Hey all. I currently have many hue bulbs bulbs in my setup which I use for accent lighting. However, I have been re-thinking my setup and want to got back to non-smart bulbs and smart switches. I also want to have accent lights under my baseboards in the hallways, stairs, and under cabinets.
With that all explained now, I am curious what you all have done for accent lighting.
I have a few requirements.
Smart Devices can not be powered by batteries.
I don't want to see wall warts everywhere.
Color changing light strips preferred.
Must connect directly to hubitat
I am sure some of you must have done something like this. I would love to hear what product you used, how you supplied power to the devices, and how you hid the light strips.
First of, it is important to note that color changing light strips cannot be plugged into most smart switches. They will require a smart switch that has the ability to keep them powered on, like the Inovelli (Red or Blue) or Zooz.
What I have done in my house is wired everything to a switch, so that if I decide that I want a “dumb” one color light strip, I can control it with a switch or dimmer. (I have a few like that.)
I have some that are either plugged into an Inovelli Red in Smart Bulb Mode (SBM) that keeps power to the strip all the time. Hubitat detects power on or dimming events and sends those commands to the light. It works quite well. I also have a Red stitch bound to an Inovelli bulb and it does the same, except it will work regardless of whether the hub works or not since the command is sent directly to the bulb (Both Z-Wave in this case). This will also be possible with Zigbee light strips or bulbs once Inovelli’s Blue (Zigbee) switch comes out.
In other cases, I have the light hard wired and use a Pico remote to control the light. That also works quite well.
If you don’t want to see wall warts everywhere, you might need to consider hiding them in another room (if possible) or a closed cabinet, while passing just the power cable through an opening.
It's a rather broad description, "accent lighting". In my new home, these COB light strips are all I've added so far. These have been very helpful so we don't trip in the dark. I don't care much for color changing accent lighting personally. I do have some Hue strips that I got at a really low price, but haven't installed them yet. I plan to use them under the toe kick of our kitchen cabinets, but it's doubtful we'll use the color capabilities much, if at all. I used a differnt type of white only strips in the toe kick of our old home, and I much prefer these new type. IKEA Tradfri LED driver modules were used in both the old house and here. Paired direclty to Hubitat. Reliable, but do tend to drop off if power is cut to them and have to be joined again. NBD for me as the hub finds them again easily, but some may not like that.
In the house I sold, the lighting and smart capabilities were redesigned from scratch for the sale. There, LED ceiling lights were added for the primary, and accent lights were different fixtures in the center of each room a designer selected. The bulbs were the Hue Edison bulbs which give a orangish light. At first I really disliked them (aside from the look of the spiral filament, which I do like), but after we lived with it for a few months after the sale, we really enjoyed that as a calming light before sleep, or in combination with the ceiling lights. Having said that, we have chosen not to do that in our new home, at least for now.
Here's one of the real estate photos showing what it looked like.
I intend to keep "accent lighting" to a minimal, and limit it to practical uses. Just my two cents and personal opinion, which as I've demonstrated many times is subject to change.
This is kind of where I am going also. I’m. Not terribly old, but I thought what if something happens to me? my wife and kids won’t know how to fix things when they break. So I figure the accent lighting would be just a nice feature and the standard lights would still work on smart switches. This way all normal lights will always function the way they do now.
Many of my smart bulbs were cool to play with when I was younger but they’re not just set and forget. If a switch stops responding you have to know what to look at to fix it.
If something happens to me and stuff breaks here, my wife will just hire an electrician to pull it all out. My son could probably learn to fix it, but I don't know if he would want to. My Insteon switches would still work as regular switches, but if the Hubitat hub, my Hue Bridge, the Lutron Smart Bridge Pro, the Insteon hub, Insteon node.js server, Homebridge, or the MQTT broker stopped working stuff would break, no question. It would depend where the fault happened as to what breaks. That's when the system would probably be ripped out.
You can build this stuff to be completely fault tolerant, but those kind of systems are really limited in capability and not much fun while we're alive. So I'm not going to be overly concerned about all that and my assumption is that it will die when I do. I've designed it to be super stable and it doesn't need babysitting. It's on a UPS and it would likely survive until there was a power outage long enough to drain the UPS. That would kill the Insteon node server first, so control of Insteon specifically from Picos and Alexa would stop working. HomeKit control would shut down, and two Switchbot Bluetooth sensors that are connect via MQTT would stop working.
Yeah unfortunately I dove into the hue environment early on and I have a bunch of switches that require batteries. Not to mention the motion sensors. I also have some ZEN32 scene controllers, but if hubitat goes down they stop working. So I am looking at replacing all of my smart bulbs with dumb dimmable LEDs and dimmer switches. Then any fun stuff I do will be with accent lights and light strips. I mean those stop working and people will still be able to function.
Well the Hue bridge is one of the more fault tolerant of the bunch. My overhead lights are a mix of Insteon and Hue bulbs. If I croak, the Insteon stuff wouldn't be an issue for manual control. The Hue lights would because I have connected the line and load together, replacing the mechanical switch with Picos. They depend on the Hubitat Hub, the Hue Bridge, and the Lutron Smart Bridge Pro to all remain in working order. Honestly, my wife doesn't understand exactly how it works and doesn't want to know. Whatever lights didn't turn on, she would probably try to replace the bulbs first, thinking they burned out. She would then have lights that would be on all the time, but she'll need to hire an electrician to put regular switches back in so she can turn them off.
She's not stupid. She'll go out and buy table lamps or get it "fixed' the way she wants it fixed, and I'm not going to be around to care about how she deals with lightbulbs.
My son could probably learn to fix it, but I don't know if he would want to. My Insteon switches would still work as regular switches, but if the Hubitat hub, my Hue Bridge, the Lutron Smart Bridge Pro, the Insteon hub, Insteon node.js server, Homebridge, or the MQTT broker stopped working stuff would break, no question. It would depend where the fault happened as to what breaks. That's when the system would probably be ripped out. 
