Philips Ambilight+Hue

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hi, I own a philips tv and some hue color light bulbs.
For android and ios there is an app called “Ambilight+” which allows you to grab the colors of the current image on tv and calculates the correct colors for you bulbs.

I think it’s a cool feature but it hurts to start the app on my tablet or phone every time i want to use it.

Is there anybody who has an idea or the motivation to write a plugin for that? is it even possible? I dont know how “open” the api is for that.

Here is a link to my curent bulb setup

Ambilight+ with two color bulbs (demo video)

regards

Found a link where someone have successfuly tested that:

Hue+Ambilight+Pi

will test that when I’m home. Not sure if I’m able to write a pimatic-plugin for that.

Basically all it needs to have is a config where we define the TV-IP and the HueBridge IP (including API Key).
Also we have to define the lamps and their positions (API).

For the devices would be cool if there is an on/off switch for every lamp and one for all.

@Partovic I can help with porting AmbilightReader to coffeescript (easy) and setting up the basic plugin project. Would be nice if some other @developer would like to contribute on this.

Some thoughts are required on how the mapping to a color value for hue should work. A simple, but powerful approach would be to use “rules” for the glue between ambilight and hue. If it is good enough to pick a single color zone, say left.3 to associate it with a hue bulb one is almost done. What needs to be done is to write an Expression Handler to be able to use color zones as part of rules. This way, it would also be possible to combine Ambilight with pimatic-led-light! Needless to say, this approach allows for multiple Bulbs to be associated with different zones of the screen. My only concern is, that using multiple rules may create too much load on a weak Raspi. Let’s see.

EDIT: @developer You don’t need to own a Philips TV to work on this as there is a simulator available for the JointSpace API.

@mwittig nice! would appreciate that! thank you.

I like your idea of making it more generic. The JointSpace API gives us “left,top,bottom,right” and also the color for a single pixel.
I think it’s totally ok to map “bulb 1” to “left”. We don’t have to go that specific.

Looking forward!

Edit: I’m currently using the “pimatic-hue-zll” plugin. maybe we can have a look at that too in order to make it more flexible.

@Partovic said in Philips Ambilight+Hue:

The JointSpace API gives us “left,top,bottom,right” and also the color for a single pixel.

Is it a pixel of the ambilight or a pixel of the display? I guess it is a pixel of the ambilight as otherwise one would end up with huge amounts of data.

I think it’s totally ok to map “bulb 1” to “left”.

Well, actually I think it would be easier to associate the bulb with a single pixel. Associating it with a side would require to sum the color values. Ok that not difficult to do but it may result in unpleasant color values.

Do you you what the layering concept is about?

@mwittig

@mwittig said in Philips Ambilight+Hue:

Is it a pixel of the ambilight or a pixel of the display? I guess it is a pixel of the ambilight as otherwise one would end up with huge amounts of data.

Actually I don’t know but I think its the ambilight pixels.

Well, actually I think it would be easier to associate the bulb with a single pixel. Associating it with a side would require to sum the color values. Ok that not difficult to do but it may result in unpleasant color values.

But mapping it to a single pixel would end up in upleasant color values as well, doesn’t it? A light bulb is much bigger so I think the right way is to calculate an average color for a “range of pixels” maybe the api gives us the calculated value already.

Do you you what the layering concept is about?

For now: not really. I will try to get more involved in that case.

Just tested the ambilight control. Works pretty well:

Ambilight

And this is the result:

Ambilight.

By the way: Pixels means the LEDs. My TV has just 3 on the left/right and 7 on top. So your idea to map to a pixel would be the best way.

Here’s my output for “http://192.168.2.107:1925/1/ambilight/measured”

{ "layer1": { "left": { "0": { "r": 90, "g": 78, "b": 59 }, "1": { "r": 121, "g": 96, "b": 80 }, "2": { "r": 101, "g": 84, "b": 71 } }, "top": { "0": { "r": 88, "g": 74, "b": 62 }, "1": { "r": 102, "g": 91, "b": 83 }, "2": { "r": 126, "g": 122, "b": 121 }, "3": { "r": 146, "g": 140, "b": 141 }, "4": { "r": 104, "g": 98, "b": 103 }, "5": { "r": 109, "g": 97, "b": 92 }, "6": { "r": 176, "g": 162, "b": 161 } }, "right": { "0": { "r": 198, "g": 182, "b": 181 }, "1": { "r": 197, "g": 179, "b": 176 }, "2": { "r": 136, "g": 117, "b": 110 } }, "bottom": { } } }

Edit: Just for clarity. 1 Pixel means a Bundle of 3 RGB LEDs. Not sure if that depends on my tv Settings about dynamic Level for Ambilight. Will check that next day.

The ability to control the ambilight leads us to another useful feature for a pimatic-plugin Thats something philips missed to implement correctly on its own software.