Ambillight

An ambient lighting solution for the X11 window environment in Linux using an Arduino to control the LEDs.

Multi monitor not currently supported.

Hardware

• An Arduino - I use a nano
• WS2812b LEDs on a flexible sticky strip - I use 60: 15 for the 2 sides and 30 on top.
• A powersupply for the LEDs - I use a 5V 4A one
• A USB cable is required to run to the Arduino from your computer too

Software

Dependencies:

• CMake
• A Linux distribution for the naming of the devices
• Arduino IDE - with the FastLED library
• Libconfig (libconfig-dev on Debian based distros - like Raspbian - or libconfig on other distros)
• An X11 window enviroment and libraries (the libx11-dev package will need to be installed on Debian based distros - like Raspbian - or libx11 on other distros)

1. Run install.sh
2. Upload the Arduino/ambilight/ambilight.ino program onto the Arduino using the Arduino IDE - updating the NUM_LEDS and DATA_PIN to the your values

Usage

To run the ambient lighting, run:

$ ambilight

Quit with ctrl+c.

To set a background color, use:

$ ambilight-color <red> <green> <blue>

For example:

$ ambilight-color 0 0 0

will turn off all the lights.

Red, green and blue values from 0 to 254.

Running

$ ambilight-color

will set the background color to the one specified in the config file.

Config

There is a config file saved at ~/.config/Ambilight/config.

Background

An idle color can be set in the config, this color will be set when ambilight-color is run with no arguments.

Bad Delay

If you're getting bad delay then go to the config file and decrease the pixels_to_process value. Find the highest value where you can't notice the delay, this should give good results.

Brightness

Brightness as an integer out of 100