Creating a sound-level meter with LEDs

This small project is a typical example of a Max 6/Arduino hardware and software collaboration.

Max can easily listen for sounds and convert them from the analog to the digital domain.

We are going to build a small sound level visualizer using Arduino, some LEDs, and Max 6.

The circuit

We are going to use the same circuit we designed in Chapter 8, Designing Visual Output Feedbacks, while we multiplexed LEDs with a daisy chain of shift registers of the type 595.

The following figure shows the circuit:

Our double series of eight LEDs

Our double series of eight LEDs

The basic idea is to:

• Use each series of eight LEDs for each sound channel (left and right)

• Display the sound level all along the LED series

For each channel, the greater the number of LEDs switched on, the higher the sound level.

Let's now check how we can handle this in Max 6 first.

The Max 6 patch for calculating sound levels

Have a look at the following figure showing the SoundLevelMeters patch:

Generating...