Idea of the day: install led strips under my stair steps... Probably zigbee led strips to control them with my HE
Browsed here but more I read, more I'm confused
Can you clarify with some simple answers ?
HE C-5 (Canada) without any additional Philips hue bridge/hub/right name for it.
Tradfri repeaters everywhere, lutron caseta, some Z-wave and zigbee devices.
1- Does HE accepts natively Zigbee HA & ZLL devices ?
2- if both accepted, is HA better than ZLL ? Or Vice-versa ? Or no preference ? (Or stupid question)
3- Does HE accepts natively RGBW controlers ? RGBWW controlers ? RGB+CCT controlers ?
4- Does HE prefers RGBW / RGBWW / RGB+CCT (following answer 2)
5- Does HE able to control brightness/hue of those led strips if recognized by the hub ?
your answers will certainly clarify things here.
Thank you
Yes....but ZLL devices are not recommended to be joined to the hub if you have ZHA devices as well. ZLL bulbs are frequently very poor repeaters for ZHA messages causing messages to get dropped on your network. So, use at your own risk. It's recommended to keep ZLL devices on a separate Hubitatt hub or on a Hue Bridge.
Yes.
No.
if the device is supported, yes. But you would have to have a device for which Hubitat has a driver for.
Is your answer different if the ZLL device is a controler and not a bulb ? Because led strips are not zigbee by themselves, the controler is.
About the driver, does it mean that my choice (except if I write/find a driver who works with HE) is limited to the controlers listed in HE doc ? Or a generic zigbee driver could be ok (but I don't want to just switch ON/OFF, I need to change brightness/color as well) ?
Yes, this problem has only been noted for bulbs and light strips, specifically Osram/Sylvania/Hue and GE link.
We have not seen any issues so far with standalone zigbee controllers.
Zigbee devices in general are pretty good in regards to implementing the commands that are part of any given cluster, so typically these drivers can be used with any appropriate device.
For devices that we don't have listed in our compatibility list the device will generally pick the incorrect driver, in which case you can manually change to the correct driver, then click configure to set the required device parameters.
In regards to color devices we have three classes of drivers:
RGB, color only
CT, color temperature only
RGBW, color and color temperature
as to zigbee application profiles, the following all work:
ZHA, ZLL Zigbee 3.0
We don't support Light Link, however we don't prevent using this from device to device, the hub itself won't respond to or generate any light link commands.
Received today a Gledopto Zigbee Controller , model GL-C-008S with a set of led strips (RGB+W+C), 21W/m, 90led/m 24V. Hooked to a 24V PS
Hubitat recognized it after 5 seconds [Generic Zigbee CT Bulb (dev)]. Put some dashboard tiles and played with them.
Seems OK. I'm not the most accurate guy for that (colorblind), but I can change the intensity and the colors.
So, a good cheap choice (50 USD for the controller and the 5m strip). for my stairs project.
If the strip is truly RGBW, then you will want to change the driver to Generic Zigbee RGBW Light. The CT bulb driver is for Color Temp bulbs and you won't get the RGB commands in that one. So, I don't think it would actually set the colors to Red or Blue or Green for example.
Thank you !
Hmmm, it shows you my colors abilities (strong deutan)
You replied faster than my wife for checking them...
Btw, which tile should I put on the dashboard to control these colors ?
*Edit: on the updated device (set to RGBW), I was able to change the colors to a full blue (even for me)... In fact, it's written as violet. Ok, fine, violet.
*Edit2: I can play with colors ! Yeah.. But I know that my wife will be depressed, just looking at the colors I choose - always wrong
Here I am again, struggling with colors and led chips.
I set virtual buttons to choose between colors:
B1: White
B2: Blue
B3: Yellow
B4: BrightWhite
from B1 to B3, I have to choose (RM4) between colors and this choice change the colors of 1 set of leds
However, if I want to choose a bright white, I need to choose a temperature (in this case 1500K) and this option shuts down the previous leds (colors) and opens another set of leds.
If I choose a temperature > 2000K, a third set of led (more yellowish)) opens in conjunction of the second set.
Does it mean that colors are generated only by a set of leds ( controlled by "colors") and white/bright white light is generated only through another set of leds (controlled by "temperature") ?
