RGB Light Strip Driver Controllers - RGBGenie vs Zooz vs Fibaro vs

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1

Is there a consensus on which is the best Z-Wave Driver Controller for light strips.
I currently have an RGGenie ZV-1008 controller. It's behaving a little better now but it definitely seems finicky in the radio.

Also I am using the RGBGenie LED Controller ZW. I am not sure what the ZW vs ZV part number difference means.

It is like 5 feet from my antenna modified hub and yet sometimes its speed is only at 40 and sometimes it will not route direct but have to go through something else. It's suppose to be Z-Wave Plus. Of my 38 devices 30 are direct and much farther away in many cases. Before my Antenna mod it would fail to automate a lot.

As a result I am wondering if there are better made products out there. I originally jury rigged a Leviton Zwave switch with a Driver which was pretty reliable but also took up a lot of space.

2

I’ve been happy with my Inovelli light strips. They are no longer in production, but have lots of stock I’m told.

3

It's not the strips but I am looking for opinions on the various Z-Wave driver/controllers that light strips use.

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4

I am very happy with Pixel LED Strips controled by Pixelblaze and correspondent
HE driver. Each LED could be controlled individually by Pixelblaze and with a
driver there are a lot of possibilities for home automation.

5

My opinion is that Zwave is a poor choice in general for RGB control. Zwave wasn't designed with RGB in mind, so it is somewhat "hacky" from what I understand. I would rather use Zigbee for RGB controllers.

The inexpensive Gledopto Zigbee controllers seem to work every bit as good as the more expensive ones I have used (both Zwave and Zigbee).

6

I pretty much agree with @neonturbo although I do have a use case for the Zooz LED controllers that I haven't seen on Zigbee. The Zooz has a small handful of preprogramed lighting effects that can be fun or even have some utility. For instance I use the Police strobe light effect for when my alarm is going off. The downside is that it is also my least reliable controller. My Wi-Fi controllers (H801 and Arilux) that I've flashed with custom firmware are much more reliable and have customizable light effects. My Zigbee controllers (Gledopto and Philips Hue) are by far the most reliable, and when they're connected to the Philips Hue bridge, I can get various light effects through Hue Labs or 3rd party Android apps.