Sledge Hammers
JimB said:
Wow, talk about using a sledge hammer to crack a nut!
Is it really, Jim? Or is it just so fiendishly clever that its utter simplicity baffles the rational mind?
It uses only computer stuff that's either sure to be in the home (or readiy available from the internet). For PC users, anyway (and, there's likely a work-around for the MAC crowd). And an optical computer interface that's so simple that there's not even an IEEE standard for it.
There's absolutely no programming skills or logic design required. Just uses existing programs (Audacity and Windows Media Player). It uses the raw outputs from the comparators to drive the output switches (and that circuit only needs to be designed once and repeated 7 times for an 8 output controller). It's also expandable by adding one or more tone tracks, comparators and output circuits up to the resolution limit of the FFT display (ie: ablity to space the peaks so they don't trip adjacent photocells).
What's more, since the tones only need to be on one stereo channel it should be possible to time (though not sync) the lights to some mono music, on the other channel, within a single audio file. Of course, the music side would need to be carefully recorded so the tones would pop up above the highest music peaks. a bit tricky but, with a healthy dose of AGC, it could be done. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to force the visualization to ignore one side or the other.
Rather than a sledge hammer, I think of this more as using a feather to flick a flea off a fly's fanny. In fact, the more I think about it, the better I like it. Maybe I should kit it up and try to sell it...next Xmas...