Is it possible to switch them all ON to obtain a mix of colors and white (set #1, set #2 and/or set#3) and a more equal dispersion of light ?
And my last philosphical question: is it some point that a set of mixed colors (from leds set #1) are equal to a set of a certain temperature (from leds set #1 and/or #2) ?
I posted in another thread about LEDs about being cautious of LEDs that had separate chips for White and Warm White. You must not have seen that one. It will all come down to what your controller supports in the end. However, you are going to get the best whites using the W and WW channels. That's why the strip has them. Your strip has 1 chip for w and WW and one chip for RBG, correct? If so, you wouldn't want to try and produce whites with the RGB chip as it will NEVER end up matching the W/WW chip. No matter how long you tinkered with the settings, you're only ever going to get close, and that his why the strip has the other chip. Most likely you will not be able to overcome this with the hardware you have. What you need is a strip like this:
This is a strip where all 4 channels are one one chip. It's a Warm White. Then, if you try to go cooler (higher kelvin number), it adds in the blue channel. And to go warmer still (lower kelvin number) it mixes in the green and the red (yellow) channels. But that is only if your controller can be set up to handle it. I am not familiar with the controller you linked to so I'm not sure how it can be configured for each type of LED strip.
Where are you using the strip? will it be visible or will it be under a cabinet or above a shelf? In other words, will you be able to look directly at the LED strip or only on the light that it produces?
I have this kind of leds: 1 multicolor chip surrounded by 2 (kind of yellow) chips.
The led will be put under steps of an open stair like pictured, so no direct view. And the stairs will be put from my basement to my first floor, It's not the masterpiece of the house!
I'm not a big fan of multicolored changing lights and I'll be probably be a classic user: just put a light accent when sunset, far from a nighclub...
*Edit: if I choose 1500K, one (yellow) chip produces a nice bright white light
If I increase the K rate (1500+), the second (yellow) chip lights up and produces some kind of yellowish light, added to the white from the first chip.
*Edit within Edit (...): sounds strange to me: normally increasing the temperature will make that light more blueish, no ? 5000K, yellow and 1500K white, not the opposite ?
*Edit 2: the wiring was wrong and the manufacturer (gledopto) made a mistake in its own drawings.... So I changed the wiring and now the result is as expected: from 1500K to 5000K => yellowish to bright white !
In other cases, any colored light (HE, choose color) is produced by the multicolored chip and the yellow chips are both shutting down. Hope it helps.
Adding a bit to the fun here… I have a Gledopto GL-C-001P that I'm testing as a PWM dimmer for some LED strips. I particularly was interested in testing this model as it has an adjustable PWM frequency up to 8kHz and it is quite small for its current capacity.
What I believe that I have discovered about this dimmer and all other dimmers that are served by HE's Advanced ZigBee drivers is that the CCT range is fixed arbitrarily. So for example, if I connect color temperature adjustable LED tape (two circuits, warm white and cool white) then set the dimmer to its CCT mode, I can mix the output of the two circuits to arrive at some color temperature between the two extremes as the emitters populated on the tape. However that range is arbitrary and not configurable. So when I connect tape that is 2700K–6500K and the driver exposes 2200K–7000K there is no way to adjust preferences to make those match. So picking 2200K in the UI I get 2700K produced by my LED tape because that's all it can do. If I pick 2700K I get 3700K as measured on a color temperature meter because again the capabilities of the tape and the CCT range as exposed by the driver do not match. Electrically everything is correct and performing perfectly. But this mismatch makes this whole setup unusable. Worse yet — if you try to use LED tape that's designed for "dim-to-warm" effects with only a narrow 1800K–3500K you have a huge mismatch in the exposed range vs the characteristics of the emitters.
So what can we do? Is it possible to add a preference for the min/max CCT range of the tape that you've connected? This also has a profound effect when using RGB+W or RGB+W+W tape where you would have to be able to set the CCT of the white emitters to mix color properly. The RGBGenie Z-Wave dimmers do this quite nicely if I remember correctly from reading those threads. I'll also add that another option is to simply expose the 5 available circuits as 5 separate dimmers so that different UI and logic can be applied to this use case. That's less complete but at least it won't be plain wrong when looking at the status on a dashboard or trying to create a scene with lots of color-capable fixtures and bulbs where you want to try to match things.
