This DIY ambilight project uses a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino to get the job done

Ambilight kits are pretty awesome. If you’ve never heard of them before, they’re strips of LEDs that you attach to the back of your monitor. An app keeps an eye on the colors you’re seeing on your monitor and adjusts the lights to match the color. It creates a little ambient light that matches what you’re seeing on the screen, and it’s pretty immersive.

You can purchase an ambilight kit for yourself, but where’s the fun in that? We love building stuff here at XDA, so when we saw someone showing off their own DIY ambilight kit, we had to show it off. Best of all, if you like what you see, you can make your own using a guide.

This TV ambilight kit combines hardware to make a DIY ambience kit

In a post on Instructables, tinkerer Tesalex showed off their new project. It combines a few pieces of hardware to get the job done, including a few of our favorite DIY SBCs:

Firstly, you will need a Raspberry Pi of any kind. To drive the LEDs, we will use our favorite Arduino, as it is not very easy to control the individually addressable LEDs with Raspberry Pi. Then you will need a USB camera that will capture the content playing on TV screen and send it to Raspberry Pi. I am using WS2812B LEDs, you can choose other individually addressable LEDs as well.

Once built, the project uses the USB camera to look at your monitor and send its data to your SBCs. These, in turn, digest that information and then beam the correct colors to the LEDs, creating a lovely homemade solution for immersing yourself in TV shows, games, and movies. And if you want something new, check out why 27-inch 4K OLED 240Hz monitors are the endgame for gamers.