Comment by copypaper

This is awesome! I did a similar project in college for one of my classes and ran into the same exact walls as you.

- The more filters I added the worse it got. A simple EMA with smoothing gave the best results. Although, your pipeline looks way better than what I came up with!

- I ended up using the Teensy 4.0 which let me do real time FFT and post processing in less than 10ms (I want to say it was ~1ms but I can't recall; it's been a while). If anyone goes down this path I'd heavily recommend checking out the teensy. It removes the need for a raspi or computer. Plus, Paul is an absolute genius and his work is beyond amazing [1].

- I started out with non-addressable LEDs also. I attempted to switch to WS2812's as well, but couldn't find a decent algorithm to make it look good. Yours came out really well! Kudos.

- Putting the leds inside of an LED strip diffuser channel made the biggest difference. I spent so long trying to smooth it out getting it to look good when a simple diffuser was all I needed (I love the paper diffuser you made).

RE: What's Still Missing: I came to a similar conclusion as well. Manually programmed animation sequences are unparalleled. I worked as a stagehand in college and saw what went into their shows. It was insane. I think the only way to have that same WOW factor is via pre-processing. I worked on this before AI was feasible, but if I were to take another stab at it I would attempt to do it with something like TinyML. I don't think real time is possible with this approach. Although, maybe you could buffer the audio with a slight delay? I know what I'll be doing this weekend... lol.

Again, great work. To those who also go down this rabbit hole: good luck.

[1]: https://www.pjrc.com/