Make your own £5 ambient TV backlight

After clearing out some junk, which included an old halogen desk lamp, I was thinking about putting in an LED light behind the PC monitor.

Then I remembered I’d bought a ring of 24 RGB LEDs from Aliexpress last year & hadn’t used it in a project.

I also had a spare Arduino Nano, and all the things I’d need to allow me to hook up a dial (potentiometer) for the light level, and button to cycle through different colour modes.

Here’s a quick video of it in action..

Parts

LED Ring – £2
Arduino Nano – £1.75
Breadboard & bits – £1.25

Wiring it up

It’s an easy one to wire up.. I took a few basic examples and mashed them together to get what I wanted from the design.

I’m not an electronics expert, and approached this like I approach software development; write it in manageable/testable chunks, which I can implement and test individually, then bolt it all together.

The code for the project is pretty simple.. I think the most complicated bit is handling the button, which needed debounce functionality.

	#include <Adafruit_NeoPixel.h>
	#ifdef __AVR__
	#include <avr/power.h>
	#endif
	#define PIN 6 // pin on the Arduino is connected to the LED ring
	#define NUMPIXELS 24 // Number of pixels on the LED ring
	#define POT_PIN 0 // Potentiometer pin
	#define BUTTON_PIN 2 // Button pin
	Adafruit_NeoPixel pixels = Adafruit_NeoPixel(NUMPIXELS, PIN, NEO_GRB + NEO_KHZ800);
	int showType = 0;
	bool oldState = HIGH;
	void setup() {
	pinMode(BUTTON_PIN, INPUT_PULLUP); // Declare pushbutton as input
	pixels.begin(); // This initializes the NeoPixel library.
	}
	void loop() {
	// Read the potentiometer value and translate to how many pixels we want to illuminate
	int value = analogRead(POT_PIN);
	value = map(value, 0, 1023, 0, 25);
	// Switch colours if the button is pressed
	bool newState = digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN);
	if (newState == LOW && oldState == HIGH) {
	delay(20); // Short delay to debounce button.
	// Check if button is still low after debounce.
	newState = digitalRead(BUTTON_PIN);
	if (newState == LOW) {
	// Cycle through different colour schemes
	showType++;
	if (showType > 8) showType=0;
	}
	}
	oldState = newState; // Set the last button state to the old state.
	uint32_t color = pixels.Color(255,255,255); // default to white when first booted
	if (showType==1) color = pixels.Color(0,0,255); // blue
	if (showType==2) color = pixels.Color(0,255,0); // green
	if (showType==3) color = pixels.Color(255,0,0); // red
	if (showType==4) color = pixels.Color(0,127,255);
	if (showType==5) color = pixels.Color(255,127,0);
	if (showType==6) color = pixels.Color(255,0,127);
	if (showType==7) color = pixels.Color(0,255,255);
	if (showType==8) color = pixels.Color(127,127,255);
	// Illuminate X pixels depending on how far the potentiometer is turned
	for(int i=0;i<NUMPIXELS;i++){
	if (i<value) {
	pixels.setPixelColor(i, color);
	} else {
	pixels.setPixelColor(i, pixels.Color(0,0,0)); // Don't show anything
	}
	}
	pixels.show(); // This sends the updated pixel configuration to the hardware.
	}

view raw

led-ring-backlight.ino

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And here are a few pictures of it in place behind the PC monitor..