I’m confused about the operation of an RBGW (warm white) LED controller I have (GLEDOPTO GL-C-007). It is seemingly impossible to command it to turn the white and color LEDs on at the same time, any attempt to do this with an RGBW command like [255,0,0,255] results in only the color value being set and the white value ignored. If I send a warm-white light temperature command it turns the warm-white LEDs on and turns all the color LEDs off. Any attempt to send two commands at once like an RGB command and a white light temp command results in a Home Assistant error.
I wondered if this was some sort of protection to ensure the device output doesn’t overload, but then I noticed if I send a mid-point white light temperature command it turns all the RGB LEDs (to mix cool white) and the warm white LEDs on at the same time, so clearly it can handle this.
So is not being able to command RGB and W at the same time a limitation of the device? Or a limitation of the Home Assistant API/interface?
I’m not sure about the specific controller you are referencing. I did experiment with a couple GLEDOPTO strip controllers a while back and I seem to remember similar behavior. I think I found one of their controllers that did support and one that did not. From my experience (and a bit of a soapbox), the fundamental issue is at a higher level. Many of the tech folks that spec’ed out the design of lighting devices that have both RGB and one or two white LEDs (warm and cool), just did not get the idea that mixing RGB and whites LED can yield more pleasing light to the human eye. They basically just said, you get colors or get whites. Even if you get a light that supports the full mixing of colors and whites, now you in the whole dimension of the psychology of individual preferences. But at least if your light supports it you can get into that debate. And yes, on a true technical level, you do have to understand the power budget and heat generation of LED lights, many folks make the bad ASSumption that LED lights use no power and generate no heat in comparison to other types of lighting technology. Just mixing a ‘white’ LED with two different temperature LED’s, many do not understand that you can mix the two LED’s in two dimensions, brightness and percentage of each LED. The mix of both LEDS on at 100% is not the same light output as just one or other other LED on at 100%. And yes, further down the rabbit hole, if the light supports mixing all the LED’s and handles the power and heat, now Home Assistant’s light model does not support a color model that can use such a light. In my experiments, with a light that supports combining RGB and the whites, I end up with two ‘lights’ in Home Assistant, a RGB and a CCW light that I have to ‘custom’ mix to get the color I want.
Hopefully, this ‘problem’ is improving. At least I see more folks chiming in that they want more ‘complete’ RGBCCW lighting options. Good hunting!