Light Feedback – Playing Halo with an Arduino

An update of my MusicalColours script to provide lighting feedback for my TV! Demo’d by playing Halo 4.

The circuit used is the same as before but I have tweaked the code somewhat. I decided I wanted a way of tuning the frequency bands used for the RGB lights, as the previous code required trail and error. I found a Processing library called ControlP5 that provides a GUI, which can be used to control variables. Using it, I have developed sliders, which control the upper and lower boundary of treble, mid and bass.

Unfortunately, the graphical FFT does not work with the sliders due to a different rendering method used. I think it may be fixed in the current version of Processing (2.0) but I found this not to work with the Arduino library (a known bug).

I also started playing around with the linear averages function of the FFT:

It reduces the number of bands and should reduce noise that can cause the lights to flicker. It is also something I was looking at to try and level out the ranges a bit, so they correspond to the analogue voltage better (I’ve also messed around with map but it doesn’t really work when you don’t know the max value of the input). I didn’t use either in the video above though as I am still trying to get the right number of averages. Current code is attached below (you need to download the ControlP5 Library to use this version)

HaloColours