I am asking for opinions on the best option for Christmas lights. Zigbee, zwave, wifi plugs? I loved the suggestion of plugging all of my "Christmas" plugs into a power strip and leaving those plugs included in HE versus storing those plugs with the various lights. Many of my Christmas lights are powered by smart outlets, so those will stay as they are. But many of my lights use smart plugs. Over the past couple of years, I have just been pulling those plugs and storing them with the lights that they control, thus creating a nightmare on my mesh. But leaving a power strip plugged in with 10, or more, plugs just sitting around for 9 months just seems wasteful and possibly problematic. Thoughts and suggestions welcome.
I bought one of those absurd 12+ power strips a few years back to store all mine on. It still causes a bit of an issue because they all move around and have different connection points, but not as bad as when I was storing them. I actually have left some of them outside when they are not in obvious spots (or I do not care) also and they have been fine as well.
Helps that we sometimes put up other decorations and we also do a lot for Halloween, so that usually is the trial to make sure things work then. Although I use a lot of different lights for Halloween and most of those are smart and get stored... so bit of a mixed bag.
Long range z-wave plugs wouldn't affect the mesh, I would imagine.
Not a huge fan for year round use but I use Wi-Fi for Christmas items inside and out. No mesh worries and they go in the box until next year.
You do have to watch the amount of devices connected to consumer grade routers. I had to update my router when I started having issues (device drop-off) when I had around 50 devices or so connected to the old router. That router now has Ethernet backhaul and am using it as part of the Asus WiFi mesh.
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You are probably talking about outside lights, but for inside I buy lights with IR remotes, and use an IR blaster to control them all. This includes window candles, mantle lights, light on the railing, the door wreath, and the Christmas tree.
I can capture all the mode codes for everything to control the features of the lights from Hubitat, such as color or pattern on the tree lights, and dim level on others.
I have never tied using an IR blaster outside, but I don't actually use any outside lights to have needed to try it.
Both inside and outdoor lighting. I use a mixture of Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and zigbee. But I wanted to kind of consolidate all of that. I use webcore/Alexa to control all of it.
for outdoor lights i now use govee on wifi and no bigee if they are not hooked up.. just disable the device in hubitat till next year.
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They don't. I replaced all my zigbee (indoor) and z-wave (outdoor) outlets that are used to control Christmas lights and trees with z-wave LR devices last season (all Zooz devices).
Got tired of a bunch of devices littering up my workbench all year, and also eliminated some zigbee outlets that worked ok but I didn't trust. Unless I didn't have a choice, I wouldn't buy anything other than z-wave LR devices from now on.
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My choice is a WiFi Pixelblaze driving addressable LED Strips and LED Matrix.
A very nice HE Driver is available for 100% local control.
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I second this! I love my Pixelblaze!!!
It sounds like wifi is the way to go here. I will need to upgrade to a wifi mesh to handle the number of devices I will need to place around the house.
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