There a lot more dumb RGB + CCT (i.e. LED strips with full color and white color temperature control… 5 channels plus voltage) options on the market now but what I’m not seeing are z-wave products that can bring integration into smart systems.
To save you the click (and in case it ever get pulled) this is a 24v LED strip with RGB and CCT channels (a cool and warm white so you can achieve 2500k to 6500k white temps). This is almost perfect since 24v systems are better for longer runs and I think acc and the 2500 to 6500 is nice wider white temp range (even though I would love for someone to do a 2000k to 9000k at 24v but there’s no such unicorn I’ve found yet).
My question is what would be compatible with OH (z-wave but I’d take wifi if I had to- I’m not interested in zigbee or anything mqtt related) that would be able to control this properly?
There are a couple of RGBW controllers available (Qubino, Fibaro and Shelly for wifi come to mind) but those only have one white channel so I don’t see how those would work. The one I see on amazon with this strip that does have the discrete channels is zigbee.
You should ask this question over at the WLED discord after checking if any of the supported LED models work to your requirements in this list. Link to the discord is in this link at the top of the page. Compatible Hardware - WLED Project
They have added CCT color temp channels to the opensource project, so either it already supports some LEDs with 5 channels or they have plans to add the support. Either way that group of people will know what is out on the market and perhaps the pros and cons.
If your main goal is to have a big choice of ready made effects to choose from, then take a long look at the opensource WLED project as you can make a ESP8266 with 4 wires soldered on into a done project for $5, or buy ready made boards that need no soldering.
ZWave is not very popular for lighting. The most common system commercially is Zigbee which is used extensively, but this is not a route you want to go. The other alternative is a few Wifi devices, some BLE (but I’ve not heard great things about BLE mesh) or build your own as suggested by @matt1 .
It is interesting though why you wouldn’t want to use Zigbee - for lighting it is by far the most common system as far as I can see…
I think once upon a time it zigbee may have been more popular than z-wave but devices need controls I think z-wave has an edge there. I get your point though, there is some historic precedence that might have driving this current state where items are missing (such as an LED strip but not a bulb) from one protocol group to another. Wifi is the most common wireless protocol in typical homes and business and yet that market is absolute mess for smart habitat work because vendors are more interested in sucking up market share so they can say they are number one instead of agreeing on a standardized and open protocol that gives consumers a choice to integrate whatever they want instead of having to get locked into once thing My point here is that, despite currently popularity or historical precedence, the market seems to eventually increase the breadth of products across the most popular protocols.
This leads me to answer you question. I have a pretty extensive and well deployed 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wireless network. As you know, 2.4Ghz is a very noisy band on a good day. Yes you can get zigbee and 2.4Ghz wifi to co-exist be why fight that battle (and honestly, probably loose in the long run since bluetooth is also increasing) when you can use another band and avoid this problem all together. That was an easy decision for me even without the controls advantage I see with z-wave. For my situation this has been a win if for no other reason than troubleshooting connectivity issues when they happen.
Another way to look at this and also the reason for my post is that this is more of a device issue than protocol issue. Even if wanted to add a zigbee stick in my OH server, it seems like there is only one type out there (probably whiteboxed / OEM’d by one company). That means the market is bound to have more offerings sooner than later so I wanted to ask if anyone had come across what I was looking for first before I decided to do something else or wait.
I’m really still thinking through this because the options and product breadth does seem to be changing regularly. I was strongly considering the Aeotec or iNovelli’s LED strips but both were discontinued which to me was a yellow flag on this market. LED strip project are more labor intensive and I’m more interesting in the solution details than just hacking something together to get it done.
My point above was specifically relating to the topic - ie lighting. There’s no doubt that Zigbee lighting is hugely more popular and common than ZWave - there are nearly zero ZWave lights, and really a lot of Zigbee lights and ZLL lighting systems out there (ie hundreds).
I don’t disagree that in some areas, ZWave is more popular - but my point was regarding lighting, and also it’s use commercially, which is infinitely more than ZWave.
I see commercially customers currently dropping ZWave in favour of Zigbee and thread. There’s no doubt that the 2.4G band is busy, but it should not really cause an issue. I worked on the Hilton “Connected Room” system - they have Zigbee in every room of the hotels we were testing in, as well as 2.4G Wifi in all areas and this all coexisted well.
I also think that looking forward, ZWaves future is in doubt with other things that are going on… Anyway, that’s off topic as we’re getting into a more general discussion, and as I said, my answer was quite specific to lighting…
Would you happen to have a zigbee recommendation for a 24v RGW+CCT LED strip? I see some on Amazon but the only vendor names I recognize are Gedopto and Ledenet.
I would not recommend going the Zigbee route if your using all Zwave products, reason is you would then need to build a mesh up with multiple products that are zigbee, which you may not want to do for just 1 LED strip controller. If wanting to add a number of Zigbee light globes through your home, then that is a different case. With Amazon now building Zigbee into the Alexa hubs, I think Zigbee is going to see more products come to market that you may want in the future, so building up a mesh may be a good idea.
If your only wanting 1 device then WLED, I feel is the way forward because they are constantly adding new effects and features that will make the LED strip look more interesting. Commercial products will tend to not change the firmware and hence will not be adding more built in effects past what they initially ship with. More effects to start with, more getting added over time, the ability to do sound reactions with a mic, sync the same fx across multiple strings, and much more, just make it in my opinion the better solution to look at and any learning curve needed, totally worth taking on. Loads of videos online about building and setting it up and a big community to help out on Discord. I really would not look at any other option.
Ready made boards with LAN or WiFi are able to be purchased if you can not solder to make your own.
