show, which is programmed using the Processing IDE. They use the sound library to sync the lights with music. Components used - Arduino Mega, Jumpers, Breadboard, LEDs.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: So the original idea that we had was to have music and lecture that was triggered by when you got within a certain distance of it, it would just turn on and start going. But we had some problems with triggering this upon coming close enough. So this is the LED lights that dance to the tempo of the music.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: And one of the cool things that we do is actually use another environment as well in conjunction with our Arduino. It's called Processing. So it's another environment that allows you to integrate with other software on the computer--

[CLICK]

--any MP3 that you have.

So depending on the frequency, you can assign a bass or a treble. And so that's what assigns to each pin. And so it's a really cool thing to know that there's other environments that work alongside Arduino. And we figured that within a couple hours and I think it worked out nicely.

GUEST SPEAKER 3: And then along with the light show, there's also letters for MIT.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: So we're going to be playing "Back in Black," in honor of Tony Stark, an alumni of MIT.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GUEST SPEAKER 3: It goes on for three minutes.

[LAUGHTER]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: It does.

[MUSIC - AC/DC, "BACK IN BLACK"]

[SINGING] Back in black. I hit the sack. I've been too long, I'm glad to be back. Yes, I'm let loose from the noose, that's kept me hanging about.

AUDIENCE: Are the two different colors of lights [INAUDIBLE]?

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah, they are.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah, they're-- so you could set those values differently. Also, you could slice it up to more frequencies and ranges.

We almost had the sensor working. It's just you need to have the processing language. It doesn't have all the libraries that the Arduino environment has, so that's why the sensor wouldn't work.

Or you could also try to create-- next stage had the Arduino run a processing file and activate the communication between both softwares. So that would be the next stage to get actual sensor working on Arduino. And then run the processing environment that runs Arduino again.

AUDIENCE: Due to the processing environment, is the sensor for the sound or is there a sound sensor?

GUEST SPEAKER 2: No. So we have code that slices the MP3 there. So that's where the slicing code is. And the processing has libraries where you do Arduino dot this function, and Arduino library, and it runs it.

AUDIENCE: I see.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah.