Title pretty much says it all. I have 2.5 x 2.5 in square post with an id of 2". Right now I'm going to hack up some solar lights that fit inside of the posts. I'll be removing the solar component
s and the small LED bulb and swapping it with a G4 bulb and harness running low voltage. These are all out at the bottom of my driveway by my gate.
This morning the idea of being able to control the color intrigue me so I started hunting for rgbw ZigBee/rgbw bulbs with ZigBee controller that were small enough to fit inside of this 2-in space while being 12 volts. Not coming up with much. Ill leave pictures of the post and the solar light that I'm going to hack up.
I'd like to keep this all low voltage. I can build whatever harness that the bulb base requires as the harnesses are all over eBay.
I’ve converted about 8 solar bollards over to smart lights.
Mine are rgb so only 4 wire. I cut the light out of the strip leaving about 4 inches of wire on each side. Soldered on 4 wire conductor and ran both sets of wires out the bottom. I then terminated each with a male and female waterproof 4 pin connector. So adding more lights is just a matter of plugging in another unit on what ever length jumper I need. The 4 pin male and female connectors were pretty cheap on Amazon. Sadly they were not the exact same size as the 4 pin connector on the zigbee module so had to rewire that too.
Costco sell a 4 pack of wifi control RGBW lights for like 100 bucks. I wish there was a way to integrate those over to HE. Would have saved me hours!
I’ve done a couple versions. I like the taller one. A little more expensive but looks better.
I think I have a solution. Found these MR13 12v ZigBee rgbw bulbs. They measure 1.97" across so they can fit snug down inside the post.
I'll then gut the solar post lights of all it's hardware. The bulbs shining up through the post should glow nicely through the cheap post lights. I think I'm going to remove the whole top solar section and replace it with a 1/4 cap of square bluestone or make something out of Azek.
The bulbs aren't cheap at $30 each but I can use them in some of my landscape lights as well if the project doesn't turn out right.
