An ambilight system is a system made with a screen that has leds on its back along the edges to imitate the colours that are present on the screen itself to create a more cinematic experience. The ambilight is generally a feature for these displays, being built into them directly. I plan on making a DIY ambilight system for my screen using an led strip and the Arduino uno board.

The idea came to me when I was watching a movie at a friend's house that had a tv screen with such a system implemented. I thought it was very interesting and wanted to make one for my pc's display.

I think this is a good idea because it allows you to add an extra add-on to your display without having to pay for new expensive screen.

The way it works is you take an LED strip and mount it on the back edges of your screen. You connect it to one of the input pins on Arduino. Thankfully, there is a library called “Fastled” that makes our coding easier when it comes to programming it. Using a free app for windows called “Adalight” we can enable our DIY made ambilight system to properly follow the colors that are on screen.

The needed components are: Arduino Uno Wires LED Strip A screen A power supply A pc with windows on it

(Still in progress) In the Arduino IDE we also use the Fastled library to help with the animations for our led strip. We also use an app called “Prismatik” to help connect our DIY ambilight system to the pc.

#include “FastLED.h” #define NUM_LEDS 55 #define BRIGHTNESS 255 #define LED_TYPE WS2812B #define COLOR_ORDER RGB #define PIN_DATA 6 #define baudrate 128000 const uint16_t SerialTimeout = 60; time before LEDs are shut off if no data CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS]; uint8_t * ledsRaw = (uint8_t *)leds; A 'magic word' (along with LED count & checksum) precedes each block of LED data; this assists the microcontroller in syncing up with the host-side software and properly issuing the latch. The host software will need to generate a compatible header: immediately following the magic word are three bytes: a 16-bit count of the number of LEDs (high byte first) followed by a simple checksum value (high byte XOR low byte XOR 0x55). LED data follows, 3 bytes per LED, in order R, G, B, where 0 = off and 255 = max brightness. const uint8_t magic[] = {'D','i','n','c','a'}; #define MAGICSIZE sizeof(magic) Check values are header byte #define HICHECK (MAGICSIZE) #define LOCHECK (MAGICSIZE + 1) #define CHECKSUM (MAGICSIZE + 2) enum processModes_t {Header, Data} mode = Header; int currByte; current byte int outPos; current byte index in the LED array int bytesRemaining; set by checksum unsigned long t, lastByteTime, lastWordTime; void headerMode(); void dataMode(); void timeouts(); #ifdef SERIAL_FLUSH #undef SERIAL_FLUSH #define SERIAL_FLUSH while(Serial.available() > 0) { Serial.read(); } #else #define SERIAL_FLUSH #endif #ifdef DEBUG_LED #define ON 1 #define OFF 0 #define D_LED(x) do {digitalWrite(DEBUG_LED, x);} while(0) #else #define D_LED(x) #endif #ifdef DEBUG_FPS #define D_FPS do {digitalWrite(DEBUG_FPS, HIGH); digitalWrite(DEBUG_FPS, LOW);} while (0) #else #define D_FPS #endif void setup(){ FastLED.setBrightness(BRIGHTNESS); Initial RGB flash for testing

LEDS.showColor(CRGB(255, 0, 0));
delay(500);
LEDS.showColor(CRGB(0, 255, 0));
delay(500);
LEDS.showColor(CRGB(0, 0, 255));
delay(500);
LEDS.showColor(CRGB(0, 0, 0));

Serial.begin(baudrate);
Serial.print("Dinca\n"); // Send initial magic word

lastByteTime = lastWordTime = millis(); // Set initial counters

}

void loop(){

t = millis(); // Save current time

// If there is new serial data
if((currByte = Serial.read()) >= 0){
	lastByteTime = lastWordTime = t; // Reset timeout counters

	switch(mode) {
		case Header:
			headerMode();
			break;
		case Data:
			dataMode();
			break;
	}
}
else {
	// No new data
	timeouts();
}

}

void headerMode(){

static int headPos, hi, lo, chk;

if(headPos < MAGICSIZE){
	// Check if magic word matches
	if(currByte == magic[headPos]) {headPos++;}
	else {headPos = 0;}
}
else{
	// Magic word matches! Now verify checksum
	switch(headPos){
		case HICHECK:
			hi = currByte;
			headPos++;
			break;
		case LOCHECK:
			lo = currByte;
			headPos++;
			break;
		case CHECKSUM:
			chk = currByte;
			if(chk == (hi ^ lo ^ 0x55)) {
				// Checksum looks valid. Get 16-bit LED count, add 1 and multiply by 3 for R,G,B
				D_LED(1);
				bytesRemaining = 3L * (256L * (long)hi + (long)lo + 1L);
				outPos = 0;
				memset(leds, 0, NUM_LEDS * sizeof(struct CRGB));
				mode = Data;
			}
			headPos = 0; // Reset header position regardless of checksum result
			break;
	}
}

}

void dataMode(){

// If LED data is not full
if (outPos < sizeof(leds)){
	ledsRaw[outPos++] = currByte; // Issue next byte
}
bytesRemaining--;

if(bytesRemaining == 0) {

	mode = Header; // Begin next header search
	FastLED.show();
	D_FPS;
	D_LED(0);
	SERIAL_FLUSH;
}

}

void timeouts(){

if((t - lastWordTime) >= 1000) {
	Serial.print("Dinca\n"); // Send magic word to host
	lastWordTime = t; // Reset counter

	// If no data received for an extended time, turn off all LEDs.
	if(SerialTimeout != 0 && (t - lastByteTime) >= (uint32_t) SerialTimeout * 1000) {
		memset(leds, 0, NUM_LEDS * sizeof(struct CRGB));
		FastLED.show();
		mode = Header;
		lastByteTime = t; // Reset counter
	}
}

}

(Inca aștept sa îmi vina toate componentele comandate)

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