making interior neons light to bass

so just buy that and it'll be able to light up to my bass hits?$Mike$

Yeah buy that, and it'll light up to the sounds it hears. It can't differentiate between bass hits and high pitch sounds, all it can do is hear sound. So you could have the music interface turned on, no music going, and clap your hands - the lights will flash on. What you need to do it adjust the sensitivity, so making is less sensitive means you need to turn the music up louder for it to sense anything, and usually with it being less sensitive, it will only light up on bass hits. The most sensitive, the more sounds it will hear, and therefore the more activity that will be produced. It's really quite simple when you get it. You will have to hard wire it though, it doesn't come with a cigarette lighter adaptor.

what would i hard wire it to? i mean, i have an underbody kit hooked up to a switch on my car that i can flip on an off. so could i just wire it up to that so it only turns on then?$Mike$

Nah just connect it straight to the battery, via the fuse which is included. The music interface has an on/off switch as well as a switch to change between music and solid on.

b1b2b3 wrote: Ahk, didn't realise that you used a neon.. I don't have much experience with neons themselves, I always use LED's so they must be different. But yes, LED's do work on the speakers lines, as you said. Just gotta see if you can get a multimeter and test the voltage that is produced over the home theatre speaker wires, and then use a resistor or add more LED's in series to stop them from blowing :).

yeah, i thought of the resistors/more leds thing, but the problem is still voltage, higher volume means higher voltage, and with bass peaks etc, the voltage spikes alot, so no matter what you do, imho, you will always end up with blown LEDs when trying to connect them to speakers directly.... but im no expert, so maybe there is some kind of circuit you can build or something..... anyway it doesnt matter because as you said, just buy a sound unit :) If you want it to light up to bass hits only, you can remove the mic from the PCB, and remote mount it inside of a speaker box. I did this with my HT setup, and it worked great, i had the mic mounted directly to the subwoofer basket.

If you really really wanted to connect LED's onto the sub woofer speaker lines, then all you'd need to do is turn the volume up as loud as you'd ever have it, test the voltage, and then add a resistor/more LED's to account for that highest voltage you'd ever reach. The only problem with that though, is you won't get much light, if any, with lower volumes. So it's just best to use something that you can vary the sensitivity of. Unless you add a variable resistor with the LED's that are connected to the sub woofer speaker lines, that way, even with low volumes, you can use the variable resistor to allow more current though, so that they'll light up properly, and then when you turn the volume up, turn the variable resistor up too, again limiting the current so it's never too much.

i was going to say that about the low volumes and no light :) Anyway, i think its generally agreed the best solution is to get a music sensor :D the street glow one is nice, and would probably work for alot of people, but with what im doing it doesnt look like it comes apart very easily .

what exactly are you doing? Something with home theatre? Or was that just an example you gave...

no that was just an example, and a project that i was working on many years ago lol. What i want to do is remove the switch and sensitivity knob from the main sensor box, and mount them somewhere else(to be determined), then the main controller circuit would be in a project box in the dash or something. Im going to move the little microphone either into the trunk, or into one of the sub boxes itself. the controller will control some kind of additional interior and maybe exterior lighting..... some EL wire, LEDs, and maybe a couple of neons. at least this is the plan anyway. the type of switch i need is like $136 for a toggle, and the only one i can find that will work the same as the PCB mounted switch on the ciruit board. Otherwise i use a slider switch, which i really wanted to avoid if possible.

Why mount the mic in the trunk/woofer box? You really don't need to. By adjusting the sensitivity, and having the mic in the front, I can make it light up only on the bass hits, as bass is generally louder than other sounds.. Mine isn't even in open space, it's behind this trap door thingo in my car, but it still works great, with the door open or closed. You don't need to mount the mic in the boot, which will save you some hassle :). I've got my music interface controlling my two footwell lights at the moment, but have plans to connect up the boot lights and any extra lights I decide to buy. The only thing I want to do now is get another music interface so I can have different sensitivities on them so different lights light up to different sounds :P.