Hi,

I want to be able to control LED lights to change color by averaging the color from a webcam. I found this tutorial on ambient lighting which changes the color based on the average of the computer screen: http://siliconrepublic.blogspot.com/2011/02/arduino-based-pc-ambient-lighting.html

Right now it works pretty well and I am just opening QuickTime and full screening my webcam, which basically does the trick... but I wanted to know if it would be smoother if the code just took the information directly from the webcam opposed to the screen displaying the webcam?... does that make sense?


Also in my experience the color of the LEDS is usually red when the screen is mostly black....

Below is the code for arduino and processing that I got from the link I posted above.

Arduino:

1.  //Developed by Rajarshi Roy
   int red, green, blue; //red, green and blue values
   int RedPin = 10; //Red: PWM pin 10
   int GreenPin = 11; //Green: PWM pin 11
   int BluePin = 9; //Blue: PWM pin 9
   void setup()
   {
   Serial.begin(9600);
   //initial values (no significance)
   int red = 255;
   int blue = 255;
   int green = 255;
   }
   
   void loop()
   {
   //protocol expects data in format of 4 bytes
   //(xff) as a marker to ensure proper synchronization always
   //followed by red, green, blue bytes
   if (Serial.available()>=4) {
    if(Serial.read() == 0xff){
    red = Serial.read();
    green= Serial.read();
    blue = Serial.read();
    }
   }
   //finally control led brightness through pulse-width modulation
   analogWrite (RedPin, red);
   analogWrite (GreenPin, green);
   analogWrite (BluePin, blue);
   delay(10); //just to be safe
   }