The Lightstrips choice thread

Hardware
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Hello everyone,

Today I wanna talk about lightstrips! :smiley:

I am setting up lighting in my new apartment, and I planned to use a lot of lightstrips:

  • Around the ceiling in two rooms
  • Under and above the 2m-wide table
  • Under a bed shelf
  • Some other places

Total length is about 36m (118feet)

And the main question is - which lightstrips should I go with?
I already have 3 hue bulbs and a bridge, but this should not influence the choice of lightstrips a lotā€¦

Here are options I have:

1. Philips HUE Lightstrips

https://www.store.meethue.com/us/limitless-possibilities/lightstrip-plus
Philips HUE lightstrips are great. Everyone knows Philips hue. It has great integration into everything, as it seems. Even refrigerators and washing machines know about Philips Hue lights. Even my cat knows about them.

They come with 2m long bases and 1m long extensions. 90$ and 30$ respectively.

They are not as bright as LIFX, and they can only light up with one color throughout the whole length of the strip.

Price: 90$ Base 2m, 30$ Extension 1m
Pros:

  • Easy to use and setup, lots of apps use them out of the box, and can talk to HUE directly, even without HASS.
  • Lots and lots of integrations out of the box
    Cons:
  • Not as bright as LIFX, probably dimmer than FLICKERSTRIPs, even the new PLUS version from what I know

2. LIFX Z

https://www.lifx.com/products/lifx-z
Lifx Z is probably the main competitor to HUE lightstrips. They have two main advantages. One of them is that they have additional line of dedicated white LEDs, which boosts their brightnes above any other lightstrips. Another advantage is that each section can have their own color, however Iā€™m not sure about the exact number of LEDs that are ā€˜connectedā€™, from what saw itā€™s almost like 1 color per extension length.

On the other side they are not as widely spread, and my cat, alarm app, washing machine and fridge donā€™t know about them out of the box. But being main HUE competitor I hope that these integrations will come some time soon.

But I think it has HASS integration already, right?

And Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s con or pro, but each lightstrip base controller has itā€™s own wifi module, and they ā€˜talkā€™ to your router directly, and donā€™t need a Bridge, like HUE does. This approach has itā€™s own cons and pros, but in my case - it does not really matter. Since I already have a hue bridge, and I have a powerful enough router to support a lot of devices connected to it.

Price: 90$ base 2m, 30$ Extension 1m. Possible to buy 4x extensions for 100$, saving 20$.
Pros:

  • Paint with light, possible to light up different parts of the strip with different colors, which is cool!
  • They are much brighter
  • Possible to get them for a slightly cheaper price
    ? Integrated with HASS ?
    Cons:
  • Less integrations. Sleep as android, for example, seems to only work with HUE lights.

3. FLICKERSTRIP

https://hohmbody.com/flickerstrip/

A new name in the market of lightstrips, this was a kickstarter project by Julian, and now itā€™s finally in production. It uses fully adressible RGB lightstrips, meaning that you can control the color and brightness of each LED separately. It has very easy to use animation editor, something I thought of making myself - you just draw and image, each pixel in itā€™s width is a pixel on your LED and each line of pixels is a frame. And it just scans this image top-down.

Itā€™s also partially open-sourced already, and Julian mentioned to me in email that IF support of this project is dropped, he will release the source code for everything, including the controller. And right now he seems to repond quickly to emails, and offers support, and can even extend the functionality if required.

But itā€™s not integrated into anything yet, not even HASS.

Price: 99$ Base 3m, 35$ extension 1.8m (which is cheaper in total than other strips)
Pros:

  • Being more functional itā€™s actually cheaper than LIFX or Hue
  • Animations! Lighting up each LED with itā€™s own color opens lotā€™s of possibilities. Wanna have a NY party? You donā€™t even need a cristmass tree, your whole apartment is already capable of making a nice light show. Or maybe you wanna watch the download progress of something, while reading a book? Sure, just look up at the ceiling and youā€™ll see the progress :smiley: (I think, not sure if itā€™s possible yet, but it should be with fully adressible LEDs, depends on controller.)
  • Easy to replace it with any standard WS2812 LEDs, so in theory it should even be possible to replace it with brigther ones, or even get extensions for a cheaper price.
    Cons:
  • No integrations at all
  • I think itā€™s still hand-crafted, mostly, by the author itself. Iā€™m not sure if heā€™s still 3d-printing the controller case or ordered proper production yet :smiley:

4. DIY Lightstrips

Yes, thats also an option. It will take much more time to set up, but it will be much much cheaper. Like 10 times cheaper. Adressible LEDs can be bought for a very cheap price at any electronics market, or places like ebay\aliexpress. And controllers (NodeMCU or Arduino) are very cheap as well. Power supplies are not pricey at all too.

Rough estimation for base would be:

  • Controller chip - 8$ (damn, you can even use C.H.I.P for this price)
  • power supply and resistors\converters 5-8$
  • Strip - 15-20$ for 5m of lightstrip

Which sums up to max of 36$, maybe 40$ for 5 meter long controllable lightstrip, and you can buy extensions for cheap. It will take time to write and setup the software part, but then you only need to do it once, and then copy-paste it to other lightstrip controllers, wire all up, etc. And it will be bulkier than those neat plastic cases and power supplies.

Price: Around 40$ for 5m, about 55$ for 10m of lightstrip.
Pros:

  • Extremely cheap price
  • Fully adressible LEDs
  • Total control over the software
  • Wifi
  • Possible to use CHIPs (or raspberry pi zero w) to make them even smarter and use Python instead of C++ (which is a plus for me)
    Cons:
  • You have to write that software first.
  • C++ to make them fast
  • Time consuming
  • No integrations out of the box
  • Bulky DIY designs, unless you spend even more time to make them look nice and neat

MORE OPTIONS

5. XIAOMI MI LIGHT

Example on AliExpress (could not find official page for these)
Option suggested initially by @DavidLP, thanks David!

This is a much cheaper option, consiting of a WiFi bridge and controllers. and they work out of the box with Home Assistant through LimitlessLED component.

Price: Rougly 50$ for a set of 1 Bridge, 4 controllers (for 4 strpis) and a remote. Lightstrips not included.
Pros:

  • Cheap! These controllers cost around the same as DIY strips would. Considering how much time you save - Iā€™d say itā€™s worth it two times over. And yes, the price above is for a set of 4 controllers, so itā€™s about 10-15$ per one.
  • Work with HASS
  • Work with any RGB or RGBW strips
  • WiFi Apps available for ā€˜directā€™ control without HASS
    Cons:
  • Not a huge con, but they donā€™t work with addressible LED strips, so no NewYear lights.
  • 1 wifi box supports up to 4 lightstrips. Moar ā€˜smartā€™ boxes in your house, lol.

Overall I think this would be my first go-to choice. Cheap, almost plug and play, you are free to choose whichever light strip you like from the market, and they work with HASS out of the box. And with all these Pros I personally donā€™t care much about addressible and all that :slight_smile:

6. Arilux LED controllers with custom firmware

https://github.com/mertenats/Arilux_AL-LC0X

One of the half-DIY routes is Arilux LED with custom firmware. It will require some time and effort to flash new firmware, some soldering (?) or at least taking the original case apart.

Price: 10-12$ per controller
Pros: Cheap, DIY, consumes less power, does not require a bridge, uses mqtt, custom firmware which you can even adjust if you need
Cons:

  • Basically the same price as MiLight, but requires much more work and tinkering
  • Claimed to consume around 3W power per unit. Which is not THAT much, considering, but a think worth noting and keeping in mind

7. HUE-Friends, alternative ZigBee controllers

Example

Phillips Hue happens to work with a lot of other ZigBee controllers, and that is also a very nice option. Getting basically Hue experience for a lower price!

Price: 50$ (?) for 1 controller
Pros:

  • Works with Hue Bridge, meaning everything running out of the box and with HASS
  • Your choise of RBG strips
    Cons:
  • Still pricey. Basically the only advantage is that you can use your own lightstrip. But the controller itself costs around the same as Hue lightstrip

8. Hyperion + Raspberry Pi Zero W\C.H.I.P.

https://home-assistant.io/components/light.hyperion/

Another half-DIY option. Addressible LED strips. Requires some setup, obviously, and time, but is probably the cheapest addressible-strip controller option out there.

Price: 8-10$ for Pi Zero W or CHIP.
Pros:

  • Cheap
  • Addressible
  • Lightstrips!
    Cons:
  • Time consuming to setup, at least for the first time

Conclusion (OLD):

Iā€™m tempted to just throw money at HUE and have all working out of the box, with zero setup time. I may be ok with the fact that they are not as bright as LIFX. But I kind of feel like Iā€™m gonna miss the ability to change colors of individual pieces. However I will still be able to light up half of the ceiling with itā€™s own color, since Iā€™ll have to use 2 controllers per celing to cover the length.

LIFX are another plug and play option, which main buying feature is itā€™s brigthness, for me. And the fact that I can control itā€™s colorsā€¦ But I think that Flickerstrips beat them in this regard, since I can just buy Flickerstrip bases, and buy some RGBW strips and re-wire them to Flickerstrip controllers. And right now LIFX and Flickerstrips go side-by-side in terms of integrations, which are ā€œNoneā€. However LIFX is integrated into HASS, at least. Or is it? (I know about bulbs, but strips?)

And DIY option really buys with how cheap it is, compared to other options. But then again, itā€™s time consuming, and time is money. I would probably be able to earn more doing my actual work rather than spending time on this DIY project. Donā€™t get me wrong, I love to tinker with DIY projects, and will probably still do my own lightstrip in the future, but I canā€™t spend enough time right now to make those quick enough (have to setup lightstrips soon), not without working on it full-time at least.

UPDATED:

Well, thank you guys for all the new information. If anything new pops up, Ill make sure to add it to this header. If I donā€™t - poke me in PM :slight_smile:

So far I think that Iā€™ll go with MiLight controllers for everything, and will upgrade some of those to Adressible strips some time later, if I still feel like I want it. Iā€™m A Kitt fan, so Iā€™d die to see a red light running behind my monitors, when I talk to my AI or something :smiley: But I can live without it and without adressible lightstrips all over my apartment (ceiling strips for example).

I like it that theyā€™re cheap and basically plug and play.

For Adressible strips, Iā€™m still not sure if Iā€™d prefer Hyperion or Flickerstrip approach. I find Flickerstrips to not be very expensive, yet I love their animation approach. What about hyperion? How does one create a custom animation with it?

So! With all that said, what do you, guys, think? Which strips should I go with?

8 Likes
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I would prefer the solution that is neither expensive nor time consuming ;-). That is:

If you add the Xiaomi WiFi bridge than everything is working in Hass already. There are often bundled offers (WiFi bridge, RGB strip controller, and Remote)

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Oh, how did I miss those? Thanks, great, this looks promising. And the fact that they only give you a regular lightstrip controller, which you can connect to any lightstrip, thats great.

Are you talking about this: Mi. Light Wifi iBox2

I really hope that itā€™s the latter, donā€™t wanna get another router :smiley:
Yet I did not find HASS component for this, which one is that? The only xiaomi one I found is for prescence detection based off their router, not this bridge.

Does it work with adressible strips as well? The ones where you control each LED separately?

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Yes, I mean the Wifi iBox2. It only needs power and a connection to your Wifi. So you can hide it anywhere in your home.

Since 4 companies use the same hardware and just relabel it with their name ;-), the component is called limitlessled. Works also with Xiaomi.

Just by judging the I/Os I would say no. But I do not have the controller.

