DreamScreen TV

Browsing around Reddit this afternoon I ran across a relatively new product that looks to be pretty neat. It’s called DreamScreen. Basically it’s a series of LEDs that you stick on the back of your TV like you would with a Hue strip. The main difference is that with DreamScreen they include an HDMI splitter. You hook the DreamScreen HDMI controller into it along with your video source (Fire TV, Chromecast, an HDMI cable from your AV receiver, whatever you want) and then run that to your TV. The DreamScreen controller has Bluetooth so you can pair your phone (android or ios) to it and manually control the lights as well as to set it to audio or video mode. It looks like the developers are also working on allowing you to control your Hue lights when it’s in Ambient mode as well.

Since you are running both your source and controller through the splitter, it reacts to the digital content that goes through and judging from the video (and a couple of unboxing videos on Youtube) it reacts fairly quick to changes in lighting on the TV. Here’s a promo video from their web site.

This was a Kickstarter that is over now but you can pre order the LEDs and controller from their web site, linked at the bottom of the post. It’s not terribly expensive, starting at $139 for enough to fit a 32-42″ TV and there are two larger sizes as well. You can also just order replacement or extra LEDs as well. They start at $50 which is comparable to RGB LEDs that you might pick up at Home Depot or Amazon. Yeah, you can get the Milights that are much cheaper but they aren’t specifically made for your TV.

Hoping I can pick up a set after payday, although it might wait a while. Have a roof to replace 🙁 but that’s another story for another day.

Anyway, once I’m finished posting this I’m going to shoot them an email or tweet as I have some questions. It would be nice if there was an api that I could access so as to control them from Homeseer or through MQTT and then back to HS. I haven’t thoroughly looked around their site yet so there very well may be one. At the very least I could always power the LEDs with a Zwave plug for on/off control. I’ll update the post with whatever info that they send me.

DreamScreen

 

 

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.