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AmbiGrid video transscript.md

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Shots

  • shot 1: frontal me, AmbiGrid besides, pulsing circle lower left (tripod) - again
  • shot 2: screen with Adalight video / components overview (tripod)
  • shot 3: AmbiGrid close-up, pulsing circle lower left, walking around, back shot (handheld)
  • shot 4.1: Web app close-up, iPad, AmbiGrid blurred in background (tripod), paying around with colors, setting color change, pulsing circle, fade out
  • shot 4.2: Web app close-up, iPad, AmbiGrid blurred in background (tripod), heavily paying around with colors
  • shot 5: AmbiGrid upside down close-up, opening back plate, looking inside, detach electronics, first Raspi, then wifi, then Arduino (tripod)
  • shot 6: draw the diagram - speak again
  • shot 7: AmbiGrid in bedroom showing the pulsing circle in red - speak again

The AmbiGrid - Video transcript

shot #1

Hi, this is Robert Greinacher and I would like to introduce you to the AmbiGrid project - a programmable open source color light.

Inspiration - The why

The Inspiration was Philips' wake up light:

shot #7

I wanted to build a light which can help me to fall asleep or to wake up again by displaying a sunrise or a sunset - or which accompanies my everyday life with smooth animations. And of course I want to control it over the air.

shot #2

I remembered that years ago I tried the AdaLight project from Adafruit which adds a DIY AmbiLight to your computer screen; so I already had an Arduino with a USB interface and a strand of color LEDs.

shot #1

And at this point my engineering ambitions caught me so I had to find out what I could do with it.

What I built

What I built is a compact product with a 49 pixel screen which only has one cable...

shot #3

...the power plug.

Each pixel is powered by one RGB LED which can be addressed separately. In combination this grid of LEDs forms a little screen with not only the same color all over it but with the possibility to show a light play. That’s the reason why I call it AmbiGrid: It is a ambient light, arranged as a grid.

The wooden case hides all the electronics.

shot #1

After you plugged it in, it boots up and auto-connects to the local wifi and starts the controlling software on it’s own, providing a web app which connects via web sockets to the animations software. This fast connection gives users the ability to adjust animations or colors with their smartphone or any other web capable device - and provides a live preview of the just made settings.

shot #4.1

The web app is made with simplicity, usability and intuitiveness in mind. Every touch of a button or a slider has direct impact on the light. It provides a color preview and some information like the overall lightness or the current frame rate. The color is changed by either combining the three primary colors red, green and blue, or by using a color space called HSL whereby you change the hue, the saturation or the lightness separately.

Besides the web app allows you to select and adjust all the available animations. One of them is the color change which moves to every color. Or the pulsing circle which literally shows a pulsing circle. This animation appears very relaxing and I like falling asleep with this showing smooth, warm colors. To do so the web app provides a fade out animations as well, which can be combined with any of the other animations.

How it’s made - technically speaking

shot #1

I started the project with understanding the source code of the Adalight project to learn how to communicate with the Adruino. After that I started writing a little Python framework...

shot #6

...to generalize the communication to the LEDs, and for writing different animations. I wanted to create a central software unit to take care of the hardware, the animations, different settings, the frame rate, incoming requests from clients and steadily updating them about colors or how much time is left until the light faded out. At last I wrote a HTTP server unit to even serve the controlling web app on my own.

shot #5

This software runs on a Raspberry Pi on the inside of the AmbiGrid case. Every calculation is done there, and it’s doing good: 55 frames per seconds on average is enough to display animations fluently. This Raspberry Pi is on the one hand connected to the wifi network and on the other to the LED controlling Arduino via USB. So the software writes an array of RGB values for every pixel to the serial port for every frame - 55 times every second.

I need a color calculation module for the animations on the AmbiGrid but the web app doesn’t calculate anything on it’s own. Instead it just sends JSON encoded data via the web socket connection to the AmbiGrid, which applies the request and responds itself with a status JSON containing the new calculated color values. ...

shot #4.2

... The web socket connection is so fast, that even this ping pong doesn’t seem to have any latency - leastwise in the local network.

The software has a dry run mode, so if there is no Arduino connected, it still serves the web app which you can play around with and test the web socket connection.

Awesome, I want to build my own

shot #1

What would you need to start building this on your own? The easiest way is to order all the stuff I listed in the description. This is exactly my setup. But this has grown over time and may not be the most cost efficient. You can get rid of the Arduino for example by controlling the LEDs right via the GPIO ports of the Raspberry Pi (consider some soldering skills because you will have to use 5V signals for the chip in the LED strands but the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO output will only provide 3,3V - how tos are out there). Or you could use cheaper LEDs with the WS2811 driver chip; that would require a little source code modification but that should not be too difficult.

The software needs Python 3.5 or greater with some free and open source packages installed; the GitHub page explains what you need to launch it.

The part that you can’t buy or download is the wooden case. I have no CAD files and made the plan for it right before I started building it. But as there is no right or wrong I’m sure you will find a way build your LED matrix. For example I started with a grid I made out of this magnet game - that worked too.

Contact & good bye

If there are any questions left just contact me; you’ll find my Twitter and GitHub handle and my mail address right below the video. I’m looking forward to discuss your plans.

Thanks for watching and good night (fade out the light of the AmbiGrid).

Below the video

The AmbiGrid project by Robert Greinacher, 2015.

Twitter: @RGreinacher / GitHub: RGreinacher / Mail: [email protected]

Thanks to my Dad who helped me with the case, Mr. Schmidutz from the Karl-Arnold-Schule Biberach, and Mr. Moll from Uttenweiler for some wood and the frosted glas.

Sources & links

Used tech parts & components

Raspberry Pi components:

Arduino & LEDs:

Other: