So… I am probably a bit late to the game - but anyway…
What is the “best” light for a Christmas-Tree in terms of “HA Support”?
Meaning - with which device I can use Effects from HomeAssistant? Which does have smooth transitions (as I have seen issues with color changing and transition on some cheaper light bulbs in the past)…
Twinkly
Philips Hue “Festiva”
Govee (custom integration)
build your own (ESPhome)
Philips Hue would be integrated with ZHA, not with the hue integration…
I went for a BTF-LIGHTING Fairy lights strip in conjunction with a WLED controller from “ABC!”. Thought about some of the ready-made ones as well but was not satisfied with the price.
Thanks
I also thought about the Melinera - but I had some issues with the last “zigbee” lightbulb I’ve bought from Lidl… they had issues with the transition between colors and caused some flickering which was the reason to remove them.
Also, right now, Lidl does not have any products I would consider in their online stores … I can see, that they are increasing their zigbee / smarthome products, but right now, nothing for christmas trees - and I don’t know if a similar product as the Melinera will be added soon.
I’d suggest WLED running on an ESP8266 / ESP32 plus a string of WS281x neopixels.
There’s lots of neopixel styles from LED tape to water-resistant strings:
For WLED controllers, an ESP8266 can be as simple as three wires, but ready-made Quindor has lots of options:
While probably not addressing your core requirements, I see that you seem to have zigbee in your HA universe, I have been futzing around with a number of very low cost and long battery life Infrared lights that you can get using the zigbee Moes device cited in discussion below to control. As I said, probably not for your core, however there are a number of IR home assistant controls that might give you some more ‘bling’ We are having fun with the devices in the 2nd link and one of the zigbee moes devices outside (inside a waterproof transparent plastic food container)
The Twinkly integration will allow you to select a color or pick an effect from the ones uploaded to the controller. The twinkly playlist cannot be selected.
Using homekit integration, if a playlist is active when you turn it off, it will continue it when it is turned on without selecting an effect. It does not allow you to pick an effect. Using the Twinkly integration, it will turn on with a last selected color, unless you specify the effect. So you cannot resume a playlist.
But either way you are bound to what the proprietary controller will allow, and the app can be a bit flakey at times.
don’t get me started about the Matter integration, it doesn’t work at all for me and I got no useful feedback on what might be wrong. Super frustrating.
When using the Nanoleaf Smart Holiday string lights with the Matter integration, do you have access to scenes, animations etc? Or is support in HA very basic, without control of each individual bulb, but just one static color and brightness for all bulbs at once? I would like to use them for my kids room (with a simple zigbee button), so using an iPhone app to chance colors/animations/scenes is not an option. Thanks!
You won’t believe how many children love string lights with scenes/animations in their kids room. There’s no need to just use them on a christmas tree.
We are having fun with the devices in the 2nd link and one of the zigbee moes devices outside (inside a waterproof transparent plastic food container) 