Sound Reactive MagWLED-1
The MagWLED-1 does not come preinstalled with a microphone, but it can easily be turned into a WLED sound reactive controller!
Choose a Microphone
We recommend using an INMP441 I2S microphone. There are lots and lots of these available on the various marketplaces. Here's one on Amazon and here's a search showing options on Aliexpress. Any WLED compatible microphone should work, though. Checkout the WLED documentation for more details.
Connect the Microphone to MagWLED-1
Connecting the microphone module will require some soldering. There are many ways to do this, but two common options are:
- Solder pin headers onto the microphone module and MagWLED-1 and then connect the two with Dupont connectors.
- Solder jumper cables directly onto the microphone module and MagWLED-1. Solid core wires will provide the most robust board to board connections in this case. Stranded wire might break off over time.
An INMP441 module has 6 pins and the recommended wiring is as follows:
| SD | GPIO 10 |
| SCK | GPIO 7 |
| WS | GPIO 6 |
| VDD | 3.3V |
| GND | GND |
| L/R | GND |
You will find these pins broken out on the MagWLED-1 board.
The GPIOs can technically be connected to any pin and configured in WLED, but the default MagWLED-1 firmware has these pins pre-configured.
Note: There is only one ground pin on the board, and you need to connect both GND and L/R on the INMP441 microphone module to it. One way of doing that is to connect L/R and GND to each other on one side of the module using e.g the leg of a transistor.
Install Audio Reactive Firmware
Lastly, install a firmware of your choice from install.magwled.com. You have two versions to choose from there, "Vanilla" WLED and MoonModules. Either will work fine, but we have found that we get higher frame rates for more pixels using the MoonModules version.
Remember to enable the AudioReactive user module and reboot the controller!
Performance notes
The ESP32-C3 chip on MagWLED-1 with the MoonModules firmware will be able to drive 512 pixels with good frame rate on most effects. Going beyond that, however, may cause some stuttering and you may have to reduce the target frame rate to reduce stutter.
Let us know if you have any questions!