Hi All,
We’ve got many requests for the separate white channel control in the last weeks. It’s therefore understood as a must have feature.
I’ve experimented with different firmware modifications in order to let the Philips hue hub recognize the white channel as a standalone dimmable light (like the hue Lux). It didn’t worked out yet
Still, the biggest challenge remains: how to do the firmware update! At the moment there is no way to let the Philips hue hub update third party devices.
Does the SmartThings hub support ZigBee OTA updates or is it somehow possible to contribute to the ZigBee core firmware of ST?
Then after device update and if device is controlled directly from the SmartThings ZigBee radio, creating a white channel control should be straight forward (for example treating the extra endpoint like a hue lux).
@Manu, have you reached out to SmartThings support to see about firmware push support? I’m not a developer, though plenty of other devs have participated in this thread. However, from a business standpoint it seems that you might get some support from SmartThings on this. If this device works well with SmartThings, they could conceivably add it to their online store as an approved device.
is there any more detailed documentation for this item, would like something that covers specifics for luminary design such as,
Design wavelengths of the RGBW channels, do you assume standard wide gamut RGB i.e. Red @ 700nm, Green @ 525nm, Blue @ 450nm.
or a more common range from LEDs with red at 620 and blue at 470nm.
Same thing with white you assuming D50 ~5000k or D65 ~6000k?
Does the Mixing assume the same sensitivity for all the LEDS, ie 80 lm at 350ma for each channel or allow for the higher efficiency of green LEDs typicaly 2x that of red and 6x that of blue?
Its important if the light is going to anywhere near match the colour from other bulbs if there in the same room, also the choice of red and blue LED defines the ability to produce colours at the bottom of the chromaticity diagram, the often very important pinks.
Also is there any way to limit the maximum output of the ballast if the LEDs attached cant hack 6A, not so important but during development i might not have lots of LEDs attached.
Lastly is there any sensitivity to one of the channels operating at a lower voltage i.e. red LEDs often have a 30% lower forward voltage than green LEDs, would it benefit from a common diode in-line to bring up the forward voltage?
I’ve been eyeing this thread for a bit. I got a set of RBGW strips today, almost ready to pull the trigger on the FLS-PP. I’d also love to see white support in ST.
I recently purchased 2 FLS-PP for use with my SmartThings hub. When I powered it up it was recognized and when I click on it a color wheel is displayed but it doesn’t control anything. I can’t turn the lights off or change the color. Is there something I’m missing? Thanks.
Hello,
So I currently have one FLS-PP IP but I’m considering buying more but I have a few questions before I invest more money in this direction. I’m currently using it with some RGB led strips but am not happy that the color isn’t able to match the HUE LED strip I already own. If I were to purchase some RGBW led light strips will that help. I’ve noticed that the hue strip has a 4 in 1 SMD but I am currently only able to find RGB 3 in 1 plus a white led. Will these colors reproduce properly? I’m not interested in controlling only the white channels. Just wanting to get the more pastel hues and warm white.
Hello,
I have a question. With the FLS-PP, can one use it to start the first light strip, and then connect additional light strip, with a power amplifier, and still retain all of the functionality provided by the FLS-PP down the chain?
For example - Christmas lights on the house type scenario. If I were to connect multiple strips of LED lights along the front of my house, use the FLS-PP as the starting power, and then use amps along the way, would the control be lost at the first amp’d strip, or would this even work?
I have not added a second strip to the FLS-PP but to my Milight and do use a power amplifier/power supply for the second strip and I have not issues with controls or functionality. I would assume the same thing with the FLS-PP. Just need to have the amplifier between each 16ft light strip and the controls will be fine.
Does anyone know if this will work with control4, There’s not a specific control4 driver for it but philips hue can be controlled with C4 and being zigbee would be a fantastic solution for a lighting job i’m doing in a hotel. I’ve ordered one to mess about with but any pointers would be helpful.
Not directly, Control4’s zigbee stack can only be set up to devices that comply with Control4’s custom clusters and a custom driver would have to be set up.
However, there are many 3rd party drivers that allow devices to be added via hubs, wink, hue and others to name a few.
An ST driver could be developed to integrate ST into Control4, but since its dealer only install, it doesn’t really work well with the DIY market ST is aimed at.
Maybe someday, Control4 will allow standard Zigbee HA 1.2 devices to pair in their system.
Thanks for the quick response I understand I can’t then connect it with zigbee, if I add a philips hue hub which I can control with control 4 is it possible I can control it through that.
Yes, that should work. Just not sure if all the features are implemented. Basic on / off and color should work, don’t know if hue ever did the white channel process and if Control4 (EV) ever adapted their UI to handle white intensity.
Hoping this is the correct place to ask this… I have an Amazon Echo which I use to control all my Philips Hue lights via voice and which works really well. The FLS-PP lights don’t appear to be supported though as i cannot “discover” them on echo. Is that an Amazon Echo firmware update requirement or does this not work with the Amazon hardware? All my other Philips lights work and are controlled perfectly.
Cheers
Just to update on my previous question, Although not able to connect this directly to control4 I was able to control it via control 4 by adding a philips hue link into the project for on/off and individual Red Green Blue, Mixing other colours was the disappointing factor and that’s more to do with the philips hue as it doesn’t use standard RGB to make colours so programming different colours was very difficult to get the correct colour settings for this reason i’ve decided to stick with using dmx. For anyone wanting to add led strips or other lights to their philips hue this is an excellent product!
Any progress on getting the white control working with ST? I’ve finally got it working on my back porch.
I’d love to be able to control my white LEDs on my RGBW strip.
On a side-note, my color wheel disappears all the time…anyone else have this bug?
I would really like to see the separate control of the white lights as well. I have purchased 2 FLS-PP lp controllers and RGBWW LED strips. The whites are barely on when connected to the FLS-PP. @manu have you had any luck working with SmartThings on this? I want to install these in a couple places in my house, but want to make sure I’m going to have the full solution before I do…
Hi, here’s an update on the separate white channel control topic. First things first, it works with the Philips hue bridge now! I’ve made a short demo video so you can see how it works with a 24V RGBW light strip. https://vimeo.com/129316684
Please bare with my old HTC phone for sluggish fading, actually it’s pretty smooth with a proper mobile device.
So what changed?
Before
RGB and white channel was controlled by one Extended Color Light
User experience works only well for RGB not for RGBW
As tradeoff white channel was set implicitly based on saturation and brightness
No way to manually adjust the white channel
After
RGB channels are still controlled as usual by the Extended Color Light
The white channel is no longer controlled implicitly with RGB channels
The white channel is represented as separated Dimmable Light (like a Philips hue Lux)
Therefore full control of white channel as well as full brightness range is available
What do you think? In my opinion the UI control widgets must reflect the new behavior so that one can see the RGB and white channel controls on one screen. I guess for SmartThings and some 3rd party apps this will be pretty easy to implement but I’m afraid the Philips hue app won’t provide such a widget.
When will the update be available?
Beside the white channel control the firmware update provides several improvements and bug fixes. We are currently in the last stages to verify everything is rock solid so that we can bring the update to ZigBee certification in June/July. After certification we will provide the .zigbee OTA update file to update devices which are already in the field. Here is the biggest challenge, as I mentioned before to update the FLS-PP lp the gateway must support ZigBee ZCL standard OTA which SmartThings currently doesn’t (as to my knowledge). So for now another device would be needed for updating. The RaspBee Shield and our ZigBee dongle will work for sure, also there are further ZigBee dongles which may work but I had never tested them. I’m happy to help writing a SmartThings driver for updating if that is possible with the public ST API?
