LED Colour Organ - 3.5mm Jack input

[Gaz777]

This is my first post here, and I'm reasonably new to this electronics kinda stuff...

I'm wanting to make sets of leds flash/fade to music from my computer.

I'm planning to have 4 strips of leds 1 strip for low sounds, 2 for mid sounds, and 1 for high sounds.

I know how to power the leds etc. The problem is I'm not sure on how to use the music input to get them to fade and flash.

What I'm asking is for help on what I'll need and how to set it up. My computer runs a 5.1 surround sound system, would i use just one jack for highs, mids, and lows or would i, say, use the sub channel to get the low sounds etc.

I'm sorry for all the questions, but I've searched around and what I've found has given me clues to what's needed but I guess I haven't made sense of it all.

Oh, and also i would like to put a switch in to switch between off, flashing/fading to music, slow fading, and flashing if possible.


Thanks for any help in advance.

Gareth

 

[audioguru]

You need a colour organ circuit, not a 5.1 surround sound system.
The sub channel has low frequencies but all the other channels have bass, mids and highs.

The colour organ circuit must have separate lows, mids and highs channels and the fading or flashing circuits that you want.

 

[Gaz777]

Thanks for the reply

I knew I'd need a colour organ circuit, but wasn't too sure as to what will give the input.

Can someone possibly point me in the direction of a simple to understand guide or something on making a 3 channel colour organ?

I've seen a few solutions for making the leds flash or fade, one being using a 555 timer ic and the other using a PIC which is best to use?
From what I understand, the 555 is much simpler, but the PIC would allow me to program it to do what I want.

Thanks again

 

[Gaz777]

Does anyone know of a good schematic for a LED colour organ, with a 3.5mm input and 12vDC power source?

Also if using a colour organ would the leds fade at all to music or just flash?

 

[audioguru]

Colour organs have 3 LEDs or hundreds of LEDs.
A 12V supply is quite a high voltage to light 2V or 3V LEDs.

You can easily make a circuit that will slowly fade the LEDs or quickly flash the LEDs. You can easily switch between the two speeds.

 

[Gaz777]

I understand that 12v would be a lot to power 1 led, I have a fair amount of leds which I plan to set-up in parallel "strips", with a series of 3 LEDs and the appropriate resistor.

eg. where L is a led and R is a resistor
- & | is wire

+         -
|         |
|-L-L-L-R-|
|         |
|-L-L-L-R-|
|         |
etc.

I know how to work out the resistor values needed for the type of leds i want.

The problem is I can't find a good example of a colour organ, most i find are either using AC or have a mic as input.

You can easily make a circuit that will slowly fade the LEDs or quickly flash the LEDs. You can easily switch between the two speeds.

This is what i thought, thanks! It shouldn't take me long to make such a circuit as I've seen examples in the past.

 

[muk]

Hi there, I'm pretty much a noob as well but have been learning a lot more about circuits lately.

I'm trying to do pretty much the same thing except with a 5.45V DC powersupply (old phone charger) and 3 UV LEDs.

I started out building it from this post https://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/pulsing-led-to-audio-using-a-2n2222-transistor.35599/ but haven't gotten the LED to pulse at all, it's just always on no matter how loud or quiet I make the audio input.

Eventually I do want to make the 3 LEDs pulse to different frequencies but figured I would just start with one.

I'll post more if I get mine into some kind of working configuration, I'd like to build in some sort of level adjustment as well.

**broken link removed** seems very close to what I want to make as well, just with a line in instead of a mic.

Anyway, I hope you got yours working and if you did I'd really be interested in how!