First Post

I've always loved listening to music. An interest in audio, electronics, engineering, and signal processing came later. Sometimes inspiration strikes, and so this blog is an impulsive move on that inspiration.

The first series of postings will focus on how to design a beat tracking device that will control an RGB LED to provide interesting sequences of light and colour - essentially a music visualizer. The idea is not new, but the implementation here is original. I encourage you to give it a try. Everyone needs to start somewhere. I hope this will be of some interest, and fun. Other projects and variations will follow.

Note that unlike many other visualizers that rely on some computer-based code like Processing to work, this one is stand alone. All code is executed on the device itself.

We will start our journey with the Arduino , a well known, very well documented open source microcontroller. This is a very flexible and inexpensive development platform to start with (about $50 for the board. you just supply the USB cable, and the parts you want to control).