This is a bunch of code I've written to turn my smart (and less smart) lighting into music-reactive party lighting.
Currently there's only one utility, in main.py. It controls cheap infrared-only mood lights I got from Amazon.
In future, I'm hoping to migrate away from LightDJ on the iPad and write my own automation for the Hue and Nanoleaf lights I have, but for now this is it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4gqsuww6lw
This uses python-rtmidi in conjunction with anything which can output a MIDI clock (see below). On each beat (24 MIDI clock cycles), it uses a Broadlink RM3 (though anything supported by python-broadlink will work) to send an infrared command to the lights, telling them to change their pattern.
Originally I plumbed into Serato using Ableton Link, but it became head-slappingly obvious that getting clean BPM data out of Serato would involve having the decks in SYNC mode permanently. I didn't fancy having to adjust everything before playback, so I looked into less intelligent ways of doing things.
My first stop was HoRNet Songkey, a VST/AU which I could put in the audio path using Audio Hijack. This did not work. I'm sure it's great for key analysis, but its BPM analysis is hot garbage and the MIDI output it promises is only the chords it detects. No beat data. So no.
Next stop was Wavesum, and this is where choirs of angels sang a heavenly chorus. There's a reason their software is so overpriced, and that's because it works really, really well. I targeted the cheapest option, Waveclock, which only sends a MIDI clock out, and the result is good enough. I might upgrade later to Wavetick, which sends out notes based on bar, beat, and 'atom' as they call it. The bar phase analysis is actual witchcraft, and I haven't managed to confuse it for more than a bar or two. It'd be quite cool to use the bar signal for major lighting changes, and the beat for minor ones.
But I'm poor, so Waveclock it is. Again with the help of Audio Hijack to give it a fake line-in taken directly from Serato's audio output path, so it can do its job without having an air gap in the way.
