Manuel Alabor

Arduino Ambilight

Arduino

Magazine Articles

• Arduino Ambilight

Features

• Individual, controllable LED ambient lighting for your room
• Rich effect library
• Optionally incorporates environment sounds (music etc.) into lightning effects
• Controllable via mobile devices (clients available for iOS and Android)
• Completely open source, from hardware to software.

Recommended Skills

If you want to build the Ambilight on your own, I suggest at least being a little experienced with electronic circuitry. Further you should not be afraid of putting your hands on programming code.

The latest release of the official firmware added a configuration tool which made it unnecessary to setup output pins and numbers of present LED lights manually in the source code. But still, I recommend some programming experiences in case bugs should appear.

Hardware Components

• StripInvaders Kit
  • Arduino Ethernet with preinstalled StripInvaders firmware
  • Stack Headers
  • Audio Sensor
  • Grove Base Shield
  • Cables
• 5V Power Supply
• WS2801 LED Strip
• RJ45 ethernet cable

In addition, I suggest to have some minimal tools for electronic work (i.e. multimeter for troubleshooting) and some crimping equipment in place.

Optional Items

• Power panel jack
• 2x Scotchlok UR2 (connecting the power wires)
• 2x Scotchlok UY (eases connecting the data wires)
• Enclosure

Software

If you bought the official StripInvaders kit from boxtec.ch, you only need the Configuration Utility here. Even though, I’d like to keep the list here for completeness.

• StripInvaders firmware
• Bonjour library
• OSC library
• Depending on your LED strip controller:
  • WS2801 library
  • LDP8806 library
• Configuration Utility

Preparing Arduino

Use the four stack headers to attach the Grove Base Shield with your Arduino controller to make it look as on the image bellow.

Power Wires

1. Solder two wires to the power panel jack first. When using the power supply from the components list above, the outer contact is ground (black), the inner the 5V conductor.
2. Use now the UR2 Skotchloks to connect all power wires as described on the schema. In case your LED strip has other color coded connectors, make sure you use the correct ones!

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Data Wires

Use two UY Skotchloks to connect the data and clock wires as described on the sketch.

The pins 2 and 3 are the default ones from the StripInvaders firmware. If you want to use other pins, make sure you set them properly as described in the Configuration step.

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Connect with the outer world

Time to get serious:

1. Plug the data and power connector to the proper socket on the Base Shield
2. Connect your Arduino board to your home network using the RJ45 network cable
3. Connect the power supply to the power panel jack

If everything is fine, several lights on the Arduino bundle light up green. Don’t mind the one near to the reset switch on the Base Shield which glows red: seems to be fine like this ;-).

The LED strip should do a self test after a few seconds.

Configuration

At the moment, the StripInvaders software is not aware of the number of present LEDs yet. You can use the neophobs Configuration Utility to fix that.

1. Download the proper archive (currently available for Windows and Mac OS X), extract it and run the executable
2. The program automatically searches the network for available StripInvader controllers. If yours was found, the utility confirms with Ping “invader.local”, reachable: true
3. Use the LED Count slider to adjust the number of present LEDs
4. If you connected the LED strip on other pins than 2 and 3 (remember?), use the specific sliders to change that too
5. Use Send Configuration to apply your changes. The Arduino should restart automatically using the latest settings