Here’s a project I’ve been meaning to post for a while now. I made some LED glasses for Halloween this past year. We were seeing Big Something a couple nights, so sound-activated glasses sounded like a fun project.
A buddy of mine turned me on to a DJ named Rezz, and I immediately loved her glasses. I found this design on Thingiverse, so I started printing.
First thing I found was that the LED rings I bought from AliExpress weren’t the same size as the ones in the original project, so I ended up having to scale everything up a bit. The arms on the glasses were nowhere near long enough for my head, so I had to make them quite a bit longer. Also, since I was using bare LEDs, I designed and printed a thin diffuser/cover for the front.
The original project used an ItsyBitsy, but I wanted to use an ESP32 with WLED. I decided to use a pretty clunky box, and run it all off of a USB power bank I’d carry in my pocket. It’s not the best solution, and I plan on switching it out for a much smaller SP511e controller soon.
Overall, this was a fun project, but there’s definitely some things I plan on revising. The concert was definitely way too loud for that microphone, so the sound-activated effects pretty much stayed on “max” the whole time, even with the gain on 1. The mic in the SP511e seems much less sensitive, so it should work better.
Here’s some action shots. You can see my wife wearing the light-up unicorn horn I also made 🙂
Notes:
Stuff used:
- ESP32 D1 Mini – Running SR-WLED
- MAX4466 mic
- Various lengths of wire
- USB power bank