My dealer gave me a handful of LED’s, so I cut the pigtail off of one to use to connect to the device. This was mainly so I can plug the hub back in if I need warranty service.
The striped wire attaches to the V terminal of either output (device supports two chains), the middle wire attaches to the D terminal (data) and the unmarked outside wire to G (ground).
The existing power jack fit into the power jack on the other side, however if your power terminal is simpler, you can just wire the terminal to the power supply directly.
Since I am a new user I was only allowed a single image per post. This is not as exciting, but it shows the device in my box with the pigtail attached and the power jack connected.
i finally had a change to try LedFX for music/sound sync without using the internal mic and it works really well! And, it should work with devices that don’t have built-in mic(?) because both my WLED controllers were showing up, but only one has the built-in mic.
Having this is nice because you don’t have to have the speaker or sound right at the Gemstone Box. You’ll still need an outdoor speaker, but at least with this you can put the speaker anywhere you want and sync it with this software.
and, I think there is even a Home Assistant integration for LedFX, althought I have not installed it as I was use the desktop app for LedFX. What does the integration allow you to do?
it will be great for Halloween and Christmas, for sure.
also, about the music sync, turns out you may be able to get this to work with Home Assisitant Music Assistant.
Using this
and then enabling squeeze, and with a squeeze group player in Music Assistant, you can play your music as if your lights were a speaker.
More information here in the Music Assisstant discord channel
EDIT: I ended up getting this work. The WLED lights show up as a speaker in Music Assistant, so you can stream music to it (and any other speaker) at the same time and the lights are now synced with the music.
Sorry for editing post, forum doesn’t let me post any more replies.
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So I looked inside the box and what I found was black hub (Hub v2) but it is connected to lights with 2-wire connector only. One wire is connected to V- and another to Data. No V+ wire at all. The lights connector is 3-wire one though. Am I right to assume that hub is basically using just a data wire and even V- is not really used? Got 2 power injection cables coming out too, so I guess all the power to the lights is supplied through those.
Everything would be easy but then the striped wire, which was supposed to be V+ is connected to V- on hub, so it is either not used at all or I don’t understand something .
I tested Gledopto controller with 3-wire connection on some spare lights I had and everything works but now am thinking how to connect it to the LEDs since there are just 2 wires and striped one is on V- terminal.
in theory, the power supply and data cable can run seperatley.
But yeah, I would just inject the power to the controller (2 wires) and then on the other side line up the 3 wires (power + data).
Power will flow to where it is needed. Some will for through the controller and some will go through the power supplies to the injection site. The data cable just dictates what the pixel will do.
Are there any concerns that striped wire here is connected to GND? This is the part that worries me the most - connectors between lights are not possible to connect wrong, so this striped wire connects to GND on the hub but likely connects into striped wire on the LED, which is supposed to be V. So either wire markings are not the same and this striped GND from hub actually goes into LED’s GND correctly or I am missing something
2 white ones are both power injection cables connected to the screw terminals on power box. Both are 2-wire cables with red connected to V+ and black to GND. Both go to lights. From the looks inside conduits - first one terminates somewhere at the beginning and the other one goes all the way parallel to lights.
The black cable is 3-wire cable coming to LEDs, which connects to the hub with 2-wire cable (Data &
GND).
Hub is powered same as for everyone else.
So basically only big difference from everyone else’s setup is that:
I have 2 power cables going to lights
Connector from Hub to LED only connects to GND and Data but not V+ on Hub’s end (earlier picture in previous post). Then this 2-wire cable from Hub connects to 3-wire cable coming to LEDs, assuming to GND and Data lines. On top of it striped wire is connected to GND on hub’s connector and connector looks not modified (not like they cut a third wire from it, it was 2-wire cable by design).
I have roughly 30ft+ run of cable before it gets to the first LED light, so maybe that’s why they get power to the light via dedicated cable. From what I read hub just needs Data & GND to be able to control lights without powering them, so that checks out too.
The part that confuses me right now is that striped wire connected to GND on hub. Hub2 has 3 more data+GND 2-wire terminals, so I guess this connector is new Hub2-specific connector, that connects data without supplying power and I have no spare one to sacrifice for testing
ok, I still don’t have a full picture about this, but from what I can tell, what you need to do is:
You will need a bit (less 1 ft, 2 wires, one black or red prefrered) of 16 guage wire to power the WLED controller since you hub is being powered by the data side.
Disconnect all power
Remove the Hub2 (and the wire if possible)
Leave Power Cable 1 and 2 as is
Disconnect the LED cable
Connect the 3 wires of the LED cable to the WLED controller side (will be GND, V+, and data) → you might have to cut this wire
With your extra 16 gauge wire, connect the GND (black) and V+ (red) to your power supply in the Gemstone box to the power inputs of your new controller. You will see the screw terminals on the power supply (usually there is 3 for AC, and 2 sets for DC).
Turn the power on and give it a try
Before you attempt this, just confirm what I’m saying because i don’t have the full picture either. The new gemstone boxes just make it easier for dealers to install everything on the PCB board.
You could try to power the WLED controller the same way. I don’t know if that will work. They much have some sort of pass-through on the Gemstone controller that allows you do this, but not sure if the other controllers do this.
Thanks! There is a barrel connector for power, going into Hub2, so I guess I can just re-use that, since Gledopto controller has that option.
Just to confirm - you believe there is no problem supplying additional power to lights via V+ from the controller? I guess it won’t really change anything but just wasn’t sure why they didn’t do it in the first place and went with that 2-wire connector instead.
Correct. There is no isse, in fact, for smaller installations, going via the controller (at least how it was done before the new Gemstone boxes that have the PCB hubs) is how its done without any other injection points. The only issue is the Gemstone Controller is limited to 9 A (or at least the older one was), so for larger installs, they need extra injection points. Some of the Athom ones are 16A but voltage is all the same at 12V. Going with external power supplies/injection points makes for a more even and balanced system because the longer the wires, the more the voltage drop is.
Its great you have a the barrel, that makes things easier with the wiring and no need for extra wire to the power supply!
By the way, the hub2 has extra channels, its a 4 channel hub, hence those extra vacant slots.
I tested mainly on few spare lights (~20 of them) I had. Connecting them to WLED controller worked, I could control them from WLED interface no problem. I didn’t install WLED controller to manage the lights on the house itself though, because I run HB instead of HA as my main setup and WLED integration for it is not great and/or supported well. So I cannot tell how 150+ lights would perform there because I never went so far.
So I got this set up on two test pixels I have, and got that all working fine. I used gemini to help me figure out my wiring and it all made sense. I have direct power being sent to the backside, as I had dimming originally because of the low 4A gemstone controller. So the fat black wire with the thicker red/black is dedicated power that they ran to correct the issue. I never did understand what they did at the time, but now I do
Self-hosted Docker container, full local LAN control of the Hub1 over both MQTT (with HA auto-discovery) and a broker-free REST/webhook API. No cloud, no hardware mods, multi-controller supported.
Limitation worth flagging: no per-pixel/app animations or white channel over local Tuya. My use case only needed on/off and a single solid color — I wanted the lights to blast to 100% as an alarm when my cameras catch someone on the property at night — so I didn't chase the fancier effects. README has the DP mapping and the local_key extraction.
