RGBW LED Lightstrip (Project Cribs)

So Hot Right Now Projects & Roadmaps
#224

In addition to the link @Bry posted, here’s a tutorial written for ST specifically that should help with creating custom effects:

Not at this time, unfortunately.

I’m thinking I need to update the terminology as many people are confused here. I think I’ll just remove the word, “Individual” which may help.

But to answer your question, the pixels are individually addressable in that they can be a part of pre-made effects and the strip’s pixels will be different from one another (instead of having them all be the same), however, you cannot manually change pixel #1, 5, and 23 for instance to separate colors.

We are looking into a firmware update that allows this.

EDIT: Dangit, I should’ve read further down the thread and realized we have an awesome community. Thanks @darthandroid for answering this lol

Thank you :slight_smile:

So, while not recommended as it takes a bit of force to get them in, you can actually just flip over the right angle and it will work as a left angle:

image
image1258×1514 1.5 MB

We don’t have any orders in for left angles (honestly, we didn’t even think about it), but we can check with our manufacturer to see if they have any we can buy (they outsource them too, so hopefully the people they buy them from have them).

I’ll have to wait for someone else to respond unfortunately as I’m not familiar with HA :frowning:

Maybe @nathanfiscus or @EricM_Inovelli knows?

Yeah, this has been a problem as of recently. It looks like USPS is experiencing some delays. We’re looking into an alternate solution in the future. With the claims, what ends up happening, is that 9/10 the package just hasn’t been scanned during one of the stops and will arrive late and they won’t honor the claim as it has arrived albeit late. So then we’re out two packages lol.

I’m hoping in the next month or so, @anon14959390 will have implemented Shipper HQ into our website which will allow for the choice of shipping options (USPS, UPS, FedEx). If your package doesn’t arrive in the next week or so, shoot me and @Courtney_Inovelli a PM and we’ll take care of you.

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LZW45 Light Strip - End Cap
#225

Thanks for making smarthome products, that instead of sucking, are awesome! Look forward to seeing what the future holds for you guys.

Would you be willing to divulge what protocol you use for addressing the individual LEDs? I see up in the thread that lengths of 30ft might be possible—buying and snapping together that many strips for multiple locations in my house feels tedious and expensive, but if I could use generic LED strips I would definitely buy many more controllers.

Keep up the excellent work!

#226

They also have support for “generic” strips on their firmware roadmap. If I recall correctly adding that at initial release would have delayed the launch a few months. Stay Tuned for more Awesome :wink:

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#227

Would it be possible to add the color pre-staging option similar to the bulbs? I like being able to change the color over time but don’t want the strip turning on if it’s not presently on.

Looking at the driver code for the bulb it looks like it just toggles whether or not a basicSet command is included in setColor's command group or not, so hopefully it works the same way for the strip?

I see that the strip even has the copypasta’d code for it, but the option itself just isn’t exposed :wink:

#228

Any possibility of the controllers being powered by 2 wire low voltage wiring? My house was wired with under cabinet strip lighting that uses 2 wire power. I was hoping that at some point I would be able to throw in a controller like yours where the wire comes out of the wall and then running your LED strips so we could do all the fun colors. Basically something like the gledopto zigbee controller but, you know, inovelli style.

#229

Try adding this to your configuration.yaml (for Legacy ZWave 1.4)

homeassistant:
  customize:
    light.inovelli_lzw45_light_strip_level:   # change this entity if needed.
      supported_features: 177

After adding to your configuration.yaml and restarting your server, the white level slider and the white temperature slider will be force added to your light entity. I didn’t get the temperature slider to work. I am still looking at why the temperature slider isn’t working with this device when using the legacy ZWave 1.4 integration.

LZW45 (light strip) drivers for home assistant?
#230

Thanks @nathanfiscus. I don’t actually have a light entity with the legacy zwave integration - I’ve got 4 sensor entities and a zwave entity but no light entity.

I’ve been playing with the parameters, and it seems to me like I should be able to set the strip to static warm white using parameter 21 if I could figure out the byte settings. Do you agree, or am I off base here?

#231

For parameter 21, I can calculate the values manually for the rgb colors using color*1 + level*256 + duration*65536 + effect*16777216 and get the same values given by your nice toolbox app. However, I can’t figure out how to account for the extra bits in bytes 1 and 4 that permit the use of the white leds.

