Something very wrong with limitlessled MiLight RBGW+iBox2

Configuration
1

I’ve been trying in vain for months now to get a LED setup working with Home Assistant, using the light.limitlessled component.

I’ve determined that something is very wrong with using RGBW with Mi-Light.

I say this because also the many threads on this forum of people trying to get this to work, but a common use case I see is the use of the iBox2 with RGBW. What I’ve seen is that a lot of times it is reported to “work” but in reality is an rgbw setup that is incorrectly configured in HA as rgbww for some reason. Other times people just give up.

Searching “ibox2” on this forum, some examples:

The setup is:

  • Android phone and Mi-Light App - V4.0
  • 1x Mi-Light Wifi iBox2 - Model iBox2 - Software Version V1.0.08
  • 3x Mi-Light RGBW RF Controller - Model FUT038
  • Some Generic 10mm LED strips I purchased online
  • For the record, I’m not using a Mi-Light RF remote, just the Android App

Setup:

App -> [Wifi] -> iBox2 -> [RF] -> RGBW controller -> LED Strip
                          [RF] -> RGBW controller -> LED Strip
                          [RF] -> RGBW controller -> LED Strip

Config:

- platform: limitlessled
  bridges:
    - host: 192.168.178.24
      version: 6
      port: 5987
      groups:
      - number: 1
        type: rgbw
        name: strip 1
        fade: true
      - number: 2
        name: strip 2
        type: rgbw
        fade: true
      - number: 3
        name: strip 3
        type: rgbw
        fade: true

Without using HA everything works, I can control everything via the Android App, confirming that:

  • The LED RGBW strips work
  • The LED RGBW controller works
  • The RF link/pairing between the iBox2 and LED controller works
  • The iBox connection to Wifi works
  • The Android phone and Android App are connected to Wifi and communicating with iBox2

Now the main issue I’ve encountered, which seems to be common, is that if I configure my setup at type: rgbww it “works” but the controls and colours are all janky. If I select “blue”, “red” or anything else, I’ll get some other undesired colour and the white will also turn on.
I can turn the LED “on” and “off” but if I try to set a colour, it goes all wrong and cant seem to work as intended.

If I try to use type: rgbw nothing works, which seems to correlate with other experiences.
It seems to me that something is very wrong with the limitlessled component code somewhere.

So the question seems to be:
what is up with using the expected default type: rgbw with a Mi-Light iBox2 setup?

I’m an amateur Python developer, so I’ve started investigating into the light init and limitlessled component but I’m just trying to get my head around the setup now.

Does anyone else think that there may be something to this?