Ambient Lighting Tutorial?

[MNMax21]

I was surfing YouTube yesterday for marquee magician videos and somehow came across a MAME cabinet build with RGB LEDs on either side of the LCD TV inside the cabinet.  It was setup as ambient lighting and the color changed instantly mirroring the colors of the screen.  I located an article on how to do it at Silicon Republic and also watched a video of it working with The Lion King movie, which was sweet.  However, it uses a Arduino and Breadboard, which I have no experience with.  The article at Silicon Republic only shows a picture of the Arduino and Breadboard, but does not have a tutorial on where the wires go and why.  You are suppose to just eyeball it I assume.  I'm wondering if anyone has created a video tutorial on this subject or can direct me to a video about it on the web.  

If you search ambient computer lighting in YouTube, you should find the sample video.  It's pretty sweet.

Thanks

[drventure]

The Phillips AMBX is a ready made solution to this. They have full on commercial packages (big $$$), but also have a home PC version that supports a wall washer (the "ambient" lighting behind a screen) as well as lamp modules, fans (so you get that "wind in your face" feeling when palying driving games, I suppose  ) and a keyboard rumble pad..

You can check it out here

www.ambx.com

I've played with one, and intend on using it my cab eventually.

The main issue with any system like this is "detecting" the majority color on screen at any particular time and echoing that out to whatever LED driver you choose to use.

Of course, if you're looking to just drive LED's in some way (with fades, wipes, color changes, etc) you can do that really easily with arduinos, or a an LEDWiz a pc, and LEDBlinky, or a host of other ways, but that won't imitate the colors on screen.

I actually started a project once to do this.

My take was to grab 10x10 pixel captures of the screen at various points, average those blocks, then average the averages to get a general idea of the color to the left and right sides of the screen, then drive some LED's through an LEDWiz to follow along. Grabbing entire screens worth of pixels would take way too much processing time to do in realtime, unless you could sit in the pipeline (which is actually what the philips driver does). But that kind of thing is a bit beyond me (or the time I could devote to it).

[Turvey]

This any good?

Instructions at http://amblone.com/

[lilshawn]

if it wasn't for the disgustingly thick boarders of the TV it would look okay.

the monsterous "shadow" cast by the black surround  kills it.

[drventure]

the monsterous "shadow" cast by the black surround  kills it.

True, still,that's a pretty cool project. I gotta look into that more.

[MNMax21]

Yeah, in the youtube video of the MAME cabinet they actually have the lights on the side.  It's a little bright at times, but looks cool and I think it would make gaming more immersive.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SJPXUQE9SuA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Turvey]

if it wasn't for the disgustingly thick boarders of the TV it would look okay.

the monsterous "shadow" cast by the black surround  kills it.

Totally agree but bezel-free screens are coming........... apparently http://www.stuff.tv/news/tv-and-hi-fi/rumour-mill/samsung-set-to-launch-ultra-thin-zero-bezel-tvs-in-2012

[drventure]

Yeah, in the youtube video of the MAME cabinet they actually have the lights on the side.  It's a little bright at times, but looks cool and I think it would make gaming more immersive.

I agree. Having the lights pointed at you is a tad much, but I still like the idea of the color tracking ambient light like that. Cool link. Thanks!

[lilshawn]

this would be a little better. but ugly as hell when turned off.