Back in those days ambilight systems did exist on some premium Philips TV’s, but plug-and-play systems like the Philips Hue Play to add ambilights to your existing TV were not around yet. This project looked very simple and seemed to have a great effect, which is why I also wanted to try it (we’re talking early 2017 here). I was especially curious to see how responsive the LED’s would be, and if they could keep up with fast moving objects on the TV.

The build

For the build we need a few components that are easily sourced through eBay:

• HDMI Splitter.
• 30cm HDMI cable.
• HDMI2AV converter.
• USB Video Grabber.
• APA102 strip which is long enough to go around your TV.
• Power supply.
• Various small wires for data and power distribution.

I replaced the Raspberry Pi Zero from the overview for a Raspberry Pi 3 model B, which I had laying around. This also had WiFi built in, which meant I could scrap the separate WiFi receiver.

My TV is a 49″ Sharp Aquos, which could house a whopping 194 LED around the edges!

After everything was wired up it was time to set up the Raspberry Pi. Firstly, I downloaded the latest version of Raspbian and flashed this to the SD card. Then I connected it to my WiFi network so I could access it over SSH without the need for an additional Ethernet cable. After this setup was complete I could download and set up HyperCon. This piece of software is truly awesome as it takes care of all the aspects of the project (read out the USB grabber, do the image analytics and controls the LED’s), and in addition provides a remote interface which you can use to show different animations.

Setup is also very easy with the included Configuration Tool. In this tool you can set up the position of your LED’s, configure your grabber and finetune the colors of the LEDs:

After uploading the configuration file to the Raspberry Pi and starting the included running rainbow animation, which is perfect to run as a test, the result looked like this:

The result

The goal of this project was to increase my gaming experience. For this, the responsiveness of the LEDs needed to be high enough. I never actually measured the response time, but in the video below you can check out the result. As for my own opinion, I think it is more than good enough, especially if I consider that this is a DIY project and offers much more LED’s than the commercially available products back in 2017.

3D printed case

This setup has run without changes for around 2.5 years behind my TV. In September 2018 I wanted to try and design a 3D printable housing which could house both the HDMI splitter, HDMI2AV converter and USB Video Grabber. I came up with the following design:

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the end result. It looked good and the setup worked like this for a few months, although I noticed that the housing would get very warm when the system was in use. Eventually either the HDMI2AV board or the USB Video Grabber broke, as the LEDs one day did not came on. I was able to test the HDMI splitter by attaching either outputs to my TV, which showed that it was outputting a signal on both lines. The Raspberry Pi also still worked, as I could control the LED’s via the Hypercon webinterface.

I never came around to fixing this issue, and eventually removed the entire system when we started to use this TV as our main room TV and I got another TV for the gaming.

Would I advice this?

All in all, this is still a relatively easy and fun project. I think it works extremely well for a DIY project, and I would definitely recommend it if you are into gaming or watch a lot of movies, and would like to enhance your viewing experience.

The first test

Installing the software wasn’t very difficult, I just had to Follow Michael Teeuw’s guide on how to set up the Raspberry, and then Install his software. After having done this, I found myself looking at a copy of the Magic Mirror!

I then tried the cheap eBay foil again. Still, the results I got from this were far from satisfying. It looks like I’m going to have to pull out my wallet and get myself a real one-way mirror…

The frame

Now that I had ordered a real mirror (bey bey savings), I had some time left to focus on the aesthetics of my mirror. So, I removed the casing of the TV and tried to build a decent looking frame around it.

I was quite impressed with how this looked, and after a paintjob I was getting quite happy with it.

Wrap up & result

Now, it was only a matter of waiting for my mirror. When that finally came in, I could screw/glue it all together, and I had myself a Magic Mirror!

Check out the updates here!