USB LED Lights behind Monitor controlled via Windows Software

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

So here is a bit of a challenge:

 

I want to have some kind of ambient light behind my monitor for long PC sessions without my eyes falling out their sockets.

I spent 2 hours of searching and ended up more confused then when I started out.

 

So what it must do:

- an USB RGB ligth strip that fits behind my monitor (link)

- draws power via USB from the USB ports in the back of the monitor (no extra power adapter!)

- can be controlled via an installed Windows software (that's the tricky part here)

 

Would be nice to have but definitely not a must have:

- is flexible (though pretty much all are)

- is self-sticky (adhesive maybe?)

 

Something like this thingy here:

click on me - but I want to control it via software if possible.

Maybe something like Philips Ambilight is possible to do (though I don't think so to be honest)? <-- well, that will be not happening. forget about it

 

Motto:

Nice and clean, it will have to be wife approved, which is very hard to come by, especially since she recently discovered, that she was an interior designer in her last life (along with being the queen of Egypt of course).

 

 

Maybe such a thing doesn't exist though. Please note that I am that kind of person who is too stupid to drill a hole in a wall, so anything DIY related is pretty much a no go. I can boil water though!

Hope somebody here can give me a tip ?

[Factory Factory]

I did one of these, starting with inspiration from the Adalight.

 

https://learn.adafruit.com/adalight-diy-ambient-tv-lighting/overview

 

It worked, but it was slow in terms of updates per second and didn't work with everything (Metro 2033 was the only game it worked with, after much ugly hacking, though it was a gorgeous effect).

 

When I have more money, I have a pretty solid plan to re-implement it using a Raspberry Pi to drive Neopixels (the Adafruit RGBLED lineup), with frames captured via an HDMI splitter and capture setup. Alternatively, an HDMI to composite/S-Video capture setup, but it's hard to find one with reasonable latency.

 

One thing I ran across in my research that was interesting but very complicated, is there are these HDMI color grading boxes that make your HDMI signals more "cinematic" or something. Inside, they're an HDMI decoder, a reasonably buff FPGA, and an HDMI encoder. You could, in theory, hijack and reprogram the FPGA through its JTAG connector to get an incredibly capable video-stream-analyzing piece of hardware. But these devices are getting harder to find, and FPGA programming is a whole different beast from C or Python.

[Factory Factory]

Oh, and to be clear: You won't find a non-DIY solution because Philips patented the idea as the "Ambilight" and builds it into their TVs. Ask again in like 20 years.

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

Sounds like I will drop the whole Ambilight idea and stick with the original plan of a windows controlled USB RGB LED light strip behind the monitor. It would be enough if I can tell it to be red / blue / whatever with just 2 mouse clicks.

 

will update my 1st post accordingly

 

thx for your thoughts @Factory Factory

 

[Factory Factory]

Well, another thought: USB won't provide enough power to light an entire LED strip reasonably brightly. The maximum you can get out of a USB 2.0 port is 500 ma, which is about enough, best case, for about 14 RGBLEDs at full brightness. This is because an RGBLED is actually three LEDs in one package (sometimes four, if it's an RGBW LED), and the power draw can vary hugely depending on the color of the light.

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

so I went with this thing here now:

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01JA8YZ30/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 can't be controlled via software fromt he PC directly, hope it still suits my other needs. lets see about that.