Is this possible?

Dear Justin,
I really like your site. I built the 3x3x3 that make had. Thought it was cool. Then found your site and went wow! Actually I build 2 of everything; my neighbor is a woodworker and makes these really cool boxes to hold the electronics. I work as a tech so soldering is no problem. I do not know much about microcontrollers, I basically just copied what you did. I have built 2 4 x 4 x4. I am waiting to order parts.
Here is my question and idea. While looking through the instructions for the 4 x4 x4 I thought hmmm, how to make it flash to the music. I stumbled on this site; www.audiolites.com What they have is a 20 channel colour organ using leds. What I would like to do is make it on a much smaller scale, like 7 inches by 7 inches. My thought is to have a control module and then have the display separate. I am also trying to decide if I should use 5 mm rgb leds or 10 mm rgb leds. I would like to have 5 display units, like on the site they have the control unit and the ability to add 5 drones. It would be controlled by the module. Would it be possible to program a microcontroller to light up the leds at certain frequencies and work like the bigger version? Take a look at the web site and let me know what you think. I would appreciate any help on this. Thank you for your time, and an excellent website.

Sincerely
Marque L Dunkle

Wow, just watched a video of it... Very cool.

You built 2 4x4x4 cubes! After one I never wanted to wire the bottom again. You should upload some pictures I would love to see them.

Yes it is possible but difficult. I have not gone far into audio processing. The 4x4x4 code that does use sound does it solely on loudness and not tone. You would need something like the dsPIC. You can get very fast ADC readings. You could also look for a circuit that can detect a specific tone, this way is better, (Like this one). Correct me if I am wrong (I did not read the AudioLites page that well) The rings of LED correspond to different tones and when the tone/pitch is being played the ring light up. You could simply build multiple circuits for each tone and then feed the digital output into a PIC (you could use any PIC that had enough pins) and the PIC could control the LED. You may not even need the PIC.

I would use 5mm LED. They are more common and easy to work with.

Why did you have to show me this? Now I want to make one too.

Looking at the site it give the frequencies that the LEDs go to. They are very low, but you should be able to make one with the same characteristics.

I think I found a winner.LM467C Tone Decoder By changing the resistor and capacitor values you can make it sensitive to different tones. It also has adjustable bandwidth (+/- set tone).

To make 5 displays each display would need to have each powered separately (or at least connected to the same power lines) and then amplify the current to drive the LED. Not too hard. Just use transistors.

I think I will attempt to make this with you, I probably won't go for 20 channels but I'll make something.

EDIT: You will also want to take a look at this site.

Thanks,
Justin