hyperion.ng VS HyperHDR

You can DIY your own with a IC-based RGB/RGBW strip and a rPi or x86 PC + ESP microcontroller using software like Hyperion or HyperHDR, combined with WLED.

You might be able to run an app on your TV, but unless you root it, you will be limited to DRM-free streams. If you have a spare Wyze and HDMI capture card, this is probably the easiest way to grab the video stream. There's no need to run piOS; Hyperion will run fine under Linux, MacOS or Windows using the latest release.

What other ambient light implementations are out there? A cursor look suggest hyperion.ng maybe?

Yeah the github page is a much better starting point.

Creating an ambilight effect requires you to have something that can read the screen to determine what lights to show, so that basically requires decoding and processing a video stream in real time which is beyond the capabilities of most typical MCU's like those used for WLED. There is a project called Hyperion but that requires a full Raspberry Pi and a USB HDMI capture card. There are lots of tutorials for this on YouTube

This is the official repo: https://github.com/hyperion-project/hyperion.ng

Any reason you decided to "reinvent the wheel" instead of using an existing solution like Prismatic or Hyperion?

You can DIY your own with a IC-based RGB/RGBW strip and a rPi or x86 PC + ESP microcontroller using software like Hyperion or HyperHDR, combined with WLED.

This page https://github.com/awawa-dev/HyperHDR/wiki/Level-Shifter shows that a level shifter (3v3 to 5v) is needed for your lights.

If you're interested in a raspberry pi option using an hdmi splitter https://www.hyperhdr.eu

I spent a lot of time looking into this. Didn't want to lose HRD to implement Hyperion. I found the HyperHDR fork. Which will convert HRD signal to SDR and works really well out of the box. only thing I had to update was to turn the brightness down in the capture settings. Found a HDMI splitter on Amazon that handles CEC pass through. I lost Dolby Vision, because I couldn't find a splitter that will downgrade dolby vision to 1080p for the capture card. But I had to be honest with myself, I can't tell the difference between Dolby Vision and HDR 10+. Now I have an ambient light solution that allows me to keep HDR without dropping big bucks on something like HD Fury. Very Happy, works with HA still too.