Well spotted Mikebits, yes I did sway to another schematic on the vu search.
This schematic looked a little clearer to me, so I went ahead and drew up a
board trace (sorry should have mentioned it).
Thanks for the tip on the ground plane problem, will ammend that to the pcb.
I have attached the correct schematic for this board & the pcb trace without
the placements in the way, for a clearer view, in case I have made errors that were hidden by the placements
audioguru, thanks for the extra info.
You have me slightly worried though about those dreaded transistor thingies.
They always catch me out, (base ,collector, emitter) god knows where they go sometimes.
I look the data sheets to check base leg ect, and still manage to get them
the wrong way round sometimes.
I would be very greatful if Mikebits & yourself could detect more errors if
any before I build this board.
The purpose for my building this board is for the car, so I can feed the
stereo or radio scanner through it.
So while at traffic lights people will look and say "what the fu**# is that" lol.
These 2 seperate vu scales (using 2 boards) will be on the dash.
About the heat thing, may want to use bar mode, so do I change to a
5v reg on the 12v line with a heatsink ?.
And would I get less LED brightness with 5 volts ?.
Thank you all so much for the help so far.