I was wondering if anyone might have been able to build a driver that can control them, and if so if they would share it.
I have seen some pretty amazing drivers to control the Shark IQ robot and the Blink Cameras - I wonder if the same methods could be used to control Wifi lights like these…?
Alternatively, anyone know a good (and not too expensive) device that works well via Zigbee that might be able to replace the included controller?
Otherwise, I will either control them through Alexa via a virtual device (this does limit the options…)
Unlikely as it is a WIFI product and unless the manufacturer has an open API that someone can write to to interface with their cloud based app, you're probably out of luck. This is why most of us avoid wifi based stuff.
If you reach out to the manufacturer there is always the "slight" chance they might be willing to share how to read/write data.
If they ARE willing to share that, then community developers could likely make a driver for it.
In general, I am willing to work on drivers in such scenarios. I will note that I am personally getting a little discouraged with reaching out to companies about such and getting no response at all. Not even a "sorry, too bad for you".
I usually ask if they have any API that could be used to read data from the device (I usually focus on reading first) or a status page on the device that I could query.
For DIY there is WLED if you have not looked into it. I think someone has a driver for it.
I have made my own firmware and associated Hubitat driver (to control some Christmas projects, but I have not published them yet because it is all on the back burner to other projects). The hardware I am using is just ESP8266-01 on ESPixel Pop Tiny boards. Simple, small, and does the job. I wrote my own firmware though since I have been doing that for Arduino for some time plus I had recently completed a 60 LED ring clock using an ESP32.
