I’m looking to add some uplighting to my house like shown here.
Can anyone recommend a HA compatible RGBWW uplight? My preference is ESPhome, but would consider zigbee or a light that has an integration. I’d like bright lights that are also dimmable. But not being dimmable isn’t a deal breaker.
Does anyone have recommendations?
Wow Master Wayne, hope Alfred is still being helpful 
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that said, some of the ‘best’ external LED RGBWW lighting solutions are in the Tuya ‘space’. If you can find a specific device within this universe that you can make ‘100% local’ via some of the cited hacks below, I think you can place a really cool and solid solution.
I should not minimize the challenge of finding device that you can replace the firmware on (or in the case of BLE, figure out the commands) . However, once you find them most definitely buy extras, ‘cause if it is good it is gone’ in the market where you buy them, they will ‘burn out’ at some point and you do not want to restart this ‘adventure’ from point zero for as long into the future as you can.
Also, there are some of the devices that are based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) that are ‘local only’ hackable as well.
See the links below.
Good hunting!
I’m working on a project now for permenantly installed Christmas / multiuse lights. I’m an EE, but haven’t done electronics projects like this since college, so hobbiests far outpace me currently.
My research so far has gotten me this:
WLED is kind of like a fork of ESPHome, but for LEDs. I flashed it on an ESP board, and the interface is simple and powerful. HA integration is same as ESPHome.
Unless you want to buy a complete solution and hack it, you’re probably going to have to invest in some tools / equipment. For example, I’m thinking I may need to get some tools to makeup cables so I can buy waterproof cables and attach them to wherever they need to be. Haven’t scoured Alibaba yet, I may get lucky. But honestly, that’s not a bad investment, m12 connectors are nice and look clean.
ESP is 3.3v, most LEDs are 5v control / power, or 5v control, separate 12v power. Plenty of guides online on how to make this work. Take the time to read and understand them. Don’t ignore the small components, like fuses, capacitors, resistors, etc. Especially if you’re not sure why they’re recommended.
I haven’t yet found an easy solution for mounting an ESP board in a waterproof box. I’m probably going to just mount a dev kit on a breadboard and stick it with double sided tape. When that eventually shits itself, I may be using a custom PCB, or have found a better solution by then.
I’d recommend starting easy, with maybe some interior strip lights that you may eventually use somewhere. Get them working, then graduate to outdoor, powerful, waterproof lighting.
That’s not my house, I just found that on the internet to demonstrate what I’m looking for. This is my house I’m looking for lights for. 
I just flashed some Tuya RGBWW can lights to Libretuya, so that’s definitely an option.
@Dyson I’ll need a light similar to this. Can I use any light with WLED? I thought that just controlled individual LEDs on a light strip or set up on a string for permanent lighting.
I can’t say for sure, but looks like you could probably hack them to work. Specs don’t explicitly call it out, but it looks to me like they have 12v power, and 5v control, all probably running to that central controller. So each light probably has a hanging cable at the end for you to add the next light. Should be able to replace the brains with WLED if you wanted to.
WLED is for controlling string lights, but it has a selectable number of devices, so in this case you’d pick a number like 8. Aside from maybe needing another power supply, you should be able to add more than 8 in this case.
I’d imagine it would make more sense to control all of them as a singular string of lights, rather than as 8 individual lights, so one WLED would make sense. You could also break it up with WLED if you did want to control them in groups.
That goes back to my original point though. You’d be buying a fully featured solution, only to hack it apart. Going to be expensive and time consuming just to end up basically with what you started with, just open source. The benefit though is you know the parts work, and are of a relatively high build quality.
I’ve not done any deep work in the area of UDP lighting control, that said, I believe the OpenBeken project does support DDP lighting.
‘DDP lighting protocol support (“startDriver DDP” in autoexec.bat/short startup command), works with xLights’
I have gone down the OpenBK firmware more than the LibreTiny path. That said, the nice thing about both of these ‘off shoot’ of Tasmota and espHome projects is that you can go back and forth between them very easily. And both communities on GitHub seem very friendly, inclusive and helpful.
Good hunting!