#232

The controller uses 12VDC. The power supply that ships is rated at 2A.

#233

To add on what @Bry said, it is a pretty standard supply. So if you have 12v DC low voltage wiring… that can supply the amperage… You could wire up the correct plug to power the controller. I do not have mine in front of me but it seemed like it was the pretty generic 5.5 x 2.5mm barrel plug. DIY versions of those (crimp or solder) are pretty common.

Edit:
If your low voltage wiring is NOT 12v or is low voltage AC, it IS possible but more complicated.

#234

@Bry @Snell Thanks for the info, I’ll have to dig into it this weekend.

#235
#236

@Courtney_Inovelli I can love this post enough.

#237

Thanks @nathanfiscus! Editing the zwcft_***.xml file as you mentioned above worked for me, and gets the light entity to show up for me. I can now turn it on and off and have a little control over color and temperature, although as you mentioned, it’s still somewhat buggy.

The more I read, it looks like parameter 21 should allow me to set this to solid warm white, but I can’t figure out what value to use for Byte 4 - can you advise? Here’s what I have:

Byte 1 (color): 2700
Byte 2 (level): 10
Byte 3 (duration): 255
Byte 4 (effect): ?

My best guess for Byte 4 was 9 (1 + 8) giving me a total value for the parameter of 167711884, but unfortunately that doesn’t work, so I think I must be wrong on my Byte 4 value. Any thoughts?

#238

Anybody tried the maximum length out yet? I have 12ft of strip and the output drops to a maximum of 63% with no additional connectors - If I add the 2 T’s I have been wanting and the additional 2ft I need I don’t imagine this will be bright enough to be useful in my application

That being said - can we replace this with a power supply that’s able to support more lights or will that destroy something?

I also tried getting this running with home assistant but I can only control one white LED, and can’t disable the center color LED so maybe when I get that center one turned off this will still be bright enough for me

#239

Interesting question. I was wondering how well 16 ft was going to work given voltage drop issues.

What’s happening is that controller is limiting the brightness as the current draw reaches a preset limit. It would be interesting to find out from Inovelli how that limit is set. If you substitute a 3A power supply, will the controller recognize it and adjust the ceiling accordingly? I don’t know if that’s even possible.

Typically, with a 12v 5 meter LED strip you would inject power at both ends, but you can’t do that here as-is.

#240

I have 16ft, and the limit seems to depend on color temperature (at least for white). I am seeing it settle at 90% for 5000K.

#241

I too, noticed the strip dimming from 99 down to 55 with only 12.5ft of strip connected (steady white, whatever the default color temperature was from the factory).

I’m guessing the “16ft before dimming” that was posted earlier in this thread is only for 1 set of LEDs (cool white, warm white, RGB) and anything using more than one set will be restricted to shorter lengths if you want full brightness.

That said, it’s extremely confusing to set the level to 99 and come back and have it be something else. While it would be nice to know when the strip is limiting based on current restrictions, I’d much prefer that to operate like the maximum level on the dimmer switches, so that if I set the level to 99, then it continues to report at 99, instead of reporting that it’s at half power and making me think I can turn it up.

#242

The unit itself will limit the current to 2 amps (regardless of the power supply used going into the box). The device will automatically lower the brightness if it exceeds 2A current draw. If you want to exceed this value, you would need to insert 12v power into the strip itself.

Here is the power usage on my LED strip using various colors at maximum brightness, measured with a kill-a-watt meter. The LED strip is 6 feet in length.

Color Watts
WW 10.5w
CW 10.8w
Red 8w
Green 7.9w
Blue 7.9w
RGB (all 3 colors lit) 7.8w
RGBWWCW (all LEDS lit) 20w (brightness was automatically lowered)
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#243

Yea it looks like 20W is the limit then, probably not suitable for my application I should have waited to see more user reports before buying these. I don’t think many people will use all the LED’s at once but I would have hoped it could at least support it at the standard length. Maybe there’s a firmware update in the future to allow a flag to allow this to jump up to 4-10A with a different supply

For power injection - its probably not a big deal to do it from the opposite end or to mockup a connector to allow it in-line but its my first addressable strip so im not sure how it would deal with on/off/brightness/etc. Got some reading to do on my end. I also haven’t used two power supplies before, always a single one