[caption id=”attachment_21” align=”alignnone” width=”300” caption=”The Innards”][/caption]

There is a really cool kit made by Future Kit that will allow you to pretty easily make your own LED VU meter. The kit comes with 15 leds, the PC board, all the components and a little bit of solder. The solder that comes with the kit is pretty big so I just used my own 60/40 rosin core solder from Radioshack. You have to attach your own power supply and the kit accepts 9 - 12v. I didnt want a huge AAx8 power supply so I just stuck with a 9v battery at the expense of slightly dimmer LEDs. It stays in the box with velcro.  I wanted the whole thing to be something I could easily carry around (party trick!) so I decided to place mine in a box. Project boxes from Radioshack work well, they are fairly cheap and the material is easy to cut. One thing to watch out for the is the microphone - it has no leads. You have to solder wires on to the solder pads on the back of the mic. Be very careful, if any of the solder drips and touches anything else on the mic it will short out the circuit.

You can order one from Bakatronics:

http://www.bakatronics.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=410

Here is a video of the thing in action: