Cheap DIY Ambilight TV Project with Hyperion and Raspberry Pi

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biased lighting is something i've wanted

to do for years

ever since i first saw the philips

ambulate tvs back

in 2017 and whilst there is software out

there to do it

i could never seem to find the hardware

required for my setup

at a reasonable price until recently

when i was browsing amazon to find parts

for this project like i occasionally do

and i finally found a capture card that

could

fit all of my needs and seem to tick all

of the boxes

meaning i could finally get started on

the diy ambulate project

i'm going to show you how exactly i did

it in this video

for around 75 pounds before we get

started i do want to mention that this

isn't a full in-depth tutorial like we

normally do

but more of an overview of the entire

project and how i did it for my exact

setup

you will definitely be able to follow

along and see what i did and replicate

it for yourself

but we're not exactly going to go deep

into the weeds on this one

if there's enough interest we can

definitely do a full in-depth tutorial

be sure to let me know in the comments

down below if that'd be something you're

interested in

and uh whilst you're down there you may

as well hit that like button and get

subscribed if you aren't already

before we get into the setup it's worth

talking about how the ambilight or bias

lighting project works

and also the exact hardware i used for

my setup

and it's actually pretty simple

essentially there is an addressable rgb

strip that goes all the way around the

backside of the tv

and this is being controlled by a

raspberry pi running some software

called hyperion

and hyperion is an open source project

that i first heard about back

in 2018 i think and essentially it's the

brains of the operation it takes the

image that is being currently displayed

on the tv

analyzes it figures out all the colors

and then controls the led strip

in response to that on-screen image it

runs on a raspberry pi like i mentioned

and it's very customizable and it's also

pretty easy to set up

you can run it on any raspberry pi i'm

using a raspberry pi

3b but i'm planning to move to a

raspberry pi

0w very shortly you're probably

wondering how the raspberry pi gets its

image from the tv

and that's by using a capture card to

intercept the source media

and this is definitely the piece of the

puzzle that put me off doing this

project for the longest time

we consume pretty much all of our

content on netflix or amazon

or youtube or plex at 4k hdr

and so finding a capture card that can

do 4k hdr

pass through as well as hdcp 2.2

at a reasonable price was very important

to me

and i could never seem to find one that

ticked all of those boxes

it wasn't actually the 4k hdr that was

the hardest to find

it was the hdcp 2.2 because without this

any content from netflix or amazon will

just display

a black screen but then i finally found

this capture card on amazon

that ticked all of those boxes it's a

bit more expensive at 59.99

but if 4k hdr isn't important to you

which i know it isn't for a lot of you

guys

then you can definitely find ones that

will do this exact job

for less than half of the price of this

one i'll have the

links for everything you need in the

description down below as always

the led strip i used was the classic

ws2812b

which runs at five volts and this is

ideal for pairing with the pi

which also runs at five volts meaning i

can use one power supply to power both

the pi

and the led strip and i don't need to do

any voltage stack down

the led strip i have is the 60 leds per

meter

which i think is the sweet spot between

luke's

and also power consumption finally i

grabbed a 5 volt

8 amp power supply with barrel jack

connector some

female barrel jack connectors with screw

terminals

and a tiny bit of wiring i'm using

roughly four meters of

leds on the back of this 50 inch tv

and according to the calculations i

would need roughly 14 to 15 amps of

power

however the only thing i could get my

hands on at the time

was this 8 amp power supply and i've

seen some

indication from some other youtubers

that are much smarter than me in this

area

that you can actually get away with less

so i decided to give it a go and i

haven't had

any issues since but just make sure to

research your power supply and your

power requirements

before you buy your power supply the

first step was to install the led strip

around

the frame of the tv and i tried to get

these as close to the edge as possible

for the best look

at the corners instead of cutting and

soldering like is the proper thing to do

i just kind of folded them over

themselves like this

i decided to start and end my led strips

right in the middle of the bottom of the

tv

because this lined up nicely with where

i wanted to place the rest of my

components

i then used some command hook strips to

stick down my capture card

and also my raspberry pi yes i velcroed

a raspberry pi to the back of my tv

don't worry it's just temporary i then

plugged my chromecast into the hdmi

input of my capture card

and i took the hdmi output and plugged

that into the hdmi port of my tv

i then wired the usb port of the capture

card

to the usb port of the raspberry pi with

