Bias Lighting and USB

My family is pretty brutal on the television binge sessions.  A new show will come out on a streaming service and we cancel our weekend plans to watch it.  Not a great strategy for shows like "Black Mirror", since you need a day to digest the episode completely, and maybe a trip to a therapist.  One of the items I kept seeing in smart home social media threads for binge viewing was bias lighting.  It's a neat little hardware add-on for your television that prevents eye strain and assists with contrast.  Grays seem grayer, blacks become blacker.  A neat concept, so I did some more digging.

One of the first things that came to mind was the lingering expectation from Phillips to integrate the Hue color bulbs and LED strips into your smart TV or Roku/Firestick/AppleTV/Chromecast.  It's been referred to as "the immersive viewing experience" on the This Week in Tech (TWiT) podcast a few times.  That is not what bias lighting is.  Bias lighting is an attempt to match the temperature of the lights that illuminate the screen at a reduced lumen by reflecting and diffusing the light source.  That's a pretty direct way of saying that the light is going to be as cold as the florescent tubes that light up mental institutions, but it will be behind something so it won't be as bright, and it helps protect your eyes.

Aggregate 1:
What is bias lighting? 

I added the LED strips to my Amazon shopping cart and went to sell the idea to SWMBO.  After about 45 seconds I realized that she knew more about it than I did, and had probably written a paper on why it should be an OSHA standard to have bias lighting on all computer monitors.  She was already sold, so all I had to do was hit the checkout button.  Here's where things become a little "first world problem".  They sell inexpensive stick-on kits, which are great because I love to save money.  The problem is that it is a one size fits all for a range of sizes.  One that fits a 55 inch TV can also support a 75 inch TV.  You can buy specific lights for your television brand and model, for a price.  But I am unwilling to pay a 300-500% markup to have one that is specific to my TV, which probably requires taking a mounted television down so it can be gently placed on, and the adhesive is then given hours to cure.  So I got the one size fits all.

Aggregate 2:
Extra large LED strip

I went ahead and wrapped my largest TV, with no excess LED light strip to deal with.  Looks great, just have to adjust the angle to prevent a very close and direct reflection of the LEDs on the bottom.  The plug is a cute little integrated USB that plugs straight into the screen and turns on as soon as the TV does.  Next, onto my smaller TV.  I ended up with about 4 feet of excess, and I was able to easily cut it off at the "cut here" mark.  I'm one of those people who grew up with an education of the environmentalist 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  4 feet of copper and LEDs surrounded by plastic shouldn't end up in a landfill, it's wasteful.  So, I did what any geek with a soldering iron would do.  I made another bias light.

Noted in aggregate 1 is the ability to use a single strip in the center of a TV that is not mounted.  One of my kids has an unmounted TV that would be able to make use of the excess.  The trick was to connect it to USB so that it could be plugged in and used just like the others.  The pinout of USB 1 and 2 is dead simple.  You have red (5 volt power), black (ground), green (data in), and white (data out).  We are interested in the red and black.

Aggregate 3:
USB pinout

Caution: I believe certain USB 3 and C cables and interfaces can reach higher than 5 volts without making a data connection, but don't quote me on that.  Verify with the cable manufacturer and do as much homework as necessary if you need to use those cables.  

To connect the USB to LED, simply solder on the red to 5v+ and black to 5v-.  I recommend cutting the USB cable at around 6-12 inches, whatever allows the least amount of bend and doesn't protrude out from the side when plugged in.  The remaining portion of the USB cable can be saved for experiments with serial and network connections or as a replacement for a damaged cable.  Worst case scenario, find an electronics recycling facility or event.  To solder, tin the pad and wire, then solder them together.

Aggregate 4:
Solder wire to board

Once you have soldered everything together, pull the adhesive protection on the LED strip down enough to wrap about an inch of the LED strip with electric tape.  Wrap from an inch above the solder to an inch below where the USB cable was cut open.  Plug it in to verify that everything lights up, I recommend an appropriate USB power adapter that is plugged into a socket that won't take down all of your power if you have a short circuit.  I'd show pictures of the final product, but I'd get yelled at by a 12 year old about how I wrecked his game of Fortnight.  The luminoodle is tuned for USB, and is ready for this project.  I'm so glad I didn't have to add tiny surface mounted garbage to make this work.

Note:  Most TVs are USB 2, which can be determined by the color of the USB interface on the TV.  White is 1, black is 2, blue is 3, red is the newfangled version referred to as C (as of this post).   Make sure you verify and test with each type prior to leaving it plugged in without supervision.  Don't burn down your house because you refuse to test something you built out of spare parts.