Help with music analyzation for light strip

giantjacob's icon

I have an Arduino Neopixel LED light strip that I want to set up to be in sync with music. I found a similar project using 6 LEDs. It basically anaylzes the audio-in and converts it to amplitudes for "high" "mid" and "low" and sends those values to the Arduino microcontroller. I have Max 5.0 but am a complete noob. I wanted to use his Max file as basis and just change a few things to suit my needs but his file is un-editable. I can see his file in patching mode but I can't unlock the file into edit mode. So I have a couple questions:

Can I unlock his file somehow to make a few minor modifications?

Is there any other object or whatnot that I can use to analyze an audio input, and get the amplitudes of the various frequencies (like an fft) so I can send that data to my arduino through USB?

I am a huge noob at Max so if you could explain things very simply step by step that would be great. Any help is much appreciated!!!

Peter Castine's icon

What's the file extension? A patch file (.mxb or .pat) is normally editable for all the world. A standalone or collective, otoh, is not (.app/.exe, .mxf).

It is possible to extract the core patch from standalones and collectives to allow editing, but if you're if that new to Max/MSP, the step-by-step is going to look pretty arcane. And first we need to know exactly what you're dealing with.

Wetterberg's icon

It's .mxf. I'd love to hear the process again, there are a lot of standalone abandoned little nuggets out there that could use a little lovin'.

giantjacob's icon

Thanks for the response. The file extension is .mxf. I did some reading online, and tried to copy text using a text editor and paste it into its own .maxpat file, but I'm having trouble figuring out how much to copy. I read somewhere to copy from the first "{" to when it closes but when I do that and open it I get errors for certain objects that there are "no such objects." So obviously the .mxf created those objects but now I don't know which code to copy and which not to. I can not attach the .mxf file as it is too big so this is the link to download it: http://cdn.makezine.com/make/2010/11/Max-Arduino_Color_Organ.zip

Again, any help is much appreciated. thanks a bunch!