Music Sync with an Existing FM Broadcast

[kruso.tech]

I have a local radio station who wants their sign out front fitted with RGB LEDs that will pulse in sync with their broadcast.

Is there a controller on the market that has its own FM receiver?  I would really like to have a single stand-alone unit, and I don't think I want to use their source audio, because there will be some amount of latency between it and what's actually broadcast.

They're mostly interested in purple, but want the ability to change it up for holidays and events.

 

Thanks!

[PhilMassey]

Light O Rama nor any other light controller I know of will sync live or real time music. There may be sets or strings of lights or DMX lights which have some kind of music sync via a microphone but I can't say how well they work. Probably, not very.

This hobby is about manually synchronizing recorded music to light displays. You don't say if you have an existing display, but it would be confusing to display a radio frequency and be playing different music.

We all use short range FM transmitters tuned to an empty frequency to broadcast our playlists. If you used the radio station frequency, then that is what you would hear. 

Latency would not be an issue in any case as everyone would be listening to the same broadcast.

RGB lights can produce ant color, including purple.

[k6ccc]

Do a color search for "Color Organ".  Lots of devices for controlling a few light channels based on a sound input.

 

[Orville]

Got to agree with Phil.  I have yet to see any controller that will allow you to sync live or even prerecorded music in real time.  Otherwise none of us would need to spend all the time we do on sequencing songs and instrumental music for our displays. 

Always done manually, I believe what you see in TV and Movies that look like it's occurring in real time have been preset up for the song or scene that is playing out to the audio/song.   And all that is usually done with DMX, as opposed to the LOR default system protocol most of us use.

It'd be nice if it could be done, but thus far, I don't think anyone has come up with anything that works very well, if at all for the purpose you're{the radio station is} wanting to do.

 

[PhilMassey]

Just to beat this to death.

Many of the largest rock concert lighting directors still " play" a lot of the light cues using momentary keys on the light board in real time, and they can afford the best gear 

[kruso.tech]

I’ve been able to better focus my search, and found out that what I’m looking for is an LED VU Meter.

I actually have an Adafruit Trinket microcontroller (https://www.adafruit.com/product/1501) and some of their NeoPixels here in the shop from an old project (my quadcopter: https://youtu.be/jArTTM9wTlU ). Just need to build an audio input.

I’ll give it a shot and report back. Thanks for the help.

 

 

Edited September 10, 2020 by kruso.tech