Hey guys, I need some help! I started to work on the graphic section of the vu meter tonight. To make sure I was getting everything aligned properly and checking for looks I hooked it up....which is my problem... The meters stay lit, FULLY lit!! With or without music playing... I have checked and rechecked the volume levels to make sure I wasn't maxing out the sound levels. I've tried power different lines, nothing has worked... If I unhook the audio lines they go down to one LED lit....I can't figure it out!! PLEASE HELP ME!! Thanks! DDK
Holy cow !! I figured it out! I've had an old PSU in the new case, testing out leds and crap like that..well I decided to run the a mloex over to the old case which has the newer, better PSU..well hooked it up and it works fine! I was feaking out there for a minute! I don't understand why the meter didn't work off the older PSU..both lines I tried can't be bad and they power multiple leds fine... Though I solved my own problem if anyone knows why I can't power the meter of the old PSU but can other devices, ie drives, leds... please educate me! thanks DDK
Noisy line? You could try sticking a smoothing cap on the meter board across the incoming power lines. 220uF sounds reasonable.
smoothing caps are nice.. assuming you use an IC.. the cap shoul be as close to the ic's vss and vdd (how was that again?) as possible.. believe me.. i'm talking with experience here.. made a VU-meter myself.. went a bit quick on the PCB design... .. but now it works great..
