Feedback on RPi + sound system + LEDs idea

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itsterp
 
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Joined: Sun Mar 16, 2014 6:44 pm

Feedback on RPi + sound system + LEDs idea

Post by itsterp »

Hi experts

My dad and I are building a festival sound system. The whole system is going to be a little advanced, so I was hoping to get a little help or just a point in the right direction.

It will be built around a Raspberry Pi 512MB rev2, it will have a touch screen where people can choose between two modes. "Songs" with a predefined list of songs each associated with a timed lightshow. And the mode "Mobile" which enables a mini phone connector (3.5mm) to use with your smartphone. The idea was that the Pi would detect the beat, and a lightshow choosen by the person standing on the touchscreen would be played to the beat of the song from the smartphone.

The touchscreen is a uLCD43-PCT from 4D Systems. The graphic is coded into the screen itself, so it will only send messages/commands back and forward to the Pi.
I was thinking about making the programming on the Pi in python. I didn't know the language until about 2 weeks ago, but I've done programming in PHP and JavaScript for about 5 years now and at this moment I'm reading a couple of books on the python topic. And there is a lot of python libraries to use so it seems to be the best choice for this kind of programming a system.

There will also be a lot of LEDs. 11-12 meters of digital RGB LED strips. (32 LEDs pr meter) So it will be possible to make the "equalization" light effect and other cool light effects.
There will also be some groups of RGB LEDs, where the group only will show one color at a time, and so I was thinking it is was possible to use an analog RGB LED strip and include the same kind of chip as the ones on the digital strip? So it could be controlled in the same way as the digital strip, it would just be controlled like it was one single LED, but in fact it is like maybe 9 analog LEDs?
The lightshows should be like a timeline show which is created and associated with a specific song, so when that song is played by clicking on it on the touchscreen, the lightshow associated with the song will run. Maybe a new python class for every new lightshow (song)?
Or the lightshow should just be a loop of effects that will play according to the beat detected by the Pi.

I was also thinking about the Wolfson Audio Card because it has a stereo LINE IN and the same out, so it seems to be perfect for the job. It will take in the audio, analyze it to find the beat (in real time), and output the audio to an external amplifier and at the same time get the lightshow to run according to the beat.

Another thing I will do is to add a CW2 Pi UPS which will be able to, when the power goes (eg. when we turn off the music system late in the night with a power switch) the CW2 Pi UPS correctly shuts down the Pi, instead of just cutting the power several times a day. (which I don't think is good to the Pi)

And as the last thing I thought it would be cool to add a USB 3G Dongle and a GPS breakout and then every like 5 minutes, it would send the current coordinates through the 3G dongle to a website that saves the information in shows it on a map to the visitors. The website part of it I pretty much got handled, but it would just be a nice feature to add GPS live location if that is possible.

So here come the big questions.
Is all this possible in that way I've described?
To be honest, I really doubt that the single Pi can handle all that. (Mainly the play a song/analyze and detect a beat AND running the lightshow on ~12m á 32LEDs/m = ~400RGB LEDs = ~1200LEDs)
Should I add another Pi and make them work together if that is possible, or would an Arduino handle the task.
Is it even possible to add that much to the GPIOs on the Pi?

I'm not planning to run any graphical things on the Pi itself. In fact it should be that when the Pi powers on and starts up, it automatically starts that main python script that handles everything from getting the songs list to controlling the LEDs.

Is it possible to use the analog RGB LED strip together with a digital controlled strip by adding a chip like the ones on the digital to the analog?

Again, any help is appreciated. The only things I've bought until now it the Raspberry Pi, the touchscreen and a 1m digital test LED RGB strip (WS2801) and some small things like cables/SD card and so on, so any ideas in the right direction would really help.
And by the way we are running 12V from the batteries and also a transformed source of 5V for the RPi and the digital LEDs.

I've made an illustration to show how i imagined it to be.

Sincerely
Christoffer T

TL;DR How would the best way to build a festival sound system with ~12m of digital LED RGB Strips, Touch screen, GPS tracking and music analyzing be?


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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:42 am

Re: Feedback on RPi + sound system + LEDs idea

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Wow. Sounds like a lot of work.
The only suggestion I have is that if you try to run an FFT to analyze the audio in real-time, you may not have enough CPU left over to run all of those LEDs. Instead, I would try an ADC to sample the audio output. You should see higher signal levels as the low frequencies spike on the beat.

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