Any way to adjust range of EQ bands?

[Leon R]

This board is truly a gift for me. I have been working on an interactively lit saxophone for a year and a half now, and have several working prototypes using an off-the-shelf controller with RF remote, driving a string of 2812’s inside the sax. I use a microphone inside the horn, through a sound-activated automotive sensor to power the lights, driving whatever program I have manually selected, so I can use smooth transitions for softer songs, and glittery ones for more energetic material. Really a cool effect, but the thing that would really make it better would be for the lights to obviously respond to what I play.

Enter the Lumazoid. I have purchased one, and I am testing it to drive 60 LED’s (from a 144/M strip). I’m getting great signal with a MAX4466 microphone module powered by the 5v jumper at the input jack – actually have to tamp it way down to keep it from being too sensitive. Not installed in a horn yet, but not far away from that either.

So, here’s my question: Is there a part of the code where I can adjust the eight EQ bands to be distributed across the limited frequency band of ~100Hz to ~1,500Hz? I have no programming experience, but I did look through the code on Github, and did find one section describing what appeared to be 8 bands. Couldn’t make the connection to freq’s though…

I’m certainly willing to get whatever I need to program the Lumazoid, as I’m sure it will take some experimentation to get the most effective distribution of color-to-pitch within the limited range of the instrument (mostly tenor or C-Melody saxes, maybe try alto in the future.) It would also be useful to reject bass, drum & cymbal sounds, as I have been using the setup I described in a live band setting (playing professionally in a few different groups). But being able to go from low, red notes to high, white ones, with increased activity in response to higher volume will be just what I’ve been trying for.

Lastly, have you found a case that would work with the Lumazoid? I’m thinking the Parameter & Sensitivity knobs could just stick up through holes in the top, while the color & program buttons would just need risers to do the same.

Thanks so much for having developed this really cool product! I have seen the ViVi also, but Lumazoid gets straight to the heart of what I have been imagining. So, thanks also for any assistance or direction you can provide.

-Leon

[Michael]

Hi Leon,

I’m glad you like the Lumazoid and you are certainly doing an interesting project. If you have the ability to upload code to it, then I am happy to give you a code modification or two that might achieve what you are looking for. You would need to install the Arduino IDE (from arduino.cc), download the Lumazoid code, compile it and upload it to the board. A simple USB to serial adapter board or cable is required. For example, we sell them: https://nootropicdesign.com/store/product/ftdi-friend/

There is not a real precise mapping of frequencies to the 8 bands. I think you’d want to listen only to the 3rd or 4th band for saxophone. The current Lumazoid firmware lets you adjust how many of the lower bands you listen to, but does not let you pick out one band. I could show you how to limit to 1 or 2 bands and you could give that a try. Let me know if you want some pointers on the code to change. I would just make a quick change and send you the firmware.

[Leon R]

Hi Michael,

Thanks so much for the reply.I will get the cable, download the IDE and tackle the compiling and uploading. As soon as we get back from evacuating for hurricane Matthew!

The thing is, I want to assign all 8 bands to the specified range (100-1,500Hz), and reject any signals outside that range that may leak into the mic. Looking for a way to have max color range, with a clear correlation between pitch and color, but all within the range of a saxophone. Does the section of code that I saw, with 8 categories followed by sequences of seemingly random numbers, somehow determine which signals get sent to what bands? What do those values represent? I want to eliminate the values that correlate to really low or high notes, and redistribute the numbers in the target range across all eight bands.

Am I wishful thinking?

Thanks,
Leon

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