To the best of our knowledge all of the Ambilight clones we’ve covered over the years have one thing in common. They need a computer to do the image processing. This one is different. The PCB seen on the left right is all you need for the video processing. The project is called SCIMO and is the handiwork of a hacker named [Keiang].
There are only few times that the DRM built into the HDMI standard has pissed us off. This is one of them. Because of HDCP and licensing issued revolving around HDMI [Keiang] didn’t use HDMI pass through. Instead he uses an HDMI to S-Video converter. This board acts as an S-Video pass through, analyzing the signal using an STM32 ARM chip before the video signal continues on to the television. It still produces a respectable picture, but wouldn’t it have been cleaner if he could have gone with the HDMI standard?
UPDATE: Thanks for the comments on this. It looks like the TV is getting an HDMI signal. The board is fed by the HDMI to S-Video converter which itself is getting HDMI in parallel with the television thanks to a splitter.
Where other examples use Boblight on a PC for processing this manages to do so as a standalone embedded system. It also offers quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to choosing the LEDs, supporting pixels that use DMX512, WS28xx, or TM18xx protocols.
Continue reading “Ambilight Clone Uses Video Pass-through; Needs No Computer”
