LED light strips over & under two seperate sets of cabinets

A recent post inspired me to research installing led lighting above & below my kitchen cabinets. Lighting above the cabinets would be somewhat a night light at a dim level. These lights would turn off when the kitchen switch is turned on, turn on when the kitchen switch is turned off and only operate after sunset. The lights under the cabinet would also be at a dim level (with the same sunrise/sunset parameter) but would get brighter or turn on when the kitchen light is turned on. I would describe this as 4 zones due to a entryway separating the cabinets and flooring in the attic making it impossible to hardwire them together. Is there a controller that can operate two zones independently? Everything I have so far is z-wave and I would like to stay on that path. Any suggestions on a controller or controllers & led strips?

You can use a device like this, which is basically a z-wave RGBW tape light decoder. 1 zone, 1 controller. How you control them as groups or independently from there is only limited to your imagination through rule machine or scenes/groups.

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I know you want z-wave.... but I guess I don't understand the controller question. Sengled LED light strips can be controlled independently (or in groups) with RM, webcore, or the Sengled app. You would not need a controller. They are Zigbee. They come in multiple lengths and can be trimmer and/or joined together. You would not need a controller for these other than a zigbee hub. I use them around the inside of my closet doors for automatic lighting when opening/closing the closet door. I really like these lights, and I think they would perform perfectly for your situation. That is, if you would consider zigbee. Just my 0.02 cents.

Like @Pantheon I went Zigbee with the Sylvania lights strips, they have worked well for us. I ran them under the Kitchen cabinets and they work very well for under cabinet lighting. Very similar to the Sengled.

As others have mentioned with any combination of rule engines you can do what you mentioned in your OP, no problem.

I have this very same setup -- warm white LED strips above and below two sets of kitchen cabinets -- and use a single Z-Wave Fibaro RGBW module to govern them. Each LED strip is powered by one of the R-B-G-W channels.

Integrates perfectly with Hubitat, and as others have already pointed out, these things are very straightforward to integrate into rules, etc. For my own purposes, I just use Mirror Me app to have the LED strips go on/off and dim to match the status and brightness of nearby bar lights, which are governed by a Z-Wave wall switch.

Did the same several years ago using Hue. These new options seems simpler/cheaper though.

Doesn't inovelli have zwave light strips?

They do.

https://inovelli.com/red-series-smart-led-strip/

I do something similar but with motion sensors and modes. I use hub variables to change the color temperature, level, and duration based on the time of day. That rule looks like this:

You can see how the lights will change from bright white in the morning to warm white at night. The duration values are still under test. The only one that is set in stone is for bedtime. It is zero so that the lights will turn off as soon as the motion detector goes inactive.

Then each room has a rule similar to this:

You could do something similar triggering off your switch. I expect you would drop the duration and use the off condition instead. The color temp and level part might be useful for your setup. You would likely use two variables for the level - one for the under and one for the over lights. That way you can set the intensities independently.

Of course It might be overkill for one room but I like the consistency across the house.

I'm still hung up on what to buy, and now Lifx just got thrown in the mix. Inovelli (so far) is the best fit for my cabinets (microwave in the way). They have a "T" shaped connector that I think I can use to split the strip around it. How easy (or hard) is it to set up and configure Inovelli led strips for this purpose? This would be my very first step out of simple automation rules.

For my kitchen renovation a year ago (Recommendations for kitchen remodeling (2020)), I tried the ZEN31 mentioned by @JoshBI555 and couldn't get it reliably work for me with my LED strips. You can see me asking some questions about it in my thread. I was pulling my hair out up to just before the electrician was installing all the lighting. Thankfully, TheSmartestHouse let me return it.

Like @Pantheon and @terminal3, I ended up going with the Sylvania lights strips. They are Zigbee and they just worked for me. You can get a sense of how they look in the video I linked in Red Alert.

I didn't consider the Inovelli Z-wave strips because they weren't released until right after our kitchen project was done. I ended up buying one strip and it just worked for me out of the box. If I was doing this over right now, I would probably have gone with these (especially since I put in 10 Inovelli Red Dimmers as part of the kitchen project).

I also included some under cabinet LED strips in my night light mode scenes because they make an excellent low-power indirect light to walk through the kitchen by at night.

On the other hand, I never made use of the four analog/digital inputs of my Fibaro RGBW controller, which an automation enthusiast could go nuts with.

@LibraSun , I just reread this entire post and you answered my controller question. So I can run more than one strip with a controller? If i get two white strips and plug them into any two channels I can control them independently?

Exactly. I do this with four white strips, effectively making my RGBW controller act like a wwww. :slight_smile:

I balance the two "upper cabinet" channels s little dimmer than the lowers.