Mad T Party

The Mad T Party was a night time music/dance event at the California Adventure Park in California.  The listed starting date was June 15, 2012, the same day the first ear hats become available at the California Parks.  Unfortunately, it's now history.  The official ending date for this attraction was March 30, 2016.  For more general information about this event, try the Wikipedia page.  Here, we're just interested in how it supported Glow with the Show/Made with Magic technology.

Glow with the show support?

This little video segment introduced the Mad T Party's support for Made With Magic (MWM)/Glow with the Show (GwtS).  According to the video, the Ear Hats "beat in time with the show". 

When I first heard that, I misinterpreted it to mean that the Ears would respond to the musical changes in a manner similar to a light organ.   That would be very cool.  But, apparently, that's not the way it worked. 

By the time I made it to that attraction, it had ceased it's support for Made With Magic devices.  So I didn't get a firsthand chance to see this in action.  My gizmos didn't do anything in time with the music and my recordings of infra red signals were blank.  Talking with other enthusiasts that went there during roughly the same time frame, they didn't find any support either.  Not sure when that ceased, but it didn't appear to last through out the entire run.

Fortunately, folks who managed to attend way before I did, took and shared videos of all this in action.  This next couple of videos clearly show that the responses look to be more like programmed signals that are coordinated with the overall lighting effects.  Not a true light organ effect. Still pretty cool.

But my misinterpretation got me to thinking....  What would it take to drive Made With Magic products with light organ-type signals?

Thoughts on a light organ MWM driver

Searching the Internet, different authors take different approaches for accomplishing this.  Some combine the stereo inputs and use an assortment of capacitors, resistors and transistors to do the deed.  Others keep the left and right channel separated and use op amps for a more elaborate build.  Still others use a MSGEQ7 seven band graphic equalizer IC and an Arduino to make the magic happen.  Another example of that approach is here.  The leanest approach simply uses an electret mic and an Arduino.  If ability to send the MWM IR codes could be incorporated into the latter solution, it just might work and not be too difficult to pull off.

Tear down of a Pixmob "beach ball" revealed an integrated microphone and an AVR ATTiny84 processor.  So this is a concept that has been successfully pursued elsewhere and seems very likely to work.  Something to think about for future projects.