I have a fully functional LED strip that came with the controller dongle below. It’s controllable via an app called LED LAMP over bluetooth.
I’m wondering if it’s possible make it available and controllable in HA via zigbee (or wifi) by buying a new controller dongle? On the LED side it’s a 3-pin connector. Is it even worth pursuing - I mean, would buying a dongle separately be more expensive than just buying a new kit and drop the idea of retrofitting?)
Even if possible, going down the bluetooth route might not be possible of HA PC placement and also HA is running in Hyper-V, which I believe doesn’t support USB… Unless some ethernet to USB concoction exists…
Sorry, you won’t be able to control it via zigbee. Your LED strip appears to be an addressable LED, for which there are currently no zigbee controllers available so far.
You can, however, control it over wifi using the WLED integration. You can get WLED compatible controllers like the Quinled boards, or whatever else is compatible with WLED.
Most of Gledopto’s controllers that use Zigbee don’t control that 3-line type of LED. However, this one appears to:
I didn’t see a price on that page nor sure that it will work.
Per ShadowFist’s suggestion, anything that can run WLED should work. You can get a ESP32 board for about $5. If the power supply for original device still works, you could probably cut the wires and make that work with the ESP32 board if the power supply is 5v.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Would it be correct to assume that the WLEDs based ones will allow for “effects” and not just simple blinking as with the zigbee devices?
If yes, where are such sequences stored / run from? Is that part of the HA WLED integration or is that a separate extension?
It’s not strictly necessary as it has little functional value, but my 6YO son likes when it goes a little crazy once in a while
I probably could put it togther myself, but for the placement I have in mind there’s an aesthetics factor.
I don’t have a 3d printer to make a caase (but I guess they can be purchased too?), and an USB charger connected to an ESP32 which is then connected to the end of a LED might be a bit too “raw” looking…
The sequences (effects) would be stored on the WLED software running on the ESP32 controller, but they should also be able to be controlled via HA since these are exposed as presets. Note that I could be wrong about that last part, since I don’t use WLED myself.
Basically, there are 2 parts required in order to get the lights up and running inside HA:
The WLED software installed on an ESP32 controller connected to your lights.
The WLED integration in HA in order to control them via HA.
