Ambient lighting

WORK IN PROGRESS

Ambient lighting in this context is lighting that is utilized to complement the light coming from your main display.

Common types of ambient lighting
Since the recent availability of displays by Philips featuring their Ambilight, there has been interest in producing similar effects for displays other than Philips which have this built into their hardware. Most commonly these systems consists of LED lights placed behind the display that face either to the side or towards the back and the light is reflected back towards the user from the surfaces behind the display. There are also systems where individual bulbs can be linked into the system that can be made to respond to system events.

Simple systems may have lights that are all one color and cannot be changed or strings of lights that can be made to change color all together. More recent systems feature lights that can individually change color. These can be made to change in sync to the borders of the main display thereby 'extending' the light from the edges of the screen to the surfaces around and behind the display. Alternatively they can be made to respond to characteristic of the audio or music being played.

Bridge boards
Most implementations utilize a separate processing board between the HTPC and the lights in order to provide low level hardware access to drive the LED's. There are kits available to implement this as well.

LEDs
LPXXXX, WS2801, WS2811/2 Strings of bulbs vs strips