The Programmable LED Strip Driver project encompasses multiple areas of electrical engineering including signal processing, signal amplification, RC filters, power regulation, MOSFETS, PWM, infrared protocols, processing, and programming. Combined, these theories are implemented to drive 32+ feet of strip lights using a single power source. Utilizing the on-board microphone, the lights react to music/beat changes. Employing its IR LED and Receiver the project has infinite communication abilities. Finally, at its core is an ATmega328Pu processor, the same processor on the Arduino Uno R3, making it extremely easy to program.

After proposing my idea to other officers and attaining the projects parts I ran into a variety of design obstacles. The L7805 voltage regulator was over heating at room temperature with a current draw of 1A, thus a heat sink was added to relieve it. The microphone system was very sensitive, providing unnecessary high frequency signals. To accommodate this, I added an optional low pass RC circuit to damper higher frequencies. Finally, it was useful to override reset the processor, to do this I added a tactile button between the reset pin and ground.