making interior neons light to bass

Ok, i have an 07 Cobalt LT coupe and i was thinking about putting some neon either in my trunk or under my seats. If i wanted it to light up to the bass, could i just run the positive wire to my positive sub wires and then ground out the neons properly?

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$Mike$

You could do that, but it's not advised. There are a range of problem that could arise from doing such, things like your subs not getting as much power because the neon is taking some, and also with really big bass hits, it might the neon might get overloaded, and blow, which wouldn't be a great outcome.
I know you'd expect me to give you an example of what you could do, but to be honest, I don't know exactly, I only have rough ideas, but I do know that you shouldn't connect them up how you have suggested.
I've got my LED strips lighting to the beat of my music, which I was going to do by connecting a home made circuit to the signal line to the amp, but that proved to be a little too difficult for me at the time, so I bought a Street Glow Music Interface for $50 (Australian).
That's not going to help you too much, but at least you know what you shouldn't do :).

im working on a similar project sort of.

If you buy a light ring, it will come with a flaher unit that makes the light ring flash to the music.

What ive done with mine so far, is to take apart the unit, remove the little mic and remote mount it, and im working on finding a switch so i can remote mount that too (hard switch to find) then i can put the mic wherever i want, slap the switch on my dash, and connect it to LEDs or other neons that will flash to the music.

You dont nessecarily need to take apart the flash unit, im just doing it a little bit differently because i want to wire lights all over my car, not just in one place.

You CANNOT connect lights directly to a subwoofer wire.... it doesnt work, ive tried it.

bigjohnny wrote:

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You CANNOT connect lights directly to a subwoofer wire.... it doesnt work, ive tried it.

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Yeah dude you can do it, I've done it with my speaker wires coming out of my head unit, just for kicks, nothing permanent, so it will definitely work on the subwoofer lines. But as I said above, it's not advised because (in a general sense) it takes power away from the amp.

It didnt work for me when i tried it.... i was using home theater though, not car audio..... i tried it using a neon.

It works with an led, but it blew the led i tried with when the voltage got too high......

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 :).

so if i used a streetglow LED tube, how would i do that without anything dangerous happening?

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$Mike$

does the streetglow LED tube already have a sound sensor in it?

i dont think so.

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$Mike$

well then the first thing I'd suggest, if you don't know how to read, and construct ciruits, is to also purchase a Street Glow music interface. I got one off eBay for ~$50. You can then plug in up to 12 light accessories, although I don't see why you can't double up connections into one port,which then means you can have lots and lots of lights running off it. I would only do this with LED's though as they have low current draw, with neon's I'd be much more hesitant.

Otherwise, you'll need some sort of circuit, which incorporates a microphone, and then an amp to power the lights, variable resistor, and various other things that I can't remember off the top of my head. There are plenty of circuits out there if you are good at putting them together, but otherwise just spend the extra 50 on the music interface, it works great for me :).

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

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$Mike$

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?

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$Mike$

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:

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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 :).

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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.

the mic is already off the board.
Ive got two of these circuits, and it works better being close to the bass, at least from what ive seen anyway.

Im still struggling with where im going to put my amp..... the trunk lid is almost my only option.

Ahk fair enough. May aswell stick with what you've got ay. I've just been working on mounting my amps on the back of my back seats, and then having my subs sit in front of them. They won't be seen, which is a shame cuz I love the look of them, but I would also like to be able to get to my spare tyre if needed, and this is the best way to be able to have 3 amps, 2 subs and still boot space lol.
Wouldn't it be a little bit heavy to put on the trunk lid? Unless you upgrade the gas struts or something...

that might be exactly what i have to do. I need to use my trunk and get to my spare tire, so i cant drop my amp right in the middle of my trunk.

Ive been looking to see if i can find fold down seats for my car, because i think one of model years of cougar/thunderbird had fold down seats, and i think they are compatible with my car.

I just havent been able to find out 100% if thats true, and which car has the fold down seats.

Otherwise i mount my amp to my trunk lid in some fashion that wont destroy it.