Which LED-Panel should I buy? (First steps into Smart Home)

1

Hello!

Some days ago, I dediced: I want a smart led panel in my man cave. Great thought, but from there, it went all downhill for me… I can’t dedice, what I need.

The whole story:

I need some better light to work in my hobby room, for this I thougth about buying a LED Panel (120x30cm or 120x60cm) for mounting on the ceiling.

Next thought: For working, I need bright, neutral light. But I also use the room for gaming. In this situation, I would like to have some cozy, dim and warm light. So, I would need a LED panel with different colors, maybe some RGBW for the funs…

I would like to have a remote controll, but I’m shure, that thing want last for ever, will get lost in some hobby stuff. That’s why I want to controll it per some other means. Android App, PC … that’s why I’m now into Home Assistant. (Next step would be a smart bulp and some motion detectors at my stairs!). I would start with this one LED Panel in my man cave, and then go on to other scenarios. (Hmmm, dimming the light, when I switch on the TV, motion detector in the hall and toilett…, all bulbs in the house go red, when my 3d printer has an error…).

I don’t want any cloud service! Clouds come and go, but my home should stay!

That’s why I think about a Raspberry Pi, a ConBee… that should be easy, I allready played a bit with HA in virtual maschine, installation and configuration looks easy.

But what I don’t get: Which LED panel should I buy?

It should be:

  • Not to expensive (less then 200 Euro) and
  • easy to source in germany, …

Any help would be great! I’m complet clueless after hours of reading and watching YouTube.

Bye and thank
Marcus (aka Tiggr)

2

Hi,
I’m looking for something like that, too. Did you manage to find a suitable led panel?

3

Hi Marcus welcome to the forum!

So you consider using a RPi: are you aware about the SD card corruption issues?

With a Conbee II: you plan to use zigbee.
IKEA sells LED panels but not with RGB it seems.

Have you found this: Top 10 LED Panel Zigbee RGB – Bürodeckenleuchten – OvoNEL

4

Hello @DanBak!
Hello @Nick4

I decided not to use a Raspberry Pi, but a small and cheap fanless server. One of the reases was the wear on the SD… I learned that lesson with nagios on a Raspberry Pi. :smiley:

I bought a LED Panel from Eglo, from the connect.z brand. Not shure if that was the best choice. sometimes it needs a second try before it reacts.

Bye
Marcus

5

I have multiple zigbee controlled lights and don’t experience what you write: they respond right away.
Do you have connection issues?

Have you seen this: Eglo connect.z integration

6

My other zigbee devices reacting fast as hell. Most of them made by IKEA! :smiley:

But I’m still watching the panel. I changed the hardware of my Home Assistant yesterday. I changed from a small mini pc with 4GB RAM running Proxmox and HA as VM to a small server running Proxmox and HA as VM. The system now has 16GB of RAM and I assigned 6GB to HA … and all my lights seem a bit more responsive now! :slight_smile: I’m afraid, the old hardware was a bit to weak and cheap for the setup.

Aside from my “reacts sometimes a bit strange”, I’m happy with the panel, and it seems good for the price.

7

hi @tiggr ! I’m interested on running HA in a fanless x86 machine. Can you share what hardware are you using?