Raspberry Pi Project Syncs Philips Hue Lights With Your TV Using HDMI

(Image credit: MCPCapitalLLC)

If you're a movie buff, designing the perfect home theater is a must! This project, created by MCPCapitalLLC, uses a Raspberry Pi to create ambient lighting that matches whatever you're watching on TV.

The setup is known as Harmonize Project. It interprets HDMI input from your TV with the Pi to determine what color to send to the Phillips Hue bridge.

A demo of the project was released in December, but this week the source code was officially made available for anyone interested in recreating the project at home.

Harmonize Project was tested with a Raspberry Pi 4B and uses Python to control the Phillips Hue Lights. There are multiple lights that change depending on the average pixel color relative to their physical location to the TV.

If you want to recreate this project at home, you'll need a Raspberry Pi, Philips Hue lights, an HDMI splitter, an HDMI capture card and at least 512 MB of RAM. Check out the full source code on Github to see how it works and get started. Be sure to follow the Harmonize Project channel on YouTube for future updates.

Ash Hill
Freelance News and Features Writer

Ash Hill is a Freelance News and Features Writer at Tom's Hardware US. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting.

  • mariusmotea
    This can be a 100% Raspberry pi project by replacing Philips Hue lights with diyhue https://diyhue.org/
    Reply