[cowbellemoo]

I picked up a TinyFPGA BX to make a VU-meter with strips of neopixels for a Halloween project (keystep+volca keytar with lots of reactive lights). You can do this with microcontrollers but I wanted to stretch myself and see if I could get a crazy-responsive 7-band meter working. I'm like 95% of the way there after several months learning verilog, testbenches, how a few modules off github work, the I2C protocol, and how to use a logic analyzer -- but I'm stuck trying to get a ADS1115 to do one-shot conversions reliably and probably have to implement the VU-meter with an arduino to get it done for Halloween. It's absolutely thrilling to be working with nanosecond-scale operations and totally parallel design though.

[rough-sea]

Sounds like a fun project.

You might find this video helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us2F8wAncw8

I think his design is very interesting, showing how to mix custom peripherals with picosoc so you can get very good response but also be able to program in C.