Recommendation for an SK6812 LED Strip controller. (or other)

Hardware
1

I’m looking to upgrade some (LED Strip) accent lighting in my kitchen.
At the moment, I have three (actually 4) strips of the following lengths:

1x 2m
1x 3m
1 x 7m (actually its 1 x 2m and 1 x 5m connected to a single controller with a splitter - i did this because running the power from one end across a 7m length showed noticeable brightness drop.)

All the LED Strips are 12v 60 LEDs/m RGB controlled by a simple tuya zigbee controller:

image
image1058×409 62.5 KB

Because these are RGB only, there is no dedicated white channel, and there are no supported effects. (The best I can do is slowly colour change the whole strip via a script I wrote).

I’d like to upgrade these to get the following:

Brighter whites via a dedicated white LED.
Some alternative effects like rainbows or chasing etc.
Ideally zigbee based, but would also consider wifi via Esphome (Not interested in getting a 3rd party hub to make it work with HA).

So I stumbled over this video:

And started thinking about SK6812 strips.

There are so many threads on these topics, its a bit of a minefield, and wondered what the communities recommendations would be, given the above requirements ? Should I go for SK6812, and if so, what controller would pair with it in HA ?

1 Like
2

Looks reasonable

The go-to devices in this area are undoubtedly the ones from quinled

They are esp based so you are really owning them and can use the *ware you like if it is esphome or wled :rocket:

3

Perfect timing.

I also found this video:

Which briefly mentioned QuinLED

4

These look amazing and definitely fulfill my requirements.

1 Like
5

There is also a ton of very useful information on the site itself. Quinledpedia kind of style :rainbow:

6

What I really like is that the quin-led controllers fully power off the LED strips, so they aren’t drawing power, even when they are turned off, which many controllers dont do.

7

Some interesting observations that I thought I would share.

My current ‘dumb’ 7m LED strip is 60 LEDs/m, totally approximately 420 (5050) LEDs at 12v. According to a smart energy monitoring plug I have installed, its only pulling 20watts at maximum brightness (Although the LED’s never feel super bright).

This seems very low as compared to say the WS1815 (12v) addressable strip which according to this video:

Draws around 50 watts, and thats only for 300 LEDs. Further more, it apparently draws around 9watts even at idle.

My dumb LED strips pull 0 watts when idle.

8

High resistance in cables/connectors can limit the power consumption and keep your LEDs far away from super bright :sunglasses:

9

Having read more, I now understand why the addressable strips can draw a significant amount of power, even when not ‘on’.

The individual controllers on each LED package on addressable strips still drain a tiny amount of power per LED (even when off), which is not required by an analogue strip which don’t have these controllers on the strip.