After finishing my Arduino 8x8 LED Display, I got a Raspberry Pi, and this is what I made with it: a 50-pixel RGB ambient light rig for my TV.

The colors are sampled from the edges of the TV screen using a webcam. After sampling from the captured frame, each LED is updated with the matching color. Watching movies and playing games with it on is great.

The initial prototype used an Arduino — color sampling was done on the PC and sent to the Arduino over serial. That setup only worked when my computer was the video source (cloned monitor to TV). I also managed to break my Arduino, which forced me to use the Pi instead.

With the webcam approach, the rig works with any input: cable TV, Xbox, Apple TV, Steam Big Picture and the Raspberry Pi itself. I briefly looked into HDMI splitters and frame grabbers, but they were far too expensive.

Overall it took about 6 weekends to complete, spread over 7 months. I took a bunch of work-in-progress pictures along the way — those are in part 2.