The LM3914 LED bar graph driver was an amazing chip back in the day. Along with the LM3915, its logarithmic cousin, these chips gave a modern look to projects, allowing dancing LEDs to stand in for a moving coil meter. But time wore on and the chips got harder to find and even harder to fit into modern projects, what with their giant DIP-18 footprint. What’s to be done when a project cries out for bouncing LEDs? Simple — get a RISC-V microcontroller and roll your own LED audio level meter.