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I would suggest this if your going for DIY route


You flash once and are good to go! HASS config example included in github page.
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i also have a cheap milight box.
didnt even bother to get it in china, just on amazon.de for 15 euro. (needed it quick as Christmas present)
around 10 euro for the controllers.

10 euro for a 5m RGBW ledstrip and ready. (3 to 6 for cheap rgb works also)

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Nice. A little cheaper and if setup properly itā€™s better.
Just a general question: Last time I read about the ESP8266 I concluded that mqtt + ESP8266 + TLS is not possible due to the limitations of the chip. TLS means in this context that just a fingerprint is checked, but no proper encryption. So I concluded that the ESP8266 should not be used with public mqtt servers. Did this change?

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Running my own mqtt server, so canā€™t really help you here.
Maybe you can ask on project topic?

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@melagodo Do you know how much standby power is needed by this wifi LED controller?
I saw some others with over 3W and this is pretty heavy if I think about them running 24/7
@Michael_Davydov As you mentioned youā€™d like the Hue experience, Check out these Zigbee controllers they should work with the Hue bridge out of the Box and with RGBW https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-electronic-ballast-interface-certified/dp/B00NMSQ4QQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490809442&sr=8-1&keywords=fls+pp.
They are not cheap either, but you can use one each 10m strips. so this would actually be an alternative to the short Hue strips.
And they need 0.4W in standby onlyā€¦

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Thanks everyone.

@DavidLP Well, based on the price of milight+strips (what, around 35$ for 5 meters, and then around 20$ for each additional 5 metersā€¦) Iā€™ll be ok if they are not adressible :smiley: Can always start with those and upgrade to adressible later, if needed, I guessā€¦

@derdude1893 yes, this is also a good option, IF it works with hue controller, is there any proof that they work with hue bridge? I know that not all zigbee products works with hue bridge. And it if does not work with it, then itā€™ll be pretty much useless to meā€¦

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@Michael_Davydov
Yes they are compatible. Check out here.

https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/funktechnik/solutions/wireless-light-control/wireless-ballasts/fls-pp-lp/?L=1&cHash=c9c902ccdb43164696acccf81b62b2bd
They cannot do homebridge though but who needs that :wink:

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If you want to use those you only need a pi zero w running Hyperion to control the strip, this is controllable directly by HA, no need for the bridge.

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@Bobby_Nobble
If you want to use those you only need a pi zero w running Hyperion to control the strip, this is controllable directly by HA, no need for the bridge.

Hm, this sounds good as well, however itā€™s hard to get pi zero ws here.

@derdude1893
Great, thanks!

So, it was a good idea to ask about it here, thanks guys, you provided me with a lot of really cool options, which are all much cheaper and\or less time consuming than what I initially thought about using.

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@Bobby_Nobble - can you elaborate on this? any links etc? Iā€™m very interested in addressable LED strips, and I get the Hyperion and pi zero w - but how does HA handle the control?

ā€œIf you want to use those you only need a pi zero w running Hyperion to control the strip, this is controllable directly by HA, no need for the bridge.ā€

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@Michael_Davydov - thanks for posting this - Iā€™ve been in the exact same boat as you for a while and couldnā€™t make a decision on any led strip controllers etc - it seems there is lots of information, but not all in one spot/post - this was a good post to get some ideas from.

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@Bobby_Nobble
similar question as vexter. I use hyperion as an ambilight on the same Pi i have OSMC and HA running, and I can use it in HA. What I did not manage to do so far is the use of effects and dimming.
Do you know a way to show a brightness switch?
Looking forward to your yaml :wink:

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Yes, my intention was to create a thread, which would include all ledstrip information, a go-to place if you donā€™t know which ledstrip to choose, etc. Maybe it will even be pinned one day :smiley:

I will add all newly discussed options to the first post later.

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I think I may have a slight answer to your question @derdude1893 - https://home-assistant.io/components/light.hyperion/

and here - Hyperion component

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Exactly where i was about to point you :slight_smile:

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Thatā€™s too funny! @Bobby_Nobble