Thanks for the recommendations - I'm in USA so Amazon is perfect.
Unfortunately that kit is RGB, for white it'd be pretty bad (comments say as much, and it's what I'd anticipate), especially as the main source of light in a room. Unfortunately this response was good enough to get me digging in for (yet another) 4 hour dive on researching what I wanted to get. I used Adam's info from Under cabinet strip lighting and just kept digging. Here's what I came out with.
- I could get the LEDENET W/WW (CCT) strips, the high density 5050 ones, which seem solid for white, but overall it feels like CCT isn't getting love in the way of controllers etc, 3-wire support, etc.
- I feel like if I'm going beyond white I should get RGB+W+WW but 6-wire stuff also is a bit of a mess in terms of wiring support.
- Those above 2 options, for what I was finding, had significantly higher power draw than RGBW. Not a "deal breaker" but something to think about and also drive you towards beefier power supplies (more heat, money, but also seems like a wreck of poorly reviewed equipment due to noise issues etc)
- After looking through everything, I concluded that I really don't need Cool White, I'm never going to use it (we had 5k bulbs here for a while and really hated it). In a weird situation where it'd make sense, can add some blue in to the light I suppose. The same is true with adding orange in with CW to lower the color temp I guess but 99% of the time I'm going to want to have WW or lower temps
- I thought I'd go with zigbee controllers, but I ended up going with Wifi. There's the aliexpress.com zigbee controller, also on Amazon, but it takes a while to get here, and I saw some weird bad reviews showing a super bright red LED on that unit (gaffers tape can fix it, but, hmm) and a lot of kind of FUD about people worrying that it'd break compat with philips Hue, and also some people had it work with the hue bridge but was not able to work with any other home auto equipment. There was also conflicting information that said 24V wouldn't work out. I ended up going with the wifi controller linked in the other thread
- For power I decided 24V was absolutely the way to go. I ended up reviewing a ton of stuff and ultimately settled on a "mean well" unit which are well-reviewed, almost none of their stuff seemed to be available on amazon but then I found a great unit at the very end of my search. I'm still not entirely sure how I'll mount it.
- I chose aluminum channels to put the LEDs in, with a diffuser. I like this because with my existing LED tube lights (clear plastic shell on them, diffuser in the ceiling box fixture), the lights are 'directional/discrete' enough that I actually bought some extra diffuser to install (haven't gotten around to it yet). Diffusing twice seems totally fine to me in this case. Plus the heat dissipation
So I could have gone with a few varieties for RGB+WW but what I ended up choosing was a little weird, I picked the LEDENET double row RGB+WW. It's 16mm wide (instead of 12mm or 10mm for typical RGB+WW) which forced me in to a wider channel and to have a slightly larger power supply (not as much as it was for CCT) and means I'll have to hand-solder everything since 16MM is a weird size. But I got it because 2x the lights means I can run them all half as bright (ish) which I'm hoping will help with diffusing the light. Just like any lighting, lots of smaller dimmer lights is better than fewer ultra-bright lights (in a typical residential setting anyway).
What I specifically got was:
MEAN WELL LRS-200-24 211.2W 24V 8.8 Amp Single Output Switchable Power
HitLights Heavy Duty Foam Mounting Tape, 100 Feet 10mm Width Strong Adhesive Waterproof Clear Removable Mounting Tape for LED Strip Lights, Home Decor, Office Decor - to secure the strips inside the channel and other stuff around the house
RGBSIGHT 40FT 18 Gauge RGBW LED Strip Extension Cable 18AWG 5pin 5 Color Stand Wire for RGBW RGBWW LED Ribbon Lamp Tape Lighting (40 Feet per Spool) - I specifically chose 18awg because the quick-connect solderless connectors recommended 18-20 and in their text said actually 18awg was more what they worked with. I didn't end up doing any of that but in the end I think this was probably a better choice than the 22awg I'd originally picked.
I'll post back here when I get a chance to fiddle with it all
