MIT Engineers Create Arduino-Based Wi-Fi LED Lighting
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Anyone looking to soup up their rock band’s stage presence—or maybe enhance an otherwise drab LAN party this weekend? A group of MIT engineers have posted instructions for hacking together a Saiko5 Wi-Fi-enabled LED light fixture that responds to music playback. It’s based on Arduino, the open-source electronics prototyping platform responsible for countless hobbyist projects since its inception in 2005.
The engineers posted detailed steps that detail the board design, soldering, and case integration, as well as how the software and firmware can be used to do music analysis and control multiple fixtures, as the article states.
Here’s a 20-second video showing the LED light fixture in action, responding to a short clip of music with a heavy backbeat:
To help others pursue their various LED lighting projects, the MIT group also developed a suite of open-source tools. These include an example python server for controlling the lights, a python GUI, and—our favorite—a PureData music analysis system that listens to the music in real-time and sends data to a locally running python server over Open Sound Control. In other words, it controls the lights in time to the music.
Anyone interested in picking up the parts—or even complete LED light fixtures—can find them at saikoled.com. Example installations and other applications can be found at saikoled.com/applications. There are also instructions for assembling the Saiko5 light fixture itself, with plenty of detailed photos showing the entire step-by-step process beginning with an Arduino board.
Back in March, a Carnegie Mellon University student created an eight-by-eight LED matrix game based on Super Mario Bros.