Audio Spectrum Analyzer on an ESP32 Display Board
A DIY audio spectrum analyzer was built using an ESP32 microcontroller and a 480x320 touch screen display. The project demonstrates that modern microcontrollers can handle spectrum analysis with minimal additional hardware. The build requires only a few passive components to condition the analog audio signal for the microcontroller's ADC.
- ▪The project utilizes the CrowPanel 3.5, which integrates an ESP32 with a 480x320 touch screen LCD.
- ▪Only a handful of passive components are needed to process the incoming analog audio signal for the ADC.
- ▪The design is adaptable to other display panels, though code modifications may be required.
- ▪The article also references a separate, more advanced project involving a high-voltage X-ray machine made from a vacuum tube.
Hackaday files mainly under tech. We currently carry 437 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Hackaday |
| Canonical URL | https://hackaday.com/2026/09/23/audio-spectrum-analyzer-on-an-esp32-display-board/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:00:19 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-24T05:05:13.814Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-24T05:05:13.814Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | OJEFl86mKNuJ · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Audio Spectrum Analyzer On An ESP32 Display Board No comments by: Tom Nardi September 23, 2026 Title: Copy Short Link: Copy A slick spectrum analyzer used to be the kind of thing that would have been tricky to include in a DIY project, but as [Mirko “mircemk” Pavleski] demonstrates, a modern microcontroller like the ESP32 can handle the task with nothing more than a display panel and a few passives. This particular example is built around the CrowPanel 3.5, which combines the powerful microcontroller with a 480×320 touch screen LCD. But there’s nothing inherently special about the CrowPanel, and you could get similar results with whatever display you might have kicking around the parts bin — albeit potentially with some code changes to account for the different hardware.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hackaday.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Hackaday
