Hi, am new to Hubitat with the C8 Pro arriving tomorrow. We do DMX lighting with Pharos controllers (they are DMX).
I have to get some strip lights running a faint water flowing movement, this raises 2-3 issues which am hoping some here know about.
LED
So which LED strips, they need to be able to do all colors and White / White (the Aqara will do that, and maybe Philips Hue?
The Aqara though only seems to do 20cm strips of color change, we really like to be able to have each LED controlled separate for this slow feature, ive not seen the Philips Hue strips run as yet.
Will Hubitat be able to get this granual with me able to design how i need to the LED to act, when we do this in Pharos we normally take a flame effect and play with the speed, colors and brightness as well as fade between them to get what we need, but then Pharos is designed for that kinda scene.
Will Philips Hue allow me tight control of each LED to change with a scene, will we need the bridge or will Hubitat see the LED strip directly? also i notice many seem to be "Generic RGB" so does Hubitat allow control of the White / White aspect of the LED strip as well?
Have you looked at Govee? There’s a community app available. With this driver, you can control your Govee devices on dashboards or integrate them into automations using Rule Machine or Webcore.
So i think we may be misunderstanding what Hubitat will do for you. You still need a led controller for Hubitat to talk to. Is there a Pharos Integration. Does it have an API.
Govee also includes powersupply and controller probably similar to Pharos in a way.
You would need to dig through the various Govee products to find what best matches your needs though you did limit it allot by saying you want RGBICWW strips. Probably not many of them. I am also not sure Govee will meet you pixel or led density request. I would suggest looking at the Govee Pro 2 or the Cob strips to see if they will work.
I would you first check if Pharos has a API you can use to control from Hubitat. Then you need a integration/driver written if it doesn't already exist.
Pharos was given as thats the hardware we use outside of the home for DMX, we are not wanting to integrate or go near that technology or those DMX lights.
Ive seen many lamps with Zigbee built in that Hubitat will talk to directly so it doesnt need a "controller" for all lights.
We still have some confusion. There are three network protocals that the hub will use to talk to a controller to manipulate a led strip/device. They are Zigbee, Zwave, or ip over a LAN or Wifi. Reguardless of which of those you use the device that recieves that command then tells the led strip/device how to create the color/effect is a controller. You may not see a controller on a device like a bulb, but it still has one.
RGBIC makes the controller allot more complicated as it needs to send a data signal to each pixel to tell the leds of a pixel what to do.
Some companies like Govee or Hue have there own controllers while there are also open source controllers like wled or pixelblaze you can create yourself.
Sounds like a symantec, a "controller" would be a "bridge", Hue has a bridge, however most lights ive seen have the protocol right in the device, its a circuit board, you can call it a controller, driver, protocol stack, command center... either way that light doesnt need a bridge (which was known as a controller until somewhere down time someone decided it was no longer called a controller, how the bridge "controls" all the lights under it).
Back to the original question, can Hubistat control a string of lights with a designed scene, how it does this really doenst worry me if it uses a date, timecode, DMX signal delay i am not worried or more what i know it to be would be a single signal string with an address code in it (as we have used those ICs in the DMX systems with pixel map generators such as the Pharos VLC50 units which generally are DMX, ArtNET, Dali or some other industry time over copper signal control hardware).
If the device you want to use has a integration or driver on Hubitat, hubitat can control it in within the limits of the integration or driver. The limitation is based on what your device can support and if the integration/driver has been coded to handle it.
The 3 main platforms used with hubitat that I am aware of as previously mentioned are Pixelblase, WLED, and Govee. Most zigbee and zwave adapter/controllers/bridge ect that are used do not support RGBIC and so don't apply to your ask.
You will want to research what each of those platforms can do to enable RGBIC control of the strip, and then look into if the drivers support the level of control you are asking for. Govee is somewhat simplistic, but does have allot of prebuilt effects already loaded on their device. If you use the Govee Integration linked above it has the ability to allow you to activate preloaded scenes as well as scenes you have created through the Govee Home app. I suspect based on some of the stuff you are saying you will want more granular control then what Govee offers though.
These look interesting, (LED Strip M1), i see is 60 LED per meter and matter so i assume no Bridge required? Altough appears to be 4 color only (RGB White) is this correct?
I’m not entirely familiar with all the details of the M1 LED strip, so I can’t confidently answer your questions. That said, it’s an exciting product, and it sounds like you’re exploring some great features! To get the most accurate and detailed information, I recommend checking out the Govee Integration V2 forum. The community there is incredibly knowledgeable, and I’m sure someone can provide the insights you’re looking for. Best of luck with your project—it sounds awesome!
The M1 was the first device Govee produced with Matter support. Technically you can connect Govee Matter devices directly to Hubitat, but Hubitat is not a matter commissioner so that may cause problems if you desire to have the device paired with matter to multiple environments. Matter also has nothing included to control RGB IC functions so it all of it's commands will be across the entire strip.
The M1 Strip is RGBW. You can confirm that information on Govee's website. They do a pretty good job of saying what colors their led's can produce. Most are not RGBWW.
Thank, thats a pain (no individual control). Have decided to go down the ESP32 / WLED route with an LED strip, ive not looked at WLED enough yet but am hoping i can create a scene in it then call that with Habitat to turn on a screne the WLED pushes to the LED strip. Plan on getting a WLED controller to take a look at it, ive seen it do some good stuff with TV signals, am hoping.
The other more complicated way will be to have those LEDs driving by DMX (we can create scenes in that environment way easier as way more familiar with it) and have that controlled by Hubitat but that will be way more work than WLED mostly as its in home automation side of stuff so has more work and apps created for it.
Pharos have a whole API that pre-created scenes can be called on an off by http POST or GET API layer, Pharos is not a controller i want using this though, they are not cheap (starting at $4000), there more aimed at real complicated displays.
Already created the scene in Nicolaudie ESA Pro 2 software, however thats DMX and not so sure on the calls to remote access them or the scenes (as it would be there DMX hardware on a LAN that is then talking to a LED strop controller (for which i would need to find)
You can create a scene in wled and have hubitat send it through the wled controller to the led strip. That info for a wled device is held in hubitat state variable called 'effects' and looks like this for my RGB strip:
The wled driver allows you to set the effect by sending an index into the array. Looks like this in the wled driver gui, where FX ID is the array index:
I'm using the QuinLED-Dig-Octa controller with wled to control eight 24V strips from my Hubitat C7. This config worked fine with my one WS2811 RGB strip: BTF 12V, 144 led/m, 5m. This BTF FCOB CCT for white light worked fine but wasn't bright enough to replace analog strips for general lighting. You probably won't like the FCOB strips since they have 10-20 leds per addressable zone (though CCT is 576 led/m and RGB is 720 led/m).
I'm remodeling my condo and trying to use led strips exclusively instead of canned lights in the ceiling (and walls). I think the analog FCOB strips are bright enough but still have some testing to do. Lighting vendors are pushing DMX strips for white light. You may be able to get them talking to Hubitat but it's messy: DMX <--> analog 0-10V converter <--> EuControls Zigbee Certified 20A Indoor Lighting Controller <--> Hubitat zigbee driver. You would have to do some custom programming to turn a voltage level into a scene.
