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There are a wide range of LED strip lights on the market and HyperHDR can handle most of them. It can even use external Philips Hue lights remotely, via the Hue Bridge — allowing you to place additional lights alongside the television for even wider ambient light dispersion. Turn your whole room into the viewing experience!
For my build, I used WS2812B string lights. They’re cheap and easy to find, and they run off 5V, so you can even build a power circuit that powers these and the Raspberry Pi with just one plug. I got a 5-meter (16.4-foot) strip with 60 pixels per meter. More pixels equals more resolution, right? Well, yes, although I’m not convinced that the improvement over the 30 pixels/meter option is worth the extra wattage needed to power them. (There are also advantages to using 12V strip lights, such as the WS2815 version — these don’t suffer from voltage drops across longer lengths, as the 5V ones can. But they don’t offer the easy option to power the Pi from the same power source.)
B
Speaking of power sources, you’ll need one that is sufficient for lighting all those LEDs. We’re talking 150–300 LEDs, potentially blasting a full, pure white light, meaning they’ll be drawing maximum amperage. A standard phone charger won’t cut it for that; you’ll want to get a laptop-style power brick (Figure B) that matches the voltage of your string lights and has a fair amount of amperage. Mine does 5V 10A, for 50 watts of power, but if I were wiser I’d get a bigger power supply that can go up to 300W, just for safety. They’re not much more expensive, either.
C
To connect the LED light strip to the power source, use a 5V barrel jack adapter. Some power supplies include this, but you may have to buy one. They usually come in a small set; be sure you get the “female” side with it. Strip a small bit of insulation off the power leads from the LED lights, then connect these to the screw terminals of the female jack. The red wire goes to positive (+), the black or white wire goes to negative (–) (Figures C and D).
D
NOTE: If you’re using 5V lights and want to couple in power for your Raspberry Pi, here’s where you’ll do it. Cut off the big end of a Micro-USB or USB-C cable (depending on which model Pi you have), find the red and black wires, strip off about ⅛” of insulation, and insert them in the corresponding + and – slots along with the wires that power the LED strip (Figure E). This will let you power the Pi from the same power supply
E
For longer lengths (300 LEDs), also feed the tailing red and white wires into the barrel plug here as well, so the voltage and ground feed both the start and end of the lights.
Finally, use a M–F jumper cable to connect the Data line from the LED strip (it’s the middle pin on most strips) to pin 18 on the Pi (it’s the sixth pin from the bottom corner) as shown in Figure F.
F
IMPORTANT: If you decide to power the Pi separately, you’ll also need to put a jumper between one of the GND pins and the ground wire on the LED strip, otherwise it won’t work.
If you’d like, you can now plug the devices together. Connect your external HDMI streaming device into the HDMI capture card, an HDMI cable from there into the TV, and also a USB-A cable into a USB port of the Raspberry Pi. My Pi’s USB jack supplies power to the capture card; look for the red light on it to know that it’s working.
Then turn on the TV and your HDMI streaming device, and select the HDMI input that you’re plugged into on the TV. If everything has power, you should now see your normal con
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