RaspberryPi Light Controlling Lightsynth with Music

[Riddik]

I have a rather large Eucalyptus Tree behind my house, that after discussions with an Aborist to remove it, turns out it's healthy, and he suggested lighting it would look awesome at night.

With having followed Yak's Lightsynth Journey for a while, I thought it would be awesome to not only light the tree, but have those lights change to the music.

So I had a quick search around the net for Raspberry Pi controlled lighting setups, where I found a few articles on connecting an RPI to an LED Light Bar to make suspended images, and so on, but was unable to find something decent that could control lights in a suitable way as spotlights. The tree in question, is estimated to be at least 500 years old, and is very high, and wide as far as these types of tree's go. Anyway, I thought this would be a cool project, and am after some info, or pointed in the right direction to achieve what I"m thinking. TIA

[adam]

there is a circuit for disco lights that makes them react to sound - uses a mic rather than anything hi-tech

http://www.vellemanusa.com/products/vie ... &id=350678

[toxibunny]

You're going to have spotlights shining on the tree, moving around and turning on/off/fading to the music, and possibly changing colour?

I'd start my research from both the raspberry pi end, and the 'diy theatre lighting' end simultaneously - seeing what people are doing with servos, lights, etc.

one cool-looking thing I saw on ebay was simply a bunch of rotating LEDs behind a 'dome of lenses' - it fills the whole room with moving dots. would be pretty cool scaled-up. Maybe there was a laser version, too; I don't remember exactly...

[adam]

the lighting protocol is called dmx - i haven't checked out dmx software, but there are also dmx-midi converters if you want to write lighting programs (or dmx generation programs) in midi software - there are lots of disco lights on ebay - and probably outdoor ones too

[Riddik]

Some idea's to look into there, thanks guys.