Here's a bit of a niche item. Has anybody ever seen a Zigbee solar light? I would like some solar step lights but instead of motion or light level controlled I would like to control them by automation. Bonus points for RGBW.
Interesting idea, but I think you'll find it's a challenge at best.
Typical Solar lights rarely last the full night, just running the LED -- add a Zigbee radio...even less run time. Which means that your light will be unreachable a lot, making programmatic control a bit fraught.
Now, if you were considering low voltage landscape lighting....that seems do-able, you could use a variety of ways to control those.
S.
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Well that’s part of it. Since it will be controlled via automation it won’t be on all night. Zigbee devices run off of batteries for years so that wouldn't be an issue for solar. Battery isn’t a concern for this use case.
Low voltage is great but sometimes running power isn’t an option.
I did find a solar Zigbee siren with light so that’s close. I knew it was a long shot but people here have found some crazy things.
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Interesting point. Thats true, so are you thinking that such a device might hae a battery for the Zigbee radio and a relay? Then the Solar light has its own battery to power the LED? That could work for sure.
The relay would simply turn off/on the LED.
Hmmmm. Interesting.
S.
No need for separate batteries. I was just stating that the Zigbee wouldn't be a big drain. For the light it would only be on when somebody opens the gate at night.
I may still run power for another project but just looking for options.
In that case I think I would "hack" a normal solar light with a wired contact sensor and keep it all local without smarts. I would just break the wire to the LED with the contact sensor.
In my mind, the idea of two separate batteries would be better than trying to power everything from one battery if you want to incorporate Zigbee. I would think that the solar light battery voltage would vary too much and there are even stretches where it is cloudy enough in the winter (at least here in Michigan) where solar lights don't work well or only last a few minutes after dusk because of low batteries.
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