The Lightstrips choice thread

Hardware
61

I got it to work! In the app, I had selected the wrong “Remote” when I linked the controller. I un-linked the controller from the wrong “Remote” in the app, then switched “Remotes” and then linked the controller, restarted HA and it works great. I’m happy to expound on what I did to fix it if you need @Michael_Davydov

62

Are there any options for battery-powered LED strips? I’d like to put one in my hallway but don’t have any outlets nearby.

63

I’m not sure if there are any readily available, maybe someone else can comment on that…

But I was able to light about 1 meter of a strip with a simple 9V battery. So you should be able to just find a suitable power supply for your strip and connect it that way. I mean - any controller, including mi-light, can work off a battery as long as you wire it up, it’s only a matter of ‘how long’.

I’m not sure what the power drain of mi-light controller in sleep mode is. But I have a feeling that you’ll have to recharge it daily or so, here’s a little discussion I found on this: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/202745/how-long-will-this-battery-power-this-led-strip

So it’s a matter of finding the least power-hungry led strip, and the largest battery you can find :smiley:

64

I have a phone remote (android app), and my lightstrips work fine. Lightsrip controllers are FUT038. I currently use this lightstrip daily :slight_smile: It’s just that HASS does not seem to connect properly with milight bridge.

@masterfink Could you also share the related part of your HASS config, please?

I’m am not sure, what’s a ‘wrong remote’? My FUT038 is connected with Zone1 in the app. I see a button where i can select the visual look of the remote ( two arrows ), but there’s A LOT of them, which one is for fut038? And im not sure how a selected remote is relevant to it? :smiley: I mean… it could be, but… it’s weird.

I’m using the one on the left here https://futurehousestore.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Mi-Light-2.4GHz-4-zone-RGBW-LED-strip-controller-FUT038-compatible-remote-controllers.jpg

it’s the first in the app, and it works just fine from the app

65

Hmm, that’s far from ideal. Not really keen on recharging constantly :frowning: I’ll probably have to shelf the idea for now.

66

Hi,

I would suggesting ditching the ibox bridge and building an emulator with NodeMCU and NRF24L01.

Not only that it works better with HA than ibox (as it uses MQTT rather than UDP commands) but it does get HA in sync with the remote(s) if these were used to control the strip/bulb (not possible with ibox).

In terms of coverage they are similar (12-15 m at max inside) however multiple NodeMCUs can be deployed for a mesh network without any additional settings (the MQTT topic is common). This would not be possible with the ibox as you need to have a light group paired to the same unit and be in the range of the bulb.

A virtually unlimited number (:slight_smile: actually in the range of thousands) of hubs can be emulated thus have the strip/bulb paired with any hub id without affecting the performance of the set (or increasing the cost).

The mobile apps for iOS/Android can then be used like with the original ibox.

There are numerous tickets opened for MiLight support with HA which seems to be broken almost after each new HA version (but MQTT light component used by the emulator is rock solid).

67

Well, that’s lots of tinkering with electronics, time consuming if you never did it before. I’ll need to find time for that yet. I’ll take this suggestion but I’ll have to shelf it for a while.

In the meantime I’d like to get it to work with HASS without that. Since @masterfink got it to work, I believe it should be possible?

68

Hi, I think that I have misspoken and FUT038 is rgbw not rgbww (although FUT092 remote is rgbww/rgb+cct).

Try to unpair and pair again (in the app the remote type selected should be the one corresponding to FUT096).

69

Thanks, I may give it a try, but FUT096 has no saturation control, which is working with my FUT038 by changing brightness of the W channel (full color saturation means 0 white channel brightness and vice versa). My current controller is FUT092, which was first in the list, and I can confirm that it’s saturation control is working with FUT038.

