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I'm looking into adding some bias lighting to my 34" Xiaomi monitor. I don't really want to spend too much on lights (never was a fan of RGB, but I do spend many late hours studying). The most common options I've found are Hyperion.ng, Hyperion, and prismatik. Any personal experience with either of these, or any others to suggest? I have a pro micro laying around, and from what I've seen it's sufficient for Hyperion.ng.

Good day everybody. I recently saw a new video from randomfrankp, in which he shows off a "new" product that syncs up the RGB LEDs behind one's TV to whatever they're watching at. I have personally never come across this concept, but after reading some comments I learned that it isn't new and is called Ambilight. With that, I have a question; are there any good (and preferably affordable) ambilights for PC? I'd love it if they worked with everything (games, videos, even the desktop wallpaper). Any help with this is appreciated. Cheers!

Hello, I am trying to set up an ambilight setup around my monitor and the problem is that I am currently using an AOC agon AG271QX running at 1440p at 144Hz using a display port connection as I am running it with an AMD fury X which only has display port outputs and a HDMI 1.4 output (important). I cannot find a way to split the display port signal and even if I did I doubt it would split it and I would still be able to run at 1440p 144Hz, therefore, I have to use the HDMI 1.4 port of my graphics card to connect up the video grabber too. So my question is can you run a cable from my graphics card into a HDMI to RCA converter then onto a video grabber which can plug into my raspberry pi to analyze the signal and output it to my LED's going around the back of my monitor. For example: but instead of going through a HDMI splitter my display cord goes to my monitor and the HDMI goes straight to the video grabber each from their own port on the graphics card.

Hello, I'm planning on adding some ambylight so my setup around my monitors. I've found a good software for the actual ambilight (ambibox in my case) it fits my needs. But I don't want it to always replicate my screen. I'm searching for software that is similar to what you can find on RGB peripherals. where I can choose and costumize the lighting effects and more. Ambibox has a RGB spectrum function but I want options more like on peripherals as I said. Additionally it also would be nice if it'd have somekind of music mode. Ambibox also has one but it is realy bad, I assume because it's not build for that purpose. A dedicated software for that purpose would be better I assume, so let me know if you have one for me

Hello, I want to build my own DIY Ambilight. I plan on using 5m of WS2811 RGB LEDs and an Arduino nano connected to my pc in order to control the lights. I've seen many videos of people explaining how to build one and what software to use. But there are like 3 different (for what I know) applications and I have no idea which is the best for me. 1.screen grabbing. So it changes the lights according to what's on the screen. (It'll run on an old pc so an optimized version would be best 2.I want it to also support audio visualization. This can also be a separate program and it must get the audio from an external mic (the music won't run on the pc). I'd prefer a program that actually separates Lows, Mids and Highs and that I can choose "lighting zones" according to them. (Like shown in this video or this) 3. I am going to put the strips behind my tv and under it (see picture). During Ambilight mode, the strip under the tv will be showing the same as the bottom of the tv ( see picture). I also want the Tv LEDs to show mids and high and under the tv to show Lows. NOTE: If there is no program that supports audio visualization via a mic connected to the pc then its also possible for me to buy a Mic mod for the Arduino nano (For example this one ) But I prefer not to use it because it's more wiring and so on. Bonus question: Are ws2811 leds addressable 1 by 1? I've seen some videos where it looks like they can only be controlled in pairs of 3 (maybe because its 1 IC for 3 leds?)

