There are a lot of hacks out there for Ikea’s Dioder LED light set. [Lambertus] wanted to create an easy and economical ambilight while keeping the hardware modifications to a minimum. He also wanted anybody to be able to easily duplicate his work. He recently wrote in to share his successful solution.

The customizations boil down to three main steps: solder the ICSP connector wires to the test points on the Dioder PCB, connect a picture programmer to the ICSP port (and reprogram), and attach a 5V RS-232 device to the ICSP port. The software was the most challenging part of the procedure for [Lambertus]. The PIC16F684 didn’t include the required UART and PWM controllers, so he had to get crafty. thankfully he’s done all the work for us, and lists the required .hex file he created on his site.

By adding support to boblight, his new ambilight is working with his media center very nicely. There’s a little demo video after the break.