VU Meter w/ Microphone Input

[Matt Almaraz]

Brainstorm: What do you guys think the feasibility would be of adding a mic input via the GPIO to display a VU meter of ambient sounds and music via custom firmware?

Appealing to the creatively ambitious programmer types with this one as I have no experience with programming myself.

Thanks.

[seanblah12]

I was thinking this myself, I will have a look when mine comes through.
Would be a nice addition

[Jeremy Williams]

I’ve wanted to try this for some time and am happy to collaborate here. For starters, let’s assume we’re working with the Game Frame V2 (2016 version) and I’d also suggest upgrading the microcontroller to a Teensy 3.2 for more Flash and gain access to the Teensy audio library. I’m traveling right now, but in a week I can verify there’s enough SRAM to compile on Teensy 3.2 w/ the audio library.

I’ve posted the new Game Frame source on GitHub if anyone wants to get a jump on it.

https://github.com/Jerware/GameFrameV2

There is a FFT library for Teensy LC (converts microphone signals to frequency values) if you want to hack…

https://github.com/jeff-hamm/LCAnalyzeFFT

[seanblah12]

https://www.ledseq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/teensy.jpg

Looking at that picture of the main board. Would I just need to solder the pins to the new teensy? No need to do any soldering on the game frame, that would make me much more comfortable upgrading it.

[Jeremy Williams]

The Teensy 3.2 and LC are the same size and pin-compatible. The 3.2 is just more powerful.

[seanblah12]

I should have asked, does the gameframe board have female headers, like most arduino boards do. And the teensy can just be un plugged, as it were, as though it is a shield.
Which would mean I could just solder the male header pins to the teensy 3.2 if I bought one.

Or am I seeing it wrong and the teensy is soldered to the board?

[Jeremy Williams]

Yeah, Game Frame has female headers. And you can buy Teensy 3.2 with male headers already soldered. Easy swap.

[seanblah12]

Took me a while but found one with the pins pre-soldered. Seem less readily available here.

Got teensyduino installed and got the source code compiled when set for the 3.2 but fails when set to compile for the LC

get “.text’ will not fit in region `FLASH'”
and “ld.exe: region `FLASH’ overflowed by 868 bytes”

Which I guess means it’s too large, which stumps me, could I be using the wrong version of something?

[seanblah12]

Also, thats the stock source from the link above, not edited anything yet.

[Jeremy Williams]

Hm… I’ll take a look when I’m back from traveling late next week. Could be some libraries have been updated and use more Fladh.

[seanblah12]

Had a play with the code.
Horrendously butchered it by removing the breakout code, which means it can compile for the LC now. Seems to have freed up ~3k of memory, seems a little excessive for a breakout game.

Shall dig a little deeper.

[twuelfing]

Anyone have any luck making this work?

[twuelfing]

Here are some references.
Once I get the basic unit working I will start experimenting with this, but it may be some weeks as i am making my game frame from scratch so I can learn as much as possible as I go. Seems the thing that makes the most sense would be to split up the frequencies
from between 50hz and 20khz(seems to be the response of the adafruit mic) to make the 16 bands.
https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/CMA-4544PF-W.pdf

Lets do this! it will be a ton of fun!

Color LED matrix VU meter shows how to use FFT with Arduino

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Processing-Audio-Spectrum-Analyzer/
http://apcmag.com/arduino-project-audio-spectrum-analyser.htm/
https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/2085ne/arduino_spectrum_analyzer_uno_r3_msgeq7_neopixel/

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