This DIY Wall-Mounted Waveform Visualizer Looks Amazing

If you want a way to see the sound in your room, then you should build Arnov Sharma’s beautiful WaveForm background sound visualizer.

A waveform visualization is simply a graph with time on the X axis and amplitude on the Y axis. That’s useful for a wide range of signals, including electrical signals — oscilloscopes exist specifically for that job. But waveform visualizations are particularly common for audio. Sharma’s device displays a waveform for the sound in a room in real-time, in a very aesthetically pleasing way.

The three most important components in this device are a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 development board, a 62×32 RGB LED matrix, and a MAX9814 microphone module. The Pico 2 listens for sound through the microphone, processes that using a simple algorithm, then displays the result as a line graph on the RGB LED matrix. The line is normally green, but will turn red if the amplitude exceeds a set threshold.

A custom PCB ties all of those components together and they all fit into a really attractive 3D-printed enclosure. The design work is fantastic, evoking the philosophy of Dieter Rams. Rather than looking like a simple utilitarian instrument, this looks like a functional art piece.

Sharma even has plans to improve this with a clock function and WiFi, so keep an eye out for that.