70

As far as I’ve found (might be mistaken as I only have bulbs) there are 6 protocol versions used by MiLight (haven’t included the bulbs also):

  • cct => white only (remote FUT007/B2/T2, stripe FUT035); this is white in LimitlessLed component;
  • dimmer (remote FUT007/B1/T1, stripe FUT036); dimmer in Limitless;
  • rgb (remote FUT095, stripe FUT037); no match in Limitless
  • rgbw (remote FUT096/B3, stripe FUT038); rgbw in Limitless
  • rgbww or rgb+cct (remote FUT092/B4, stripe FUT039); rgbww in Limitless
  • FUT089 in the absence of a better name (remote FUT089/FUT090/B8); the difference towards rgb+cct is the increased number of zones (which determines a change in channels).

There are also some backward compatible devices (I think one level, FUT092 compatible with rgbw/FUT096, etc.). FUT039 is compatible with both rgb+cct and FUT089.

Should mention that MiLight emulator is compatible with all of the above :smile:

71

Huh, interesting. Well, I’ll likely try to pair it as you said, and see if HASS works, but I think i’m pretty sure that the problem is elsewhere. Most likely I’m using wrong port i think? @masterfink did not respond to me asking to share his config :slight_smile:

It’d be a shame to lose control over saturation, i like to set them red sometimes, like SATURATED red, and without control over W channel, that’s not possible.

Or maybe im mistaken, is this FUT096 you’re referring to? http://www.futlight.com/uploads/image/20160413/20160413202406_5162.jpg

72

Sorry, but I don’t currently have any of the strips to test (or the hardware ibox/ibox2 either, although I can emulate the ibox).

Port for ibox2 (MiLight v6) is 5987.

Yes, that’s the remote for FUT096.

73

Allright, sanity check, does this look correct? Not sure if it’s v6 or what

light:
  - platform: limitlessled
    port: 5987
    version: 6
    bridges:
      - host: 192.168.1.41
        groups:
        - number: 1
          type: rgbw
          name: Ima lightstrip
  - platform: hue
    host: 192.168.1.252
74

Try the following (I think that port and version are attributes of bridges not of the platform). Also, although not specifically required, is better to use lower cap letters and no spaces to prevent any issues (name can be customized subsequently).

light:
  - platform: limitlessled
    bridges:
      - host: 192.168.1.41
        port: 5987
        version: 6
        groups:
        - number: 1
          type: rgbw
          name: ima_lightstrip
75

Ah, that makes sense.

But that did not work.

Then I just opened “http://192.168.1.41/” in the browser, and there’s control panel of the bridge.
And it said that https://owncloud.davydov.tech/s/7vw4wA1ih7bZo6I

I tried that port too, but that did not work, it did not even show up in HASS UI at all. It at least shows up with port 5987.

76

What ibox version do you have? Port 8899 is before v6.

77

I don’t use an ibox but that ip is class A not class C (as the one you used to connect to web page)

78

Well yes, i figured out that that port is from older version.

So I tried using versions 1-4-5 with that port, nothing works. Last thing i tried was using that 10.10.100.254 ip ,not sure why that would work, and well, it didn’t :slight_smile:

I don’t know how to tell which LimitlessLed version ibox is using. On the box it says “IBox 2”. In web UI it says this:
https://owncloud.davydov.tech/s/DVKYVmoNnntSKmt

It was actually my first question when I read HASS Docs on LLed - “How do I tell which LLed version does my bridge use?”

79

Ibox 2 is v6 so port 5987. Can you change it in the webpage to 5987? Also, I think protocol expected by HA is UDP not TCP.

Try the followings for the settings in HA (I don’t know what else to do):

  1. if rgbw doesn’t work set type to rgww then to rgb;
  2. group number might be incorrect (are you sure you used group 1 to pair the remote)? could you try with group 0?
1 Like
80

Yay.

So, this works now:

light:
  - platform: limitlessled
    bridges:
      - host: 192.168.1.41
        port: 5987
        version: 6
        groups:
        - number: 0
          type: rgbww
          name: pc_table_1

In web panel of the bridge I also switched it to UDP and changed port to 5987. I think it was about number: 0 and rgbww type.

I’ve set the bridge back to TCP and 8899 port, restarted, and it still works.

So I tried to change it back to rgbw, and yeah, does not work with rgbw, only with rgbww

Thanks for the help! :slight_smile: