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AMBILIGHT PROJECT: Hi all, I thought I might as well do a write up of an Ambilight project that I have just started to work on. Please note that my experience working with electronics is very limited and what I did learn, I learnt over 10 years ago. This document will be a WIP so if you wantto do the same I suggest waiting until it is complete as items/materials and processes may change as I go along/ I guess first thing first, what is Ambilight? Philips first introduced this on some of their TV’s, basically it analyses what is being displayed around the rim of the screen and projects those colours behind the TV and onto the wall behind giving a larger feel to your TV and letting it bleed out instead of just suddenly stopping at the TV frame. This was very proprietary to Philips but after some time people have been making DIY systems using the Arduino micro computer. This relies on a computer running Windows, Linux or OSX to analyse what is being displayed and sending information through the Arduino to power the LED’s and colour them appropriately. My Finished Product Now there are lots of different variations. Adalight, Ambilight, Boblight, Atmolight but their function is all the same, to project familiar light from the display border onto the wall behind. NOTE: I will also add that there are other methods using the much more powerful RasberryPi. I picked the Arduino because I wanted to learn this first, I then intend on moving to a RasberryPi later. INDEX I have done up this tutorial in 5 sections Part 00 - Building a frame Part 01 - Sticking down your LEDs Part 02 - Programming you Microcontroller Part 03 - Wiring up your LEDs Part 04 - Configuring the capture software. My Application. In my main living room I have a wall mounted 58” Plasma of which I use XBMC running on a shuttle with Windows 7 OS. My plan is to make an ‘Ambilight’ replica for my TV. Here is some awesome MS Paint drawing to explain. Brown is a frame that will need to be made and fixed to the back of the TV Blue is the LED strips to be mounted to the frame, blue swirlies is bad ass LED lights projecting onto wall. Red box is a Teensy 2.0 which is directly connected and driving the LED strip. Thin red line is a USB cable running down to my HTPC. Tools Required. I used the following tools but will note alternatives or if they are not a necessity. Jigsaw (any wood cutting tool would do) Measuring tape Square, for marking out at right angles (optional) Drill/Screwdriver Materials/Items. A Microcontroller. An Arduinno Mega/Uno can be used but an example I found is using a Teensy 2.0 so this is the device I will be using. It's more powerful, smaller and cheaper than an Arduino. I will show Pin outs for both the Arduino and Teensy 2.0 and Teensy 3.1. If you decide to get a Teensy in stock form, they don't have any female header pins so you'll have to solder these in OR buy them with them installed. For this project they all work well enough but the Teensy does have a very slight performance edge. An Arduino Uno A Teensy 2.0 A Teensy 3.1 A RGB LED Light strip – Make sure you are educated in your decision. If you're going to copy these instructions they MUST be WS2801 LED's. These come as a string (which is how I got them) Or as a roll/strip Or individual satellite modules with single IC's but multiple LED's for high brightness. Each have their advantages and disadvantages. the 1st example needs a mounting solution such as the frame I built for a very high zone and pixel density. The 2nd example is very easy to install as you can just use double sided tape on the back of your display. The 3rd example will give a lower zone count but should give a better throw of light. To try and put into perspective I was able to get 200 string LED's with 200 zones around my 58" TV. If I used the strip it probably would have been around 120 LED's with 120 zones. If you use the satellite style you would maybe get 180 LED's but 30 zones as each zone is connected to multiple LED's, hopefully that makes sense. POWERING YOUR LED's! You will need to consider how you are going to power these LED's. Their power draw will vary depending if you get 12v or 5v versions. I will use mine as an example. The tech sheet says at full white brightness (all colours on) each LED will draw 55mA. I have 200 so 55mA x 200 LED's gives me 11000mA OR 11Amps. I went over and above on my configuration installing 2x 5v x 10Amp Power supplies. If its convenient and your game enough you can probably wire 12v/5v from your PC power supply to power them. I suggest everyone read THIS POST when selecting their LED Strip. Some Single core wire or prototype/breadboard wires, they look like this If building a Frame for string LED's Wood for the frame. I used 18mm x 18mm square. Right angled brackets for assembling the frame. Right angled aluminium. I used 20mm x 20mm The Process. STEP 00 – Building the Frame. NOTE - you do not have to build a frame if you select a LED strip like this LINK. The reason I went the way I did is because I wanted to get in as many pixel as I could. A typical LED strip will give you 128 LED's to do the same size TV as mine instead of the 200 I used. Its up to you if its worth the effort or not. Firstly I had cut my timber to size. I measured a suitable size to be 1320mm wide x 770mm tall. This was about as big as I could go but still ensure that the frame would not be visable outside the TV frame. I cut 2 extra horizontal and vertical pieces for the LED mounting which will make sens in the photos. All my TIMBERRRRRRRRRRRR Measure twice, cut once. I marked out the first at 1320mm and then squared it off. Then squared off the other 3 pieces I needed, marked and then cut them. Then I did the same for the 770mm pieces. Everything cut to length. Then I laid out the frame to make sure everything looked OK. Notice the extra vertical and horizontal pieces I mentioned earlier that will be used for mounting the LED’s. I marked and then predrilled before screwing in the brackets, probably a unnecessary process as long as you screw things in square. There we go! All screwed together. Now I installed brackets on the backside of the frame and then I screw into the ends of the extra lengths I have. It quite important that the brackets you get will give you enough room to spin these bits of wood. Also a good idea to mark the centres so they spin evenly not like an egg, also don’t screw them all the way hard in, you need a tiny bit of movement. Let’s call this 45 degrees rotation 30 degrees rotation 0 degrees rotation Next was the Aluminium right angle to mount the LED's into. I got this from Bunnings in 1 meter lengths.One this worth mentioning is you want the LED's to span the size of your actual screen and not the bezel otherwise your lights wont line up. With new TV's the bezel is so small but mines a bit older so I thought worth mentioning. Next was to drill all the holes, 200 of the suckers! I decided to invest in a drill press for this job A quick file over the top to clean any burrs Next mounted to the frame! Finally the frame is done now it was time to start installing the LEDs A couple more.... Wow that's a butt-tonne of LEDs!(and fixed to the back of my TV mount) STEP 01 – Stick down your LED Roll/Strip Now if you're using the roll/strip style just stick it to the back of your TV. Line up the LEDs with your screen and not the bezel as best you can. Make sure that you start at one (doesn't matter which) of the bottom corners first as this will make programming easier later. STEP 02 - Program your Micro Controller. Firstly you will need to download the Arduino IDE Software regardless if you have an Arduino or Teensy. you can download it from HERE. If you are going to use a Teensy you will also need TeensyDuino. You can download that HERE. The process is almost the same but an extra step for the Teensy. 1. Install the Arduino IDE if using the Arduino or BOTH the Arduino IDE first and then the TeensyDuino software onto your PC (any PC doesn't need to be the HTPC) 2. Go to Adafruits Adalight Github site and download their Adalight project .ZIP. Link HERE. NOTE: there is an updated LED Driver if you are having flicker problems. Please follow Vlada's link here 3. Once downloaded Extract the file and go into the Arduino folder and copy the LEDStream folder and copy it into the Arduino folder in your My Documents 4. Send the LED program to the MicroController. Now plug in your Arduino or Teensy Select FILE then SKETCHBOOK and then you should have LEDstream which will open in a new window. Now select TOOLS and then BOARD and select which MicroController you have (Ardiono Uno, Teensy 2.0 etc...) Now Press the (->) arrow on the top left hand side to upload this code to your Microcontroller NOTE: If you have a Teensy it should ask you to press the reset button to complete the upload Your Microcontroller has now been programmed to talk to the WS2801 IC and LEDs! It's probably a good idea to run a quick test on your LED's. STEP 03 - Wiring your LED strip and connecting it to your Microcontroller. Adafruit has a fantastic diagram here for an Arduino BUT DON'T TRUST THE COLOURS! the LED strip should clearly state what is (+) (-) Data and Clock. NOTE the strip IS DIRECTIONAL. Make sure you going 'out' of the Arduino/Teensy and 'into' the LED Strip For the Arduino; GND on the strip goes to GND on the Arduino CLOCK on the strip goes to PIN 13 on the Arduino DATA on the strip goes to PIN 11 on the Arduino The POSITIVE wire on the LED strip goes to the POSITIVE from your POWER SUPPLY! For the Teensy 2.0/3.1; GND on the strip goes to GND on the Teensy CLOCK on the Strip goes to PIN 1(B1) on the Teensy DATA on the strip goes to PIN 2(B2) on the Teensy The POSITIVE wire on the LED strip goes to the POSITIVE from your POWER SUPPLY! When I ran mine I ran 2 stands of 50 LED's. Where the 2 meet connect the Positive to Positive and Ground to Ground of the strips. Then at the end of the 2 strands together I connected a power supply, then I repeated the same for the next strand. That's confusing so maybe this is clearer If you have done this right when powering on the Microcontroller after a few seconds you should see the LED's flash, RED - BLUE - GREEN. If so, good job you've wired everything correctly. if not go back over what you have done and check for any mistakes. STEP 04 - Setting up the Ambibox Capture Software. Now, on your HTPC you need to install Ambibox, you can find the software download HERE When installing it recommends to use PlayClaw, you don't have to but PlayClaw is known for capture with minimal CPU utilization. I would recommend not using it unless you find your CPU struggling, if it is struggling you can always make the purchase later. Run the Ambibox software, it auto minimizes itself to the system tray so right click its icon and select show. Under the "Intelligent backlight display" menu select device and set this as "Adalight" Select the Port and select the COM port that your device has been detected as, if you're unsure have a look in device manager here; If select correctly you should see Device Status: Connected, also down the bottom left it will say Adalight: connected. In here you can also select you capture method I suggest GDI FS Aero or PlayClaw. Now under number of zones select the number of IC's you have, If its a string or roll/strip it will be one IC for every LED. If its a satellite module it will be 1 IC per module. Hopefully that's clear. Once you have set these up you can select the "Wizard capture zones" which will automatically generate all you capture zones for you. There are a heap of options in her they should all be obvious as to their function. If you are running up to 80 zones you can probably leave the selection size how it is, any more than that and you may want to manually increase its size. A good test I found is if on a black screen you are getting a white backlight you should increase the size of the sample zones. For example here is the default size for 200 zones; And then after I modified the zone capture size. Save your settings and now you should be able to give it a test! You'll no doubt find some settings to tweak, I found I had to offset the zone one extra zone to correctly align the LEDs with the screen image, also I turned up the green as I felt it wasn't very strong and turned down the blue as it seemed overpowering. PRO TIP: if you find your colours are washing out or seem very white rather than colourful OR getting a white backlight on a pure black screen adjust your gamma settings. It will take a bit of fine tuning but worth it! WELL DONE! . How does it look? A little like this! Its really hard to capture the light, the camera wants to show the light as white all the time but im really impressed with it! And here's a Video... Plus my full HTPC and NAS config And then after some refinement of getting the zones in the right places and reducing gamma