Members Hardcory(rocks) Posted March 31, 2008 Members Share Posted March 31, 2008 anyone have any idea how to make a rig like this... I feel like it would be a cool prpject to cover my drums in LED lights that light up to the beat... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members I Am Chris Posted March 31, 2008 Members Share Posted March 31, 2008 I'm not sure if you've seen the prices on LEDs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hardcory(rocks) Posted March 31, 2008 Author Members Share Posted March 31, 2008 I just searched ebay, and found a lot of 1000 for $16.99, Im thinking the controllers are going to be the expensive part... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted March 31, 2008 Members Share Posted March 31, 2008 www.acousticlights.com They clip on to the rims of the drums and point up at the bottom head, lighting up the top head when the drum is hit. They've got a sensitivity knob on 'em so you can set them up to match your playing. Not that expensive and a REALLY cool effect on stage, especially during a drum solo or if you use haze. Use a frosted-type drum head (such as Evans EC1 or EC2) and they light up even better. Here's a picture of a single red one in the bass drum at one of our gigs; I'm using a white Remo Fiberskyn head, and you can see how it shines through. It's from MySpace so hopefully the image will show up: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Khazul Posted March 31, 2008 Members Share Posted March 31, 2008 Its quite easy if you know your way around electronics and micro-controllers. A couple of basic options - the very simple one - analog filters driving a driver cicuit - the most basic sound to light there is.Next up, derive a trigger from the filter outputs and use that to triggger or gate some other logic - for eg sequence chases etc. That basically how it was done 20+ years ago, except we all used triacs to control mains lighting. These days - either use analog filters to drive triggers that are monitored by a microprocesor and used to drive chases etc, or if you have a more powerful microcontroller and a ADC, simply sample the audio and FFT it to derive the beat, frequency bands etc from it. Or skip all that, use your microcontroller to simply handle the DMX protocol and drive to your LED matrix, and do all the cpu heavy work on you computer via a USB->DMX interface. Commerical DMX LEDs fixtures tend to be based upon anything from 1 to 3, 8 bit microcontrollers driving a resistive or PWM matrix to drive the LEDs - apparently its cheaper and easier to have a bunch of different little controllers each pre-programmed to do a single little bit of the job, for eg, dealing with DMX, sequencing the lights/motors etc, dealing with any buttons, menus displays etc. Many are suprisingly old-school in terms of the electronics used inside them. BTW - if you hunt around, you can sometimes find the newer 10mm higher power LEDs at quite decent prices. the really big 1W+ LEDs that are starting to be used in the best LED fixtures still seem to be near impossible to buy unpackagged. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Darkstorm Posted April 5, 2008 Members Share Posted April 5, 2008 Chauvet makes a variety of LED moonflowers and other animated LED effects lights with sound active mode. gettable thru musiciansfriend and such places for $60-$180. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members metron9 Posted April 6, 2008 Members Share Posted April 6, 2008 BTW - if you hunt around, you can sometimes find the newer 10mm higher power LEDs at quite decent prices. the really big 1W+ LEDs that are starting to be used in the best LED fixtures still seem to be near impossible to buy unpackagged. Actually they are available through many sources. www.luxeonstar.com in canada Or go to the www.luxeon.com and buy from Future electronics the shopping cart brings you there when you click it. The Acoustic lights use the 3 watt Luxeon LED's now. Zeromus-X has the older 1 watt version he is testing. Has anyone seen the writeup in modern drummer April edition? That's not me playing , it's a friend of mine. I was taking the pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members glassjaw2384 Posted April 17, 2008 Members Share Posted April 17, 2008 zeromus, would one of those lights fit inside a larger amp like the vox ac30cc2? i'd like something, preferably sound sensitive, that i can hide inside my amp so that it has a cool glow. any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted April 17, 2008 Members Share Posted April 17, 2008 The units themselves are pretty tiny, I don't see why it wouldn't. Our singer uses a Vox Valvetronix amp -- if the grille on that is spaced out about as far as it is on the AC30, I can check and see what it would look like using his. metron9, just to let you know, I haven't had a problem with any of them yet. The "put a dot of epoxy on them" trick worked perfect apparently. I still haven't tried internally mounting them -- I keep meaning to and then never get around to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members metron9 Posted April 17, 2008 Members Share Posted April 17, 2008 Ahh Zeromus so you are still punishing them putting them directly on the beater side of the bass drum. That is a good test, nice to hear they are still performing well. So when are you going to order some of the new 3 watt models? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zeromus-X Posted April 17, 2008 Members Share Posted April 17, 2008 Nah, I have the light inside the bass drum, sitting on a blanket, pointed at the front. I use two of them for the kick drum now to give better coverage. Many shows I don't use the tom ones, just the kick, and turn the toms on for drum solos/etc. I'm still looking forward to getting at least one of the 3W ones for the kick, mostly just been a money thing! My engine in my car blew up and I had to drop $2500 on a new one... which on my {censored}ty pay, is what I refer to as a "major problem". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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