Current Part:
LED Bar
20 MHz Oscillator
(2) 1kΩ Resistors
Wires
5v Power Supply
Parts List Details
You may or may not be familiar with the parts above so a picture of each item has been included to help give you an idea of what they look like. I'll go through and explain each part briefly below.
PIC 18F452
The PIC microcontroller will be the brains of this project. Any model of the PIC can be used as long as it has analog to digital converters on it. I chose the 18F452 because I have quite an excess of them.
LED Bar
LED Bars come in all types of sizes, shapes and colors. The one I use has 10 leds and shines red. Green ones might look cooler, all up to you.
20 MHz Oscillator
This will be the clock speed. Instruction Frequency will be 5 MHz. It is important to use this same clock speed otherwise the A/D's will output incorrect values unless you adjust the software for your different clock speed.
(2) 1kΩ
These two resistors will be used as a voltage divider. The divided voltage serves as a reference for the analog to digital converters. Since the music signal is of a significantly lower voltage than the power supply, we use a reference voltage that we have created to maximize control over the equalizer outpuit.