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This nature-inspired display reacts to ambient sounds

Arduino TeamDecember 13th, 2024

We all need ways to calm down and relax, and few things are as effective as nature itself. Taking inspiration from organic patterns and smooth, flowing waves, dzeng on Instructables has built an LED wall light that responds to the sounds within a room in real-time.

The project started out as a 2D vector graphic that featured several overlapping, organic leaf patterns arranged within a circle. This pattern was then etched onto a piece of clear acrylic via a laser cutter before being attached to a blue-painted base. For the lighting effects, dzeng added an LED strip between the two layers before connecting it to an Arduino Nano ESP32.

The reactive lighting effects are provided by the Nano ESP32’s sketch, which maintains two variables: brightness and delay. Every loop, the current sound levels are read from a microphone and averaged before being mapped onto the aforementioned values. Finally, the currently-illuminated LED is shifted by one position on the strip and the calculated brightness is applied.

To see it and the entire design process, you can view dzeng’s tutorial here on Instructables.

Boards:Nano ESP32
Categories:Arduino