I would like to set an automation that changes the led strip color to green, yellow, orange and red after a few minutes. I also need a warm white color for night usage.
This is the first led strip i'm buying so I'm not familiar with the options and features, but i need to be able to control the color tone and brightness preferably with zigbee and entirely from hubitat. I don't want to use third party hubs/apps.
I also read about controllers and i'm not quite understand why i need it, but i want to purchase a whole package led strip without addons.
Looking for a two different lengths, up to two meters and another for 15 meters.
Do you know what your density of led's needs to be?
Are you wanting any animation with your LED strips?
Do you expect them to always be one color? or do you want to be able to have parts different colors
The controller is what tells your strip what color to display, and possibly what brightness to be. If you get a RGBICW strip it will also send commands to the pixes to do their specific animation/action if needed.
A LED strip will generally consist of 3 parts. The strip that has the individual LED's, the controller to control the LED's, and then a power supply to power the strip.
Potentially a controller wouldn't be needed if the strip was a single color and you hard wired the power supply directly to them, but then they would always be on unless you disconnected the Power supply.
I use Govee allot and manage the integration for it. You would need to use their app for the initial setup of the device, but once that is done Hubitat can do it all. They would use Wifi instead of Zigbee as well so keep that in mind.
That is the reason i like Govee as they are basically full featured completed packages that make it easy. Just unpackage it and mount it.
You may find it hard to find a zigbee, or zwave based controllers. Most strips now are using IC's and using more advanced controllers like WLED, Govee, or Pixelblaze.
Would it be hard to get your wifi in better shape to help with choices.
There are a variety of ways to accomplish this from diffusers to COB strips that have hundreds or thousands of LED's in a small amount of space. Higher density though means more heat and higher power requirements. Density can be a balancing act.
Most more advanced LED strips with pixels split by IC's will come with controllers to provide fluid animations with the strips. It can really enhance ambiance.
The trend is to make everything RGBIC now with fancy controllers. That is at least most of what you will find now. You can find more basic LED strips that do one color at a time, or you may need DIY it.
I don't believe there are any readily available ones. You might be able to find one but the controller is going to use its own app. I rely on Govee using @mavrrick58 's outstanding integration but mostly I use WLED-controlled individually addressable LEDs using WiFi ESP Board-type device as controller. There's a WLED community Hubitat integration also.
Both of those options do more than just one color for the entire strip.
I understand that you prefer Zigbee and want to purchase a whole package LED strip without add ons. Understand, though, that, in general, the hardware LED strip choice is really independent from the automation / control issue.
Simply FYI, just to give you some ideas, here is one of my Rules for controlling vanity undercounter LED light strips in our home. It's to indicate the litter drawer fullness level for our Litter Robot 3, but it may give you some ideas. Separate Rules cause flashing when faults occur, but that's not essential for understanding the color change features.
You can buy the lightstrip that you want then find a controller that has the right outputs. Individually addressable LEDs have +, -, and data wires whereas ones that can only do one color at a time are Red, Blue, Green, White, + or similar. You have to make sure the wiring scheme of your LEDs match the wiring scheme of your controller. I have not seen a Zigbee controller for individually addressable LEDs; only single color but I have not used any of those personally.
Here is a Zigbee 3.0 controller from Gledapto on amazon. That will be a good controller for whatever you want to do. Looks like it should support whatever kind of strip you want to connect. Just make sure the strip isn't IC based and uses either a 12 or 24 volts. You should probably look at 24v so you can get as close to the range you are wanting as possible.
Also thinking about power make sure you figure out the power requirements and get a power supply with enough load ability for the strip you are connecting.
After a lot of searchIng, reading and your directions of course i think i chose a power supply, controller and led strip.
I have a few questions just to make sure i made the right choice.
Are all the items compatible to one another and can be controlled fully via HE?
Do i need to purchase any other products? I saw some connectors and other accessories that i'm not sure if needed.
What driver should i install when pairing the products to HE?
Two manufacturers of ZigBee LED kits I have used and found to work well are Philips Hue and Sengled.
Some people have had good luck with the Sylvania Smart+ products.
IKEA also has some products that may work for you.
I received the itema but i'm not aure how to connect the led to the controller.
Any ideas? If i take the entire led out i think that i can connect the wire directly. Is it the correct way?
Also how do i connect the controller to HE? What driver to use?
