According to various embodiments, with a specific spatial location and device control address, a model of the space may be built and 2d or 3d effects (for example a spherical explosion wave from the center of the room propagating to my ambient light sources mounted on the walls) may be applied. Applying the effect may for example be taking a 3d animation and using voxel information to control the light sources. In 2d, a light source would correspond to a pixel.

According to various embodiments, one or more of the following steps may be performed to achieve this result:

- A user may take a photo of an environment in which the light sources are provided (for example of the user's desktop);
- Using computer vision techniques, the system may identify relative spatial locations of all system light-able elements (in other words: of all light sources) in the scene;
- The system may take advantage of known device geometries (for example of the devices with the light sources) to optimize the object recognition task;
- The system may present a lighting authoring system to the user that allows the user to choose multi-device wide effects;
- The system may take into consideration spatial relationships to modulate timing and other color space parameters to smoothly span the space;
- Alternative to a photo or still image, a user may take a video to better identify participating devices and further analyze and compensate for any dynamic constraints a device may have;
- In the case of using a video, the system may use a dynamic test pattern for calibration purposes and optimizing spatial segmentation. For example, the system may use the dynamic pattern to obtain more reliable and accurate spatial resolution and temporal response of lighting enabled devices in the space.

It will be understood that a user may be able to scan an entire space, i.e., may not be constrained to a desktop to identify all lightable devices (in other words: all devices with a light source; in other words: all light source devices).

According to various embodiments, devices and methods may take advantage of several device aspects:

- knowledge of the exact geometry of the device due to precise device identification;
- with this additional knowledge, there may also be knowledge of device orientation which may provide precise rotation (in other words: orientation) and position of each of the lighting elements (this may be accomplished based on a combination of real device modelling and 3D image processing techniques);
- lighting signatures may be sent for the purposes of identification such that the system making it more robust to ambient light interference.

According to various embodiments, an entire scene may be represented using 3D modelling. These models maybe used in multi-view authoring environments or head mounted displays for virtual reality and augmented reality systems to provide further device alignment and locations.

According to various embodiments, access to precise 3D models of identified devices may be provided, and thus, exact model representations may be overlaid in the image based scene to achieve precise registration of the model and the real-world.

According to various embodiments, devices and methods may take advantage of specific device performance characteristics and device capabilities to tune spatially distributed effects across devices. For example, with knowledge of the specific devices, embedded effects or specialized lighting delays may be invoked to further enhance the results. For example, the devices themselves may be adapted to achieve the best result in the target environment.

According to various embodiments, if the target devices have interactive capabilities, interactions with a specific device may trigger system wide effects. For example, the effects need not be triggered from a central location.

According to various embodiments, devices and methods may be provided for scene authoring. With known spatial relationships and a 2D image based map of the area to be lit, the user may apply 2D dynamic effects over the image to generate lighting effects mapped to the devices. If a 3D representation of the space exists, 3D lighting effects may be applied in the same manner.

According to various embodiments, a user may configure lighting effects across multiple devices with controllable lighting sources such that a coordinated seamless lighting effect flows through multiple devices to create a 2D or 3D lighting effect.

Various embodiments may be implemented in the form of an app (application), for example a mobile phone application, or a software on any other kind of computing system.

Various embodiments (for example in an application) may integrate all input devices and may have the capability of lighting the input device, e.g., light bulb, mouse pad, mouse, keyboard, keypads, controller, monitor, CPU (central processing unit) case, etc., by detecting these devices.

The user may take a picture or a video of the layout of these devices and the application may compute the relative location and dimensions of each detected input device. Once computed, the user may configure a lighting effect such as a propagating wave, breathing, spectrum, etc. lighting effect. The result may be a synchronized, coordinated and animated user-configured lighting effect that transitions well across all detected input devices to provide user with an immersive user experience while gaming or just simply using the computer.

FIG. 2 shows a diagram 200 illustrating an overview of a method according to various embodiments. In 202, a scene generator (or editor) may find locations, may find dev (device) char (characteristics), and may generate effects. In 204, a scene may be created, based on information on physical locations, timing information, and effects. In 206, a controller (which may be referred to as an engine; for example a Chroma Engine) may turn on/off lights, for example based on identifying (in other words: knowing) which devices including a light source are connected.

According to various embodiments, the generator may take as inputs: a computer image or video; mechanical information from (or of) the devices (such as dimensions, spatial location etc.); and/or an effects library including image overlays state images or image overlays dynamic videos.

According to various embodiments, the generator may provide as outputs: a scene description data structure; light array locations; and/or light devices characteristics (for example hue color response or timing information).

The following examples pertain to further embodiments.

Example 1 is a control method comprising: determining geometric information about respective geometries of respective housings of a plurality of light sources; determining a photographic representation of an environment in which the plurality of light sources are provided; determining spatial information about the plurality of light sources based on the geometric information and based on the photographic representation; determining control information for the plurality of light sources based on the spatial information; and controlling the plurality of light sources based on the control information.