Upcycling Broken TV's

MAKING LED LAMPS FROM TV'S WITH BROKEN LCD SCREENS


This all started because of watching a youtube video by DIYperks about reusing busted laptop screens with LED backlights, so after toying with one of those and seeing a $9 monitor at a pawn shop things began to get interesting. I was able to wire up the monitor with a switch to turn the LED backlight on and off (I'm leaving out a few details, don't worry it's completely safe!). I have a friend who's living close to Seattle right now and was complaining about the weather so I sent him the monitor to serve as a source of artificial sunlight on those gloomy days, you know all 7 in the week up there.

TV's as it turns out are setup very similar to the monitor and through further investigation I have found a way to control the LED brightness using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) from arduino boards to the factory power supplies powerign the LED's in the TV's. I intend to add infrared remote input to the arduino to set the desired brightness level as well as maybe buttons or an encoder or potentiometer on the side. I have considered reusing the TV speakers in the TV enclosure as seperate bluetooth speakers for fun, but I am unsure if I could setup volume control from the IR remote and arduino as well. I will update as I progress.

LED Lamps from TV's

What can you do with a TV that has a broken screen? Remove it and work some wiring magic to turn it into an LED lamp!