Hello, The upcoming question is for people who know a little bit about Power consumption calculation, Addressable LEDs and PSUs. So this is what's going on: I want to build an Ambilight for my living room TV. I've found that the WS2812B LEDs are best suited for my need. I also need this https://goo.gl/99wSJ8 controller for it so far everything is fine. I need about 5 meters of a strip with each meter using 18w. The strip I've found functions at 5v. Here's the listing: https://goo.gl/Yf97jn. It says it uses 18w/meter and needs 5v. My question is what power supply do I need? My calculations are: 18w/m for a 5m strip= 90w Using a 5v connection mean 90w/5v= 18 amperes Giving 20% headroom means 181.2=21.6 ampere the closest power supply I've found on Aliexpress is 20 ampere or 30 amperes. Given the price difference is only 3 dollars I think the 30amps version is the best. The PSU I've found: https://goo.gl/acju3W BUT It sounds SOO much (22 amperes) for just an LED strip. Is my calculation correct? Am I doing any mistake here? NOTE: I've found some old power supply I used for some older LEDs I've used once. It has 12v 3 amperes (see picture). If I'd want to use it I'd need to buy the WS2811 Strip (it uses 12v) but again let's say I need 4 meters. SO: 4m with 18w/m= 72w 72w/12v=6 ampere 61.2 (20% headroom)= 7.2 This is more then twice the amount of the power supply I have and if I understand correctly the WS2811 can only control every 3 diodes separately. Will it still look good? I think I'm kind wrong with everything so please help me.

This is not a guide but rather a documentation of my approach to the DIY Ambilight If you want further details feel free to comment below I am no professional when it comes to electrics so do not take my word for anything mentioned here So, since there aren't too many of these projects documented on here I thought I might do a little write-up of my recently built DIY Ambilight version. You don't know what an Ambilight is? Well, basically it's a RGB-backlight for your monitor (in many cases TVs) that changes color depending on the currently presented image. Most of you should be aware of controllable RGB-LEDs so that's the first half of a solution for this. Now the question arises - how do you get afore mentioned image into your controlling unit? To be honest, there is no perfect way, they all come with some negative aspects. For one you could use color-sensitive light-sensors and stick them on your screen - that is obviously the ugliest way possible. Secondly you could use some screen-capture software and send the signal to a connected device such as an Arduino via USB - however this requires an operating system on your outputting device capable of such software (for example Ambibox) so it's more of a Windows-PC-solution than for a TV. And as the third option you could split the HDMI-signal, convert it to composite-video and then use one of those good old USB-videograbber-solutions to get your image into an external box - this obviously restricts the usage to external HDMI-devices only. My approach is based on option number three and utilizes my unused Raspberry Pi 2 as the controlling unit - note here that a RPi1 would be too slow to process the signal in realtime, so if you decide to do the same get a RPi2 or 3 or do the entire thing with an Arduino, however this documentation is based on the RPi and Raspbian (Jessie). Also this is based on the WS2801-LED-controller although a APA102 works just as fine (more LEDs). For single-RGB-LEDs or other controllers such as the WS2812 you might want to take a look at other guides or projects. So to get the hardware-part running we need to do the wiring/soldering for power and signal, which in my case was just a powerplug for the PSU, an adaptor-cable from the LED-plug to the GPIO-pins of the RPi, 2 cables for DC-power to the LED-stripe and the corner-wiring for the stripe itself. The whole video-signal section is done by common HDMI-cables. The hardware I bought for this (german Amazon, for US etc you'll have to look it up yourself): Wiring examples from a german guide When applying the LEDs to your screen make sure to turn the LED-segment into the right direction since this is a series circuit and the controller will only pass the signal in one direction. On most stripes this is indicated by an arrow and/or input/output marks on the solderpoints - if not simply remember that each LED-segment starts with the controller and ends with the resistors. LEDs Luckily the WS2801-LED-stripe, the RPi and the HDMI-splitter (which summarize all the actively powered devices in this setup) all use 5V (there are 12V versions of the LED-stripe) so I used a 5V 8A PSU and wired them all together - resulting in a single powerplug for the whole setup. To prevent additional cablemess I glued and screwed all the small devices to a piece of cork I had laying around. The LED-stripe requires power (in this case 5V), ground, the clockspeed also known as baudrate and a datasignal. The first is directly wired to the PSU as mentioned. Ground is wired to the PSU and GPIO pin 9 to ground the whole setup as a total. Clockspeed is wired to GPIO pin 23 and the datasignal to pin 19. These pins are