everything in place it was time to wire

everything up

i say that like it was a big task it was

five wires

i started by taking a micro usb cable

and cutting it

in half exposing the five volts and

ground wires which are the red

and black wires this allows me to power

the pi

via the micro usb port instead of the

gpio pins

you can do either but the advantage of

the micro usb port is that it has

over voltage protection built in whereas

the gpio pins

do not i connected the plus and minus

wires from the micro usb cable

into the screw terminals of the barrel

jack connector

along with the plus and minus wires from

the led strip

you'll notice i'm using a common ground

wire here

meaning that the ground from the led

strip and

also the pi are connected to the same

place

this is very important otherwise you'll

get a caesar inducing flicker

from the led strip finally i connected

the data wire of the led strip which is

the green wire

to gpio18 of the raspberry pi

with everything wired up i then inserted

my sd card into the raspberry pi

that had already been flashed with

hyperbane which is essentially raspberry

pi os

with hyperion installed you don't have

to do it this way if you don't want to

if you have

something running on your pi already you

can simply install hyperion from your

package manager

with the sd card inserted i then plugged

in my power supply

and let the raspberry pi boot up after a

minute or two i was able to find the ip

address of my pi

on the network and log in to the web ui

located on port 8090 after that it was a

simple case of telling hyperion a few

things like

what led strip i was using how many leds

i had

what position they were in and the

orientation

and then enabling my capture guard after

that i loaded up some

content and it was off to the races at

first i was a little

underwhelmed by the reaction speed which

was a little bit slower than i'd hoped

for

although i am very sensitive to this but

after playing with some of the capture

card settings

i was able to get a much nicer and

smoother experience

the key one for me was actually lowering

the capture card resolution

from 1080p down to 720p

after all all the capture card needs to

see is the colors

it doesn't actually need a good quality

image

it just needs to be able to see the

colors in order to change the

leds lowering the resolution of the

capture card

does not impact on the image that you're

actually getting on the tv

and the end result is actually something

i'm very happy with

i actually find it does add to the movie

watching experience which i was actually

um a little bit surprised about i didn't

expect it to add much to the experience

but yeah overall very happy with the

image i actually think it comes off

more distracting on camera than it does

in real life

in real life you get used to it very

quickly um and yeah it does provide a

very nice

movie watching experience and the nice

thing is that it's very customizable you

can completely turn off the leds for

certain types of content if you don't

want it and you can also set the leds to

be different effects

or you can even set it to a constant

back color instead of changing with the

image

you can just have a constant led color

up on there if you

want to maybe reduce some of the strain

on your eyes

one of the best things about it is you

can add it into home assistant

using a local integration and that

allows you to completely control how it

works

and using automations or from the

dashboard

but there we go that's how i built a

bias lighting system

for around 75 pounds and you can

definitely do this for

much cheaper if you use a 1080p capture

card instead of

4k hdr if 4k hdr isn't important to you

then just use a 1080p one and the price

will be much

lower um if you want to add multiple

sources

into the system so if you want to have

an xbox and a fire stick and a

chromecast and

a blu-ray player all feeding into the

um ambi light system then you can use a

hdmi splitter

and that will allow you to have all of

these sources available

in hyperion i'll leave links to all the

exact hardware i used

as well as some other sensible hardware

recommendations

in the description down below that you

can check out and if you decide to buy

it will help to support the channel at

no additional cost to you

but that's about all the time we have

for this video hope you guys enjoyed it

uh let me know what do you guys think

about this project i'm personally very

glad

i got around to taking this one off the

list so let me know if you plan on

making one

in the comments down below if you want

to support the channel you can do so by

becoming a patron on patreon

and your support allows me to keep on

buying the hardware

to make these videos thank you to all my

current patreon supporters

your support is very much appreciated oh

and let me know if you want me to do a

full

tutorial or full in-depth guide on this

um diy bias lighting project we can

definitely do

a more in-depth video um

if you guys want to see it so do let me

know in the comments box down below

thank you so much for watching this

video as always make sure to drop a like

and hit the subscribe button if you

aren't already thank you for watching

and i will see you in the next video

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