DIY Smart Home PC Ambilight
Introduction: DIY Smart Home PC Ambilight
I've seen a bunch of projects online of people either building their own "Ambilight" for their PC's or buying them off the shelf. I recently started playing with addressable LED strips like the WS2812(b) and decided to build my own PC Ambilight.
I make use of Apple HomeKit throughout my apartment to control various appliances such as switches, outlets, and lights, so a requirement for this project was to make the Ambilight HomeKit compatible.
Supplies
Hardware:
* WS2812b LED strip - Banggood link
* 5V 3A power supply - Banggood link
* Wemos D1 mini - Banggood link
* Jumper wires - Banggood link
* 2.1mm x 5.5mm DC jack (male) - Banggood link
* 2.1mm x 5.5mm DC jack (female) - Banggood link
* 270 Ohm resistor - Banggood link
* Heat-shrink tubing (optional) - Banggood link
* Header pins (male) - Banggood link
* Header pins (female) - Banggood link
* 4pin grove connectors - Banggood link
* Soldering iron and supplies
* 3D Printer for control board enclosure (optional)
Software:
* Windows
* Homebridge for Apple HomeKit support - from this link
* WLED to control LED strip - from this link
* Hyperion.ng - from this link
* Note: If you have a very big screen and require a long piece of LED strip, consider getting a 5V 6A power supply instead.
* Note: For this project, you require a working Homebridge server if you wish to also control your Ambilight using Apple HomeKit.
* Note: For this project, I opted for the Wemos D1 mini WiFi board. You can however use alternatives such as the ESP-01 or NodeMCU
Step 1: Prepare Wemos D1 Mini (hardware)
The Wemos D1 mini is ideal as it can be powered using 5V DC, the same voltage that will power the WS2812b LED strip. You can easily swap out the Wemos D1 mini with a NodeMCU as this micro-controller also accepts 5V input voltage. Another (cheaper) alternative is the popular ESP-01 module. The only downside is that the ESP-01 module requires additional hardware as this module only supports 3.3V I/O voltages.
In this step, we will be preparing our micro-controller hardware.
To start, the Wemos D1 mini does not come with any pins soldered to it. I decided to solder some female header pins to 4 pins of the Wemos D1 mini (5V, Ground, D4, and D3). By soldering some female headers to the micro-controller you can easily interchange it later, or reuse it in other projects.
The Wemos D1 mini is now ready to be flashed with software to connect it to your WiFi network. We will do this in the next step.
Step 2: Prepare Wemos D1 Mini (software)
In this step, we will be flashing (programming) our Wemos D1 mini with open source light control software known as WLED. Programming ESP8266 based devices like the Wemos D1 mini is very simple. I created an Instructable on this topic that can be found at this link. 485
I will however briefly go through the process below, but for all the details, please refer to my other instructable.
Since we are working with a Wemos D1 mini, we can connect our board to our computer via a micro-USB cable.
1. Connect your Wemos D1 mini to your computer through a micro-USB cable.
2. Open your preferred flashing tool, I use Tasmotizer.
+ Make sure that your port is correct. Also, since we are using a Wemos device in this project, make sure that the "self-resetting device" option is on.
3. Download the latest binary of WLED (I use the WLED_x.xx.x_1M.bin file) - Link to WLED releases
4. Select the WLED firmware file just downloaded in your flash tool.
5. Now you can proceed to flash the firmware. In Tasmotizer, click "Tasmotize!". If you are using another flashing tool, proceed to flash the firmware to the Wemos device.
6. Wait for the WLED firmware to be flashed to your device, this can take some time.
7. Once you received a message that the firmware is successfully flashed, you can restart your device.
In the next step, we will be configuring our Wemos D1 mini to connect to your WiFi network. 854