Auralight is an ESP32-based wireless ambient lighting system. It sends screen pixel data to a connected WS2812B LED strip placed behind the monitor and casts light on the wall. I wrote a screen capturing program using Pytorch tensors to accelerate computations, and both the server and the client web interface on the ESP32.

Auralight is a cost-effective solution to extend your entertainment to a next level. It extends the edges of your screen to the surroundings by casting ambient lights on the wall, thus bringing you into the moment. Built on ESP32, it provides a web interface for an easier control. The asynchronous design in coding provides low latency response. It can be used when you’re watching movies, playing video games or even reading books.

Auralight provides two modes, the first one is ‘extension’ mode. It samples the edges of your screen and create an interpolated ‘ambient’ version; the second one is the ‘breathing’ light mode, accompanying your reading journey or lighting up the room even the computer is not on. The main control web interface allows user to adjust the brightness scaling when in ‘extension’ mode and to adjust the color correction tone according to the FastLED API. Apart from that, user can also adjust the breathing/blinking frequency, the start and end of breathing/blinking brightness and the color.

This project covers various technologies, including hardware C++ coding using Arduino IDE, jQuery and Python. I was also glad to study some mathematics during my research of computer vision.

Windows 7+ (I use a screen capturing library called D3Dshot that uses that windows desktop api)

Python 3.6+

ESP32

WS2812B

External power adapter (depends on how many leds you have)

Edit the project.ino inside arduino ide code folder, add your wireless ssid name and password in the file.

Upload the arduino code to ESP32

Create a virtual env in your PC environment, I suggest python 3.7.

Then pip install requirements.txt

Edit run.bat, add the virtualenv name after the first line: call activate [your name here]

Edit the IP address in main.py, replace the ip with your ESP32 IP address in your local network.

Run run.bat every time you use it.

Feel free to drop a message if you have questions.

Some details might not be covered in this readme, so you could look at the full report. It can be downloaded here.