Tips for Audio Trigger + LED Strips = Spectrum Visualizer?

[MKUltraMkII]

I'm using Audio Triggers to enable various Scenes on my RGBPanel (4x LED strips). The goal is to have sound-activated LED strips that behave sort of like an audio spectrum visualizer. Lower frequencies drive the left-most LED strip, higher frequencies to the right. As audio signal increases, more of the LED strip lights up vertically, and color adjusts as well.

I've achieved this by creating a total of 40 scenes, which is 10 scenes for each LED strip. Each scene from 1 to 10 increases the number of LEDs that turn on, and adjusts the color from green, to yellow, to orange, to red.

Then I created 10 Audio Triggers in Virtual Console. Each Audio Trigger has 5 "spectrum bars" (although I'm only using 4, 5 is the lowest it would allow me to set it to).
The Audio Triggers are set to enable a function (really just a Scene) on each of my 4 LED strips for 4 different frequency ranges. Then the Disable Threshold and Enable Threshold for each "spectrum bar" is set to a 10% range.

Each of the 10 audio triggers maps to the next 10% segment of the 40 Scenes I have that fill up my LED strips.

Ultimately this works! And looks pretty cool, a moving visualizer that responds to input audio.

However, the setup to get here was cumbersome. 40 Scenes and 10 Audio Triggers.

I'd like to have several other color mappings, but ultimately the same effect. Instead of creating the next 40 scenes of a new color mapping and wiring them up through 10 more Audio Triggers, I thought I should check here first to ask:


Is there any faster or easier way to set this up to achieve the same effect?

My approach feels very "brute force", as I had to hand-create 40 scenes to get 10 each for my 4x LED Strips, each increasing the lit LEDs and colors by 10% to achieve this "spectrum" look.

I'd like to be able to quickly toggle between my Green-Yellow-Orange-Red spectrum, to other options like Blue-Purple-Pink-White, or many more. But with my current approach, coming up with a new color scheme for this same effect will take a lot of work by hand...

I can't help but wonder if there is a smarter approach within QLC+ that I haven't discovered yet.

Thanks for your help.

Some screenshots describing my setup are attached.

[GGGss]

If you are handy with a script, you could alter the project file. The QLC+ project file is like a .XML structure. You can open it with a text editor.
But take a backup first. If you break the structure, you break your project.
Mass copy of scenes, with modification while pasting is not (yet) a feature.

[sandinak]

So I wrote some code to automate creation of scenes and step fixtures which is very similar to your needs.. we could refine that to do what you want and i've started a python lib for just his purpose. See https://github.com/sandinak/qlcplus-tools .. and feel free to PM me here .. I am re-working the step creation now with the new libs .. makes things ALOT easier.. but the rough plan is to ingest a YAML file and edit/update a showfile in place.

[sandinak]

Uh .. also .. just.a thought .. have you considered using setting up the strips as an RGBPanel .. and then using the built in RGBMatrix Function "audio spectrum" ?

• Create your LED sets as an RGBPanel .. you can also just take what you have and organize them into a Fixture Group
• Select the RGB Matrix function
• Select the Audio Spectrum Pattern
• Profit

It works well .. only caveat is until recently the audio on Mac's was dicy .. latest version seems to work better.

[MKUltraMkII]

I did try the RGBMatrix Function "audio spectrum", but so far haven't gotten that to work at all. I do have my LED strips set up as an RGBPanel. I'm not sure why that isn't working for me. When I create a new RGBMatrix function, select Audio Spectrum, then select my RGB Panel, then hit play to "test" that function... nothing happens.

Sounds like some scripting is the best option forward.. I'm primarily a mobile dev, perhaps I will consider making an iPad/mac app that could speed up my scene design and creation.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[haddonhill]

A little late to the thread. I just got an SP801E to experiment with and was successful configuring it to use the RGB Matrix Audio Spectrum mode for LED strips. The key was to configure the strips as vertical 1 LED wide x 100 tall matrixes. My audio input on the PC can be either mic or default and the strips respond to the audio input.

With a horizontal layout, the problem is that the strip seems to be recognized as the top of the spectrum and will never get signal unless the audio is maxed out to hit the last LED in a "vertical bar".