Teensy 3.2, Audio Shield, Octows2811 Adaptor, ~1000 leds.

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gavra

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Hey,
I've purchased:
Teensy 3.2, Audio Shield, Octows2811 Adaptor, 7 leds strips of 150 leds (+ 2 back ups for experiments). I have a separate power supply to drive the leds.

I'm planning on using audio line in from Audio shield, analysing the signal and controlling the leds according to the analysis + some transformations.
I've seen multiple threads referencing issues with similar set ups, mainly of pin conflicts between the Octows2811 adaptor and audio shield.

I'd appreciate some help as I've followed some instructions on old threads with no success.
 
Check out / google "Myles de bastion" He has done extensive work in this area. He mentioned to me that he can get up to 2000 pixels using the teensy 3.6 with audio analyzing.
 
Hi, I've read a lot over the past week.
I figured i need to use a microphone/audio jack on the audio shield
Teensy and audioshield are to be connected directly.
I still can't figure out which pins to connect from teensy to octows2812 adapter in order to drive multiple leds.
 
WhatsApp Image 2018-05-04 at 8.06.50 PM.jpg
I've tried the octows2812 frequency analyzer example
But I keep having random leds light up instead of reacting to input.
Image is attached, I've tried having the mic input at A3/A2 (17/16 pins) but it seems to have no effect.
I'd expect when there's silence to have no leds light up, but sometimes it's all of them.
I've printed the input value to the serial monitor and received values that range from 0.02 to almost 5

teensy is directly connected to octows2812, pin connectors from there to the breadboard (see image)
Any advice on how to advance would be appreciated
 
There are some pin overlaps between the audio shield and the OCTOWS board that need to be managed but looking at the picture there you do not have the audio shield fitted yet?

Is your microphone a module with preamp, since I'm not seeing a power connection which is normally needed to do the gain and bias for connection to analog pins. A bare mic will not drive an analog pin.

Other tests that you may have already done using your hardware setup is run the audio library RMS and FFT examples and see what the microphone does printing to serial with the OCTO software out of the picture, and separately run the OCTO test patterns and make sure you can reliably write to all your pixels.
 
Because of the pin overlaps that I couldn't figure out yet I took a step back to a simpler set up with only OCTOWS board and trying to use the teensy's ADC input.
Issue is, that even without ADC input I get random leds that light up. with nothing to sample how is this possible?
I'm using the frequency analyzer example unmodified.

Also, i'd rather use audio input through a female audio jack, is this possible?
 
If you actually have nothing connected to the ADC it will be sampling background noise and then the FFT will be doing an auto gain correction on it to find a signal so flashing is very possible. There are also a bunch of electrical reasons why LED strips can go berserk so useful to do something with known patterns to make sure they are good.

From memory there is some pin hacking to get Audio board and OCTO working together, but for a single chanel line in bias/adjust as per https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/gui/?info=AudioInputAnalog - remembering your microphone is probably not producing a true line level. Common problem with FFT graphics is that noise manifests as spurious detections so things like clipping or very low level are hard to detect. Putting an amp on the DAC pin and running things in pass through will help find if flickering is input or software related.

Edit - using audio board and Octo together https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/26016-OctoWS2811-Adaptor-Audio-Adaptor-Board
 
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Many thanks, I will purchase something to have a proper ADC input and update after.
After that I will move on to having both audio shield and OCTO together.
 
@gavra what did you do to read the audio signal into the Audio Shield? You mentioned you "figured [you] need to use a microphone/audio jack on the audio shield". Does this mean you just used an external electret microphone connected to "L" and "R" Line In pins on the audio shield?

Let me know if I'm being unclear. Apologies if this seems like a basic/stupid question
 
so, yes that's true.
not a stupid question :)
I had difficulty getting a good enough electret microphone, so I used a female audio jack connected and an aux cable for sound input.
 
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