part of the SPI-bus which can be used by the RPi. (see the wiring example above) DO NOT PLUG THE 5V POWER-CABLE FROM THE LED-CONNECTOR INTO THE GPIO! Insulate or trim it down, you won't need it. The RPi runs a 3.3V logic on the GPIO, a 5V input would most likely result in tears.. Note that stripe-lengths larger than ~3.5 meters may result in dimm lights at the other end since the LEDs are in a series circuit - connect power and ground to both ends of the stripe in such cases. I also connected both ends although it wouldn't be needed in my case (2.8 meters of LEDs) but the stripe already had cables soldered onto it so I just did it for a cleaner setup. Wiring Moving on to the software side of things.. As the operating system I use Raspbian in which you can find the system-configuration under "/boot/config". Here you need to enable the SPI-bus with "dtparam=spi=on" and set "max_usb_current=1" to power the videograbber. Optionally this is also where you can overclock your RPi if you experience some lag between color-changes - not the case for me so far. To control the LEDs I use a software called "Hyperion" which you can install by downloading and executing the script located at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tvdzwan/hyperion/master/bin/install_hyperion.sh. To configure this you should use the corresponding software "HyperCon" which you can find here https://hyperion-project.org/wiki/HyperCon-Information. You can either run it on your PC and send the config-file to your RPi via FTP or you can run it directly on the RPi after installing the java runtime. Here you set your LED-counts, the direction of the stripe and your starting offset. You can also change the baudrate if needed and the color-smooting. HyperCon To test your LED-stripe you can use the command hyperion-remote -c <color> where <color> can be a name such as black, red, white etc or a RGB-hex value such as C3C3C3, FFFFFF, 000000 etc etc. Hyperion needs to be running in order for this to work: systemctl start hyperion Note that all mentioned commands and the ones that follow might require admin-rights and as such need to be executed either as root or with sudo <command> (recommended).. If this doesn't work try to load the hyperion-service-file with systemctl daemon-reload and start again. As of the latest update you now can setup your videograbber within HyperCon as well - small hint: the grabbed image contains black borders which you should crop with corresponding values in HyperCon. To check the image you can use the command hyperion-v4l2 -d /dev/video0 -f 2 -s 1 --crop-left 15 --crop-right 16 --crop-top 11 --crop-bottom 13 --screenshot and just change the values of the crop-arguments (start with 0). The screenshot will be saved to your home-directory as a png-file. Videograbber Screenshot without cropping After you're done you export the config to "/etc/hyperion/hyperion.config.json" and restart the service with systemctl restart hyperion My config Now you should be ready to go and get some results from your LED-stripe in accordance to your HDMI-signal. If the colors do not correspond to the correct sides take another look at your stripe-direction and start-LED-offset in HyperCon. Results To improve color accuracy you can download the iOS or Android apps for Hyperion and tinker with the whitelevel, color-temperature etc. For optimal tuning you should use static images such as white, red, green, blue and a colorswirl for gamma values (see below for such images). Keep in mind that to make such changes permanent you need to copy them to your config in HyperCon and restart Hyperion. To make Hyperion start at boot you can use systemctl enable hyperion Feel free to tinker with the config to find your perfect setting. Also there are a ton of additional "upgrade"-projects out there for instance controlling the Ambilight with your Kodi/xbmc-remote, switching video-sources on the fly, adding buttons to the RPi to control the LEDs by hand etc etc Test images That's it - I hope you enjoyed it at least a bit as much as I did and thank you for reading!

Hi guys :-) I am wondering if there is a possible to buy RGB LED strips that will replicate the coluors that is shown on the Monitor?. Same as the Philips has with their "Ambilight" technology. I know NZXT HUE+ is a good product for RGB lighting, but can HUE+ replicate the coloure that is showing on the monitor? :rolleyes: Torbjørn Norway

Recently new Ambilight device has started campaign on Indiegogo. In the movie the effect looks very nice. Let's look comparision with existing solutions. This device really increase the size of the screen and reduces tiredness (now we can spent more time to watching movies). Also support for speakers backlight is available. This affordable kit works with all popular operating systems (Windows, MAC OS, Linux, Android) on your TV, PC, MAC, Home Theater PC (like Enigma, Dreambox), OUYA, Raspberry Pi. Notifications from external application is really nice thought. Smatphone App allows to controll video player and the lights. Campaign will end November 9 and price is reduced as preorder. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lumino-ambient-backlight-for-your-screens/x/8709602