LED strip lights

[Isk82]

I want to replace cove lighting (colored rope lights) in my Home Theater to LED strip lights. What is the best controller and plugin to run with HS4? Philips Hue or Zigbee or something else. I'm trying not to buy genuine Philips Hue strips but I would buy their bridge. AliBaba has RGB-WW and RGB-CCT strips much cheaper. Any advice or experience shared is appreciated. I would be running 2 - 5 meter strips

[IKUS]

I'm very much interested in hearing feedback on this from others as well as it seems that Z-wave strip lights and controllers come and go. I've played with Phillips Hue and love their speed and the number of lighting options available but having attempted to mix z-wave and zigbee (Philips Hue) in the same house with less-than-stellar results, I'd caution against the usage of zigbee lights/bulbs with z-wave wall switches if you want the ability to use scenes and multi-taps without lag and without the requirement for HS to sit between the wall switch and the light in order for it to work. Is your current rope light on a wall switch and if so, is it a z-wave wall switch?

[Isk82]

I'm very much interested in hearing feedback on this from others as well as it seems that Z-wave strip lights and controllers come and go. I've played with Phillips Hue and love their speed and the number of lighting options available but having attempted to mix z-wave and zigbee (Philips Hue) in the same house with less-than-stellar results, I'd caution against the usage of zigbee lights/bulbs with z-wave wall switches if you want the ability to use scenes and multi-taps without lag and without the requirement for HS to sit between the wall switch and the light in order for it to work. Is your current rope light on a wall switch and if so, is it a z-wave wall switch?

10 years ago when I built my theater I put 4 different color incandescent rope lights in the same cove. (red, green, blue and purple) All are on separate Insteon dimmer modules and I have scenes that can make a variety of colors, not 16 million, but still pretty cool for it's day. Combined with the wall switches that control the room lights, it makes a dramatic dim down scene with the push of just one button. But technology marches on and I realize LED would be better and now that HS can control them, I'd like to work them in somehow. I'm considering a Gledoptp Zigbee controller with a HUE Bridge but I'm having a hard time understanding it. HS4 will talk to the bridge, (via WIFI?) the bridge talks to the controller (via Zigbee?) and the controller controls the LED strips? I'm asking here. I don't know. Then there's the issue of the controller having 1 and 2 IDs, and the RGB, RGBWW, RGB-cct. What I'm asking here is can the HS app control the extra white LEDs that use the second ID channel? Or would I be wasting my money and just go with RGB?

[IKUS]

I'm not familiar with a Gledoptp zigbee controller...but why would you need it when you have the Philips Hue Bridge in the mix? The Philips Hue Bridge is a zigbee controller. The Hue Bridge plugs into your router via Ethernet and HS communicates with it over your local network and it communicates with your lights via zigbee. The JowiHue HS plugin that I played with a while back was pretty straight forward giving HS the ability to control the philips/zigbee lights similarly to the native philips app. I see that HS4 now has a native Zigbee plugin in beta...I'd be interested to hear from folks how well this works with the Hue Bridge.

As for issues...if you have a non-zigbee switch controlling your Hue lights (and you likely will since hardwired zigbee wall switches don't seem to be a thing like they are in the worlds of z-wave, insteon, or even ye olde x10), then you have to rely on HS being up, running, and responsive at all times to receive, translate, and re-transmit the switch's original protocol to the lights' zigbee protocol. In my opinion, anything over even half a second is too long of a delay for a light to response to a wall switch. The world has been using light switches for over 100 years and has an expectation of how they work. Guests will flip a switch and when no light immediately responds, they'll flip that switch up and down (or in and out) over and over for the first second or so while that translation occurs and they end up sending signal after signal to HS which will eventually translate and retransmit and give you a delayed on and off of the controlled lights which is just annoying to everybody and leaves the impression that your high-tech setup is broken or insufficient.

P.S. if you have a zigbee controller or a philps Hue bridge, you can buy a Philips Hue color lightstrip which can be controlled from HS using one of those plugins. If you want wall switch control though, you'll have to deal with protocol translation delays or use a battery operated Hue-specific wall switch instead of your in-wall hard-wired switches.

[w.vuyk]

One can look ant the Conbee or Raspbee gateways, using the deCONZ software gateway. You can use the Xiaomi switches, or the Philips Hue switches with it. Their response with the deCONZ gateway software is immediate. There is hardly any delays measurable to it. This is using the JowiHue plugin. If I measure the plugins delay (again, using the deCONZ gateway, not the Philips Hue bridges!) the delay is within 0,2 seconds ate most. Even is the gateway is busy.

It is really worth to look at.

Wim