After finishing my Arduino 8×8 Led Screen, I got a Raspberry Pi. This is what I made with it! A 50 Pixel RGB ambient light rig for my TV.
The colors are sampled from the edges of the TV screen using a webcam. After sampling from the captured frame, each RGB led is updated with the appropriate color on screen. Watching movies and playing games with it turned on is effin awesome!
The initial prototype used an Arduino, but with that setup I could only use it when my computer was the input feed (cloned monitor to TV). The color sampling was done on the PC and sent to the Arduino. I also managed to break my Arduino, so that forced me to use the pi instead.
With the webcam approach, I can use it with any feed: cable TV, XBox, Apple TV, Steam Big Picture and the Raspberry Pi itself! I briefly looked into HDMI splitters and frame grabbers but that was all way too expensive.
I took a load of work in progress pictures while making it, I’ll post those in part 2. Overall it took about 6 weekends to complete, over a period of 7 months. And that’s because I’m a bloody perfectionist.
