LED Strips and Indigo

Posted on
Fri Dec 30, 2022 9:36 am
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

LED Strips and Indigo

I may not have posted this in the best section. If there is a better place, perhaps Matt or Jay can move it there.

I'm looking at getting some LED strip lights for various places around the house. Nothing firmly defined yet, just something I want to play with. So, my question is which lights should I get that can be controlled by Indigo? Many of the lights I see on Amazon are controllable by wifi and an iPhone app. I'd really like to avoid using an app when I have a great Indigo set up.

Would love to hear anybody's experiences.

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Fri Dec 30, 2022 11:18 am
ryanbuckner offline
Posts: 1074
Joined: Oct 08, 2011
Location: Northern Virginia

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

I don't have a great answer, since there are so many different LED strips out there. I think the important questions to ask are:

  1. How many strips are you looking to place around the house ?
  2. What is it that you're looking to control? (on/off , scenes, colors, everything the LED can do?)
  3. How would you like to control them? (control pages, Alexa integration, triggers, schedules, etc.. ?)

Like I said, I don't have a perfect answer but here are few ideas to get the conversation started:

  • I'm assuming the existing Hue plugin could control the Philips LED strips but they are really expensive
  • Arduino + existing python libraries would do the trick
  • Something like this could enable more realistic LEDs to be controlled via Wifi.
  • This page has some great information about accessories to control RF, bluetooth, Wifi - power options , and splitting options.

Posted on
Fri Dec 30, 2022 5:53 pm
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

Appreciate the comments Ryan.

1 - I'd expect about 10 ultimately. Not large strips, but mostly accent strips on several large pieces of furniture.
2. - I would want to control both on/off and color. Settings would be adjusted by schedule on some and by action group on others.
3 - Mostly it would be controlled by schedules. But also some by control page. Voice activation might be good if it can be integrated into HomeKit.

Looking at the links you provided....

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Fri Dec 30, 2022 8:36 pm
Different Computers offline
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Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

Hue Light strips are a bit pricy compared to some of the options out there, but they're the least trouble prone. A no brainer if you already have any Hue stuff and their required bridge.

Nanoleaf light strips can be made to work with no other hardware, using HomeKit + Shortcuts and python scripting to run the shortcuts.

Pretty sure there are some z-wave light strips out there too. For sure there are z-wave modules you can connect to a strip.

Anything else will require a lot more fussing.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

Posted on
Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:23 am
siclark offline
Posts: 1960
Joined: Jun 13, 2017
Location: UK

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

I use standard dumb strips so have full choice of colour, temp and quality and then control with zwave modules. For colour temp ones I did try to make a plug-in to control with a zwave module but then found a zigbee one that does just that and works flawlessly.

Posted on
Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:41 am
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

siclark wrote:
I use standard dumb strips so have full choice of colour, temp and quality and then control with zwave modules. For colour temp ones I did try to make a plug-in to control with a zwave module but then found a zigbee one that does just that and works flawlessly.


Interesting. Do you first set them to what color you want and then simply turn them on/off via the Zwave module? Or are you able to control the color via the Zwave module?

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Sun Jan 01, 2023 10:44 am
Different Computers offline
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Posts: 2533
Joined: Jan 02, 2016
Location: East Coast

Re: LED Strips and Indigo

Check out the Fibaro RGBW controller. Mine works great for the one long, non-hue light strip I have.

https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/rgbw-controller/

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

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