Ok, I am an aerospace engineering student trying to build a awesome beer pong table. One of the components is having LEDs flashing to the music. I tried looking for a good color organ schematic but everything only powers 4 leds. I want to try to use atleast 50 or so leds or maybe even a couple of neon light sticks. I tried putting a led strip to my speaker system, but i would have to turn up the volume really loud just to get it to flash dimmly. That led strip is 12 volts. What is a good way to try to tackle this process.
Hi and welcome to the forum!
First, I should mention that you should pick one area of the site to post a question, and not post the same thing in multiple places. Having just one thread about a topic makes it *much* easier to keep track of things--you don't have to try to remember who said what in which thread.
Plus somebody might jump down your throat for cross-posting, which is never pleasant.
Anyway, on to your actual question. I'd say that a colour organ is indeed what you want, and use the 3 or 4 lamp outputs from one of the schematics you've found to drive power transistors to control the large numbers of LEDs you need.
For example, say you had a 3-lamp colour organ circuit which would light up a red lamp for bass frequencies, a yellow lamp for mids, and a green lamp for highs. Instead of driving those 3 lamps directly, you'd take the output from the circuit for the red lamp to drive one (or more) power transistor or MOSFET to control a whole bunch of LEDs from the bass frequencies. You'd do the same thing for the mid channel and the high channel.
Mixing the neons and LED strips in might complicate things slightly but I think not horribly.
The actual values you'd need would depend on a lot of things, such as the colour organ schematic you planned to use, the power source you have available (voltage and current ratings), how many LEDs you want to drive and what kind of LEDs they are (different colours and types have different voltage and current requirements), and so on.
So, my first question to you would be: are you OK with having say 3 channels as I just described, with say 20 LEDs for bass, 20 for mids, and 20 for highs?
My other questions would be:
1. What kind of experience do you have constructing/designing electronic projects?
2. What is your timeline for this project?
3. What is your budget for this project?
And before we get too much farther, I'll add my standard disclaimer here: I'm a computer programmer--I am not an electrical or electronics engineer, nor do I play one on the Internet.
I will try to help as much as I can but I'm just a hobbyist; there are others here with vastly more experience and knowledge than I have. But I can help you to get together the information you'll need to get the answers you want.
Good luck!
Torben