BeatNik - personal audio-sensitive light show

http://www.whence.com/beatnik/ - BeatNik is my best surface-mount electronics project. It's an audio frequency sensitive personal light show -- my own wearable rock concert toy! Just one inch in diameter, BeatNik bears a PIC microcontroller, a tiny microphone, and a very bright tri-color LED.

I designed the PCB and wrote the PIC assembly language firmware (it counts zero-crossings to estimate frequency). I had a dozen boards manufactured by BatchPCB.com, on to which I hand-placed the solder paste and the surface-mount parts, then I reflow soldered the units in a simple toaster oven.

BeatNik runs for a few weeks on a CR2032 watch battery, putting itself into sleep mode and waking automatically when it detects a loud sound.

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Demo video music excerpts: Ecstasy, Rusted Root -- Dark Star, Grateful Dead -- Dust Bowl Children, Union Station

BeatNik is Copyright © 2011 by Kamal Mostafa kamal@whence.com.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• led
• PIC
• microcontroller
• surface-mount
• wearable
• electronics
• audio
• sound
• sensitive
• light
• show