I am seeing all these ceiling lights on Amazon they come with a remote and I hate that. I would like to integrate such a light in my home automation system. I can find lots of dimmable LED strips but nothing like a WiFi driver for these that would sit in the wall
There are many options, but what’s available to you will depend on which country you’re in, and whether you’re limiting yourself to WiFi or are happy to expand to Zigbee or Z-Wave.
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I would stay with wifi if I could.
I guess buying an Sonoff Zigbee bridge is not going to kill me if that solves the problem
The ZBbridge is shite, don’t do that to yourself.
However, you still haven’t told people what country you’re in. That makes a big difference to your mains powered options…
I am in Canada
Does Canada use the same type of junction box standard as they use in the United States? If so then look at the smart switches/dimmers products made for the USA market, (I live in Europe myself and countries here don’t have the same junction box standard so we all use hidden modules that can fit inside any wall junction box and can be used practically convert with any dumb switch into a smart switch). Check for example out products for the USA market from Inovelli → https://inovelli.com
Anyway, recommend that you read up on both Zigbee and Z-Wave and then consider one of those depending on your budget, (most Zigbee products are cheap and maintaining a Zigbee network requires a little more maintenance and configuring automation for unique features of Zigbee devices is more work as the standard is more of a guideline than set in stone, while Z-Wave is a much more unified standard so it is normally much less maintenance and Z-Wave are then often also of higher quality too but the products cost a lot more). Zigbee Coordinator and Z-Wave Controller USB radio dongles are required and are not very expensive so an option can be to try out both.
For Zigbee suggest that you buy ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” (model “ZBDongle-P”) (“Zigbee Coordinator” radio adapter) and use either the Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA) integration or Zigbee2MQTT as Zigbee gateway solution. For Z-Wave your want to get any Z-Wave 700 series or Z-Wave 800 series radio USB dongle and then use either the Z-Wave JS integration or Z-Wave JS UI (full-featured Z-Wave Control Panel** and MQTT Gateway).
You find loads of Zigbee devices in these community-maintained databases though the compatibility information is not really updated so you can take that with a grain of salt and do so research yourself:
Note that Zigbee uses mesh networking and a Zigbee network will work better and better with the more Zigbee Router devices that you add to it. Highly recommend that you read and follow this guide regardless of which Zigbee gateway solution will be used → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage
I’d suggest a close look to Shelly devices. 
They bring everything to the party that you wished for, and they are known for reliability and quality. I just checked, Shelly is shipping to Canada, so my suggestion recomendation is: take a look at Shelly products and you will likely spend a ton of money for them (despite their prices are a good value for what you get).
They have dimmers for LEDs or “normal” dimmable bulbs and I don’t know what else. They run over WIFI, and have
- cloud access via the Shelly cloud or
- can run strictly local over MQTT without changing the firmware (!!!) or
- you can flash ESPHome firmware
https://www.shelly.cloud/en-us
And for your LED stripe:
https://www.shelly.cloud/en-us/products/shop/shelly-rgbw2
thank you I think that will do -the only question is -will this fit in a box next to the existing light switch ? How do they play together ? I guess the Shelly will be downstream below the switch so the switch will continue to control the power.
I am not sure if this is not a better deal
They say (see the packing list at the bottom) that for 25USD you get
1 x SMD 5050 Led Strip
1 x WIFI Controller
1 x Power Supply
3 x Plug(EU Type, US Type, UK Type);
- QuickStart Guide * 1 + User Manual * 1
I am wondering if this is a mistake or not
For the Shelly device what is ❷ in the wiring diagram and why is it needed?
They say it is provided separately in your package (what does this mean ??)
