LED Gaming Strobe

[Excabus]

Hello! Im new to the forums, my name is Shawn. I am 19 years of age and am attending college to be a network tech! In our college we are required to take a introductory class on electricity and cicuitry. I like the class alot, we learn alot of neat stuff. Im looking for some ideas and assistance on this project id like to undertake. Me and my friends want to start making custom LED boards for computer cases. I have this idea that I think is somewhat feasable. Im not absolutely sure how to rig this up but, the idea is, I want a yellow and white panel of LED's to flash to gunfire when you play video games. Pretty neat idea yea? I was thinking about how to do this. Some materials I would need would be a power molex, some vero board, the LED's, the tools to assemble... im lost though to as what I would use to time up the strobing to the gunfire and explosions and stuff... I was thinking there has to be some sort of sound activated switch or something that can operate quickly, like a clap off clap on sort of thing. Then I could just rig up a tiny speaker right by that so when a gunshot went off, it would set off the lights for just a short ammount of time. Any ideas on the top of equipment which I could use to help make this a reality? Some of the issues I can see running into would be random background noise in real life and on the computer speaker setting off the LED's, and the power supply and the molex. Would I need some resistors to cut down on the power flowing into the circuitry on the board I am making? I am assuming I would. How exactly does a power supply distribute electricity, im not sure how a power supply totally functions. Im going to do some research when I get back from work, hopefully when I get back you cool cats will have some suggestions as well!

Thanks!

Shawn

 

[kchriste]

Google for project "color organ" and you'll get some ideas:
https://www.electronicpeasant.com/projects/ledlamps/ledcolor.html
Instead of the Mic and preamp circuit, you could connect the line level of the sound card directly to the inputs of the "volume controls".
I don't know if I'd recommend the "construction techniques" used on the page above, but it is quick and VERY dirty.

 

[Excabus]

Thanks for the link, ill have to study this a bit harder. Im in an intro electricity class, so I get the general idea. Im not sure quite how it works... How does the circuit know at what frequency the sound is? I thought this would be easier haha. Ill get it.... Just going to take longer than I thought it was ;P

 

[kchriste]

Im not sure quite how it works... How does the circuit know at what frequency the sound is? I thought this would be easier haha.

That circuit looks pretty complicated, but it's really not. I've cut out a section that would drive a single LED to bass notes and posted it below. The 0.1uF capacitor forms part of the negative feedback circuit along with the 100K resistor. The resistor treats all frequencies the same but the capacitor passes high frequencies better than low ones. Since it is in the negative feedback circuit, it will lower the gain of the transistor amplifier at high frequencies and thus that amplifier will only pass low frequencies well enough to light the LED.

 

[Excabus]

Hey thanks for clearing that up a bit! It makes more sense now, the circuit shouldnt be to hard to put together, I may experiment with some simpler things before I dive into this. It will be tricky trying to make the lights flash ONLY during gunfire and explosions, and not to things like people talking over the microphone etc etc.

 

[audioguru]

The stupid circuit has the battery symbol upside down and has the Yapanese PNP transistor upside down.
I corrected it.
The PNP transistor now has a very high voltage gain so I don't think the LEDs in the project will work like an LM3915 bar graph. They will all be on or all be off.

 

[kchriste]

Hey I never noticed that! Thanks for the 2nd set of eyes.

It will be tricky trying to make the lights flash ONLY during gunfire and explosions, and not to things like people talking over the microphone etc etc.

It will be impossible to do with an analog circuit. Maybe with a DSP and waveform recognition code which would be very hard to write.

 

[audioguru]

Maybe the gunshots and explosions are MUCH louder than voices, but with noises like that a colour organ is unnecessary. You just need a single strobe light.

 

[Excabus]

hrmmmm, oh well. This friday im going to start ordering parts and whatnot. I have a few ideas to as how to single out the gunfire. Not sure how I will go about doing it though. Is it possible to have two sound cards running at the same time? cause if so, this will be cake ;>

 

[Torben]

hrmmmm, oh well. This friday im going to start ordering parts and whatnot. I have a few ideas to as how to single out the gunfire. Not sure how I will go about doing it though. Is it possible to have two sound cards running at the same time? cause if so, this will be cake ;>

It's possible, but it will depend on your motherboard, on the sound cards involved, and on your operating system--none of which you've mentioned so I can't help any more than that, really.

Also, there may well be some limitations on what you can route where internally. For instance, Cubase won't let me use the 8 inputs on my RME card along with the 2 inputs on my integrated mobo soundcard for a total of 10 inputs; it requires all inputs be on the same driver, so it's either 8 excellent inputs or 2 mediocre ones.

I seem to recall someone doing what you're after a couple of years back, but I cannot for the life of me find it now. I thought I remembered him writing software hooks for the game in question somehow so that it didn't have to sort through all the noise; it just knew when certain sounds were being played. I would expect that to be a pretty game-specific way to do it, though.

By the way, what game is your main focus with this? Would it have to work with all the different weapons? Usually a crossbow would sound significantly different from, say, a BFG 9000.


Torben

 

[Excabus]

CSS/BF2, I was talking to my friend about this, he is into programming and all this fun stuff, he said if I could somehow rig up two cards or two different audio outputs, he said he would see if he could whip something up that would only output gunfire noises on one output, whereas the other output would work as a regular speaker jack. This is turning out to be a bit more work than I expected ;>

 

[Torben]

So I guess he plans on using a mod SDK? Dunno what engine Battlefield uses, but I suspect that's doable for CS:S at least. I used to mod games but not in the last few years, sorry.


Torben