Custom Ambilight using Raspberry Pi 3

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 3 or higher
• USB framegrabber
• WS2801 LED stripes
• HDPC compatible HDMI splitter
• Power supply
• Wires and cables

Software

• Hyperion

Additional Features

• Temperature controlled case using fan
• Blind service to disable the stripes when TV is off

Pi Configuration

WIFI configuration

1. Add following lines to /etc/network/interfaces in order to disable WIFI power save mode:

   allow-hotplug wlan0
   iface wlan0 inet manual
   post-up iw wlan0 set power_save off
   

2. Make sure /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf looks similar to this and replace the placeholders:

   ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
   update_config=1
   country=DE
   
   network={
           ssid="<ssid>"
           psk="<password>"
   }
   

   You can do this by using sudo wpa_passphrase "<ssid>" "<password>" >> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conficant.conf instead of manually adding it to the file.
3. Restart WIFI by using sudo ifconfig wlan0 down and sudo ifconfig wlan0 up afterwards.

Add services

1. Add a file to /etc/systems/system/ folder and make sure its extension is .service. Its content looks similar to:

   [Unit]
   Description=Temperature control service
   After=multi-user.target
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   Restart=always
   ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/tempcontrol.py
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

2. Register the service using sudo service enable <servicename>.service
3. Run the service using sudo service start <servicename>.service