Hi all!
I've been lurking these forums for quite a while now and think I finally found the courage to try and put my own ambi-light system together. This forum and community have been very helpful in my quest thusfar, thanks for that!
I would like to apply the ambi-lighting to my 32 inch 16:9 PC monitor. I would like to go for the solution where the LEDs respond to any HDMI input (ChromeCast/Xbox/laptop/etc through an HDMI selector). Now one of the things that was holding me back, is the fact that my screen is 4k. I understand that I won't get ambilight to work when the input is 4k, due to limitations of both the videograbber as well as the RPI. (Unless I'm willing to spend the money for an expensive HDfury Linker downscaler.) However, this should not be a problem since whenever I need ambilight (gaming or watch a movie), it will be at 1080p. However I am very curious whether I will at least be able to set a static color to the LEDs whenever I use my laptop in 4k? Preferably without changing any of the cables. Can this be done from the Android app?
Hardware I am planning to buy
Though I've read through a lot of guides, most use an arduino UNO or other types of LEDs. Therefore it would be greatly appreciated if someone more experienced with this all could quickly scan through my shopping list and look for conflicting items or items that I need but forgot (would be a shame to wait another months for an AliExpress item to arrive). Much appriciated!
Since the physical dimensions of my monitor are 44 cm x 74 cm, I would roughly need a 2.36m strip of LEDs. I figured the cheapest way to get that would be to order 3 seperate strips of 1 meter each. I've chosen to go for the APA102-c LED strip since that requires no Arduino and from several threads I read here that they generally seem to cause the least problems.
1) 3x 1m APA102-c LED (60 LEDs/m) - 38.22 dollars
Since 2.36m of a 60 LEDs/m strip has roughly 142 LEDs, I figured I'd need a power supply that is able to deliver approx (142 x 0.06A =) 8.5A. I therefore chose the following 5V/10A adapter to drive the LEDs.
2) 10 DC 5V 50 W LED adapter - 13.31 dollars
To connect the adapter to the connectors of the LED strip, I order one of these plugs.
3) Power adapter -> LED strip plug - 2.49 dollars
To connect the LED strips after they have been cut, I was planning to use these connectors (solderless). They are 10mm whereas the thickness of the LED strips are said to be 12mm. I can't seem to find any 4 channel 12 mm connectors, only 5 channel. In case they do not fit I guess I'll just need to solder.
4) LED strip connectors - 1.69 dollars
The HDMI input first goes into this 4k30hz supporting active splitter:
5) Active HDMI splitter - 11.99 dollars
One of the outputs of the splitter goes to the TV, the other one goes to the HDMI -> AV converter.
6) HDMI -> AV converter - 6.51 dollars
The following AV male-male cable would be used to bring the signal to the video grabber:
I really wished there was a more elegant smaller solution, anyone knows what kind of plug the lightberry uses?
7) AV male-male cable - 1.32 dollars
And I want to use the following video grabber that is based on the UTV007 chipset that seems to be the go-to.
Video-grabber UTV007 - 5.35 dollars
This video grabber is inserted into the brain of it all: the Raspberry Pi 3 with AC adapter, case, sd card, HDMI cable and some other stuff:
9) Raspberry Pi - 58.81 dollars
Since I read some common problems are caused by the fact that the arduino can only provide a control voltage of 3.5V wheras the LED strip expects a 5V signal, I already order a level shifter of type 74HCT125.
10) Level shifter 74HCT125 - 1.93 dollars
Meaning the complete project would cost roughly 140 dollars.
Though I also receive a seperate power adapter for the raspberry Pi, I was wondering if I could use the power adapter of the LEDs to drive the Pi. Would this cause any issues? Also I read some forum posts regarding introducing a capacitor 1000uF between the power lines and a resistor in series. Is this also neccessary for APA102-c LEDs?
