I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi3 and now wanted to try and build ambilight for my tv!

I installed an OSMC image with Kodi as a home theatre media centre.
It’s very easy to install OSMC and get Kodi up and running.  Tips about that you can find on my page: Kodi/OSMC.

Back to Ambilight. So I followed this Pi/Ambilight guide , but some things needed to be different for me (and maybe for you to), or were not clear enough so here you find my tips about that:

I only purchased the following and purchased it from the same vendor so it got sent quite quick and all at once:

• WS2801 LEDS 5 meter
• 6A 5V powersupply
• 10 pair 4 pins connectors (male&female)

Of course you need a raspberry pi and (my suggestion) OSMC. And of course a soldering iron, tape, scissors, some wires and a screwdriver.

• What I had to do, or wanted to do different from the guide is, at least in my case and installing 90 leds:
  In short it’s the following, and below that is a more detailed description about it:
  1. leave the connector and connect that to your pi and power supply, saves you time and soldering
  2. connect an additional ground wire at the very end of your led strip, prevents flickering of leds!
  3. My Hyperion configuration
  

Longer description:
1. I did not remove the already existing connector and power/ground wires from the strip. I just used them as they are!
What is important however is that you use the correct color wires to connect to your pi2/3. It’s then not the same as in the image of the guide.
From the 4 wire connector do not use the black wire. Tape it off.
Connect Red to PIN 19
Cconnect Blue to PIN 9
Connect Green to PIN 23
And of course connect the already existing red and black wire to the power supply as the guide describes.

2. To prevent flickering you need to additionally connect a wire from the very end of the led strip GND (ground) to the powersupply ground (mind you, the same ground as for the led strip start. so not the ground of the power cable!).

I did not cut the strip and solder new wires to go around the corner. I just bend the strip. When your tv is fully flat at the rear it’s not really an option, but here is how I did it (maybe not very nice, but it saved me much time soldering :)):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. As the manual says, play around with the values to get what you want. I myself want the lights to be subtle so these are my settings:

PRINTSCREENS still to come!

 

To easily stop and restart Hyperion (while testing a lot of different values) open an SSH connection to your Pi and run:
sudo service hyperion stop

followed by a
sudo service hyperion start

 

If you have any questions about any of this leave a comment or email me at LVerduijn@hotmail.com