I have really been enjoying the Ambilight feature especially the latest version that supports full screen programs. However I don’t like that it controls the brightness of the LED’s. Is there some way to set the intensity and only have Ambilight change the color?
I understand that the LED’s may not produce the same brightness at every color, but I need some way to reduce the flashing/strobing effect when the picture on the screen is changing rapidly (a fade time might help this, too).
You mean the Ambilight Notification in the BlinkStick Client, right? Why don´t you reduce the brightness in the device settings?
Thanks for the response, but that is the opposite of what I want. I don’t want the LED’s to dim. I want them to stay bright as a back-light.I only want them to track the color.
Below is a screen shot of the Ambilight feature I am talking about.
Hey Andrew,
Forgot to welcome you to the forums before, so now welcome :).
I think I understand what you want but it does not make sense to me. The brightness have to do with the code of the color. So a RED on the screen will be brighter on the LEDs than a DARKRED. If you have no way to “dim” the light you cannot view a dark red or a light red for example. Or a grey on the screen is a dark white on the LEDs.
Please let me know if I’m still wrong with what you want. For me it looks like you only want to have the main colors on the LEDs like red, green, blue, cyan, purple, yellow and white. This should be possible with a very individual change in the program but is not possible out of the box today.
That is what I was afraid of because of the way that LEDs color mix. I like your idea of just using main colors. I.e.: taking the most common color on screen and have the LEDs follow that. However I suspect I would still have the same problem of LEDs strobing between colors. It would seem the ultimate solution may be to implement some kind of fade time or dissolve instead of instantly cutting to whatever color/brightness is being displayed on screen.
OK, a smoother change between the lightstates. I will again think about it and maybe the developer also have an idea.
Hey Andrew
i´ve played around a bit and build a test tool (Windows only) for the AmbiLight function with a few parameters to change.
Please find it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19452479/BlinkStickDotNetAmbi.zip
Usage:
Note: It is a tool for testing purposes only. If you like, you can use it for your Ambilight, but it might be unstable.
Thanks for building this. I am so sorry I thought I posted this days ago, but I guess I didn’t. The tool is awesome! Very helpful! Here are my findings.
Color_rec_time - This is like the attack time or response time of the LED to color change. Increasing this value helps decrease immediate flash effect of the ambilight since it isn’t sampling every change. However going to high with this value creates delay between color changes. The best results I found came from balancing this value with Morph_steps
Main_colors_only - At first I did not like this feature because it restricted the variety of colors, but as I played around with it and the other settings I really came to like it because it keeps the LED from dimming. Now it is my preferred mode. My only suggestion would be to include more colors. Maybe primary, secondary, and tertiary colors (Red Green Blue, Cyan Magenta Yellow, Azure Violet Rose Orange Chartreuse Spring-Green, and White).
Morph_ambilight - This is probably the most helpful feature of the test tool. It really make the ambilight much easier on the eyes when being used as a bias light.
Morph_steps - Similar to Color_rec_time this feature sets the dissolve or fade time between colors. Again setting this value too high creates delay between the monitor color and the bias light. In a perfect world we would have some way for the blinkstick to look ahead at the upcoming frames, but I don’t think that is possible.
Thanks again for building this I am still fine tuning the values. I have encountered a few bugs and quirks. Firstly the Test Tool only uses the first LED pixel of my BlinkStick Flex. This strip of BlinkStick Flex is 11 pixels long. The Test Tool doesn’t play nicely with all full screen applications. Particularly DirectX programs. It tries to force itself on top which also makes full screen video difficult because the task bar does not hide.
Thanks for your response. I will take a look into all your results later.
In the end it is only a test tool and I think the screen color recognition is much slower than in Arvys BlinkStick Client.
First of all a small change regarding your last point. The tool will not longer try to put itself to the top of all windows.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19452479/BlinkStickDotNetAmbi.zip
Hi Andrew,
please find another update at the same link.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19452479/BlinkStickDotNetAmbi.zip
I´ve added some new “adjustment screws”.
)Beside this the tool will now save your settings. It will also hide to the TNA area when starting the ambilight. Please take a look at the changelog (included in the ZIP file).
To have more then one LED, set the device to mode 3. It can be done with right click to the property grid. The hardware is limited to 8 LEDs in mirror mode. For more it should be software based but this will also slow down the ambilight. Maybe I will take a look into it later.
Feel free to play around with the new options 
Little late here but I think what he means is that he wants hue and saturation to change, but not lightness. HSL instead of RGB. So essentially always the same color as on screen, just brighter.
Late is always better than never Diff, thank you
HSL is a good point, already build a HSL function for brightness control in another project. Will try to implement it in the test tool…
Hi sorry for resurrecting this topic. I formatted a drive and accidentally deleted my copy of the test tool I was using. I went to download it again, but the link is broken. Any chance you could re-upload? Also have you made any further progress on this functionality? I downloaded the blinkstick app, but the ambilight there still doesn’t seem to work right.
Hey Andrew,
yes, dropbox deactivated all public links in the public folder.
Here is a new one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k8j35xtrhu85hpr/BlinkStickDotNetAmbi.zip?dl=0
I´ve made no progress for this tool, but las year I´ve invested some time in a new ambilight tool. But there are also still some issues users reporting. The issues regarding high resolution screens and some 64bit applications.
That is a pretty neat tool! Now I want Blinkstick Flex all the way around my monitor!
I just wish that it didn’t change the brightness. Ideally I just want the color (Hue and maybe saturation) to change not the lightness or value. And to fade so the color changes are not abrupt and noticeable.
Version 2 of this ambi test tool worked pretty well when I put in custom color pallete however for some reason if the screen was black it would register green.
Thanks for all the work you have put into this!
