Music Box

This project is a small room with lights that play in coordination with a composition. I chose to use Beethovens 5th symphony due to the emotional weight of the piece. Once you get in the small foam core room, you can put on some headphones and listen to the music as you experience the light show.

To know how many neopixels you have to program, you must know the size of your room. It can be made to any size you would like!

Foam Core is the easiest material to prototype in, therefore it might be beneficial to make your first walls out of it. Foam Core and hot glue is very sturdy

Measure how many neopixels you will need, I used one meter.

The neopixels must be soldered to wire so it may be connected to a breadboard or arduino. Again, the lengths of the wire and neopixels are completely up to you.

Once the wires are soldered to the neoplixels, connect that to an arduino and breadboard. This is necessary because the light must be programmed.

Now you may begin programming the lights. If you do not know where to begin, a code similar to mine can be used to start. It is shown in the image.

The code you use will be different for whatever song you decide to use. If you choose to use Beethoven's 5th Symphony as I did, you may use the time intervals that I already figured out. Otherwise, you may tap the tempo to a stopwatch to figure out how many milliseconds are in one beat.

In regards to Beethovens 5th, one beat equaled 700 miliseconds. Knowing that number will help you establish durations for the lights.

If you would also like to use Beethovens 5th, the picture included has a segment of the time intervals and colors used in my code.

To make matters simpler for myself, I kept the video separate from the lights, and I programmed a button to start the lights. To start the code and the music simultaneously, I just make sure to press the button and start the video at the same time.

In whatever configuration you decide, attach the lights to the room. I put the lights vertically on the corner of one wall so it may shine across the wall next to it.