Lately, I’ve found myself becoming more and more interested in projects involving music and audio processing. And so, guided by sheer scientific curiosity about the theories and nuance in the field of sound, I decided to build an audio visualizer!
Just kidding. I built this because I wanted to look cool at parties, especially when all I have at my disposal is a TV screen and an aux cord. So, I figured I would make a nifty sound visualizer that could hear and visually interpret music in live time.
To do this, I used a Pmod MIC as the sound sensor, and connected it to the Arduino UNO.
Once I had the circuit complete, I uploaded the Arduino code and kept the board plugged into my computer. Next I ran the data collected through the serial port to a program in Processing, which displayed the gain levels as “bars” in real time.
Side Note: This Processing program also serves as a good testing/graphing tool for any kind of data passed to it through the serial port.
With the help of my friend Josh, I successfully created a program that visualized sound in the same way that I had envisioned it. And as for my primary goal of looking cool at parties, the results have yet to be determined regarding whether or not people think that I do, in fact, know how to raise the roof.
If you are interested in building or expanding on this project, see the full instructions and code at Hackster.io!
