We're having a kitchen remodel, and they've put in LED under-cabinet lighting. That's great — but it appears that they've put in a static 3000K strip when everything else in the house adjusts CT through the day. I figured I would switch that out to RGBW, but the wires they ran are only two conductors. For now, I've got a smart dimmer on the input, but I'd like to do better down the road.
Is there anything I can do with the two-conductor wire or am I stuck with single-color indefinitely?
(Oh, and the contractor says it would be difficult to use the two-conductor to fish a 4/6-conductor cable, since it's solid and won't slip around corners.)
Sounds similar to what they did at my house. Basically they ran DC to the under cabinents. Do you know the voltage of what they used? How many different sections do you have?
If it is a 12-24v system you could just wire that to a Zigbee or Govee controller and then use a LED Strip with them.
Yea.. so that is a 24v system. What you could do is get a few Gledapto zigbee controller. They have terminals for 12-24v input. You would need 4 of them as you would need one at each section. Then get a valid LED strip for each one that has the needed wires for the controller based on the controller type and strip type. Make sure the strip is designed for 24v as well.
The downside is this would remove the switch from being a controller, so you may want to remove it from the circut and possibly replace with a switch that can function as a virtual switch like a Zooz Zwave Switch.
Yes, the switch I gave them is a Zooz dimmer, so that's workable. Two of the spots are exposed enough that I'm not wild about having the controller exposed, but better than being unable to do it at all, I suppose.
Yea.. the other option would be to try to change the wires. Technically if you went RGBIC you don't need 4-6 wires. You just need 3 i believe. DC+, Ground, Data. The problem is i am not sure how well the D wire will translate to 4 locations.The D line needs to be a continuous series for the IC functions to work.
Like mavrrick58 said, best option is a 12-24V RGBW controller at each strip, if you would rather go the Z-Wave route since you already have a Zooz switch, Zooz makes the Zen31, I use 3 of these and they work great with some nice options like power reporting.
Is that brown wire in your picture solid? If yes I am surprised they ran solid wire but you might be able to use it to pull stranded wire unless they stapled it to studs.
Not knowing what your backsplash looks like but when I ran my own kitchen undercabinet lighting, I ripped out a few switch boxes temporarily so I had a hole to pull wire up from the crawl space below. It also allowed me to push wire out a small hole just under the cabinets too. I then replaced that "new work" gang box with an "old work" and put the switch/receptacle back and cosmetically you would never know. I mention backsplash because if you have tile, granite, etc it will be harder to pull that box out and put in an old work box.
Tile backsplash, unfortunately (in this respect, anyway). Looks like I'll be putting separate controllers on each strip rather than a single controller. The ones under the cabinets shouldn't be too visible, but the ones on the shelves may stick out a bit. Better than I was afraid of when I first saw what they were doing, at least!
When we redid out kitchen our cabinet guy installed "light rail" molding to help cover up the lights and transformers I have for my old school Festoon Xenon lighting. Something to consider too.
Here's what's in currently — the 24V wire runs through the shelf, which looks pretty slick. Unfortunately, there's also very little slack to work with on it.
