Looking to landscaper wrap my palm trees in South Carolina with lights. I want to create holiday themes and manage from New York. I want out of the box solution, don’t want to build. Any products I can recommend to landscaper to install for me?
THX
- Twinkly. Amazing effects, high end cost, no current integration except a partial integration Alexa routines. Eventual Matter support has been promised, but it’s not here yet.
It’s hard to beat twinkly brand lights for effects, but they don’t currently have a smartthings integration. They have announced that they are going to support matter for all their existing models, but that hasn’t been released yet, and there’s no timeline. So if that happens, you would get smartthings integration that way, but again, no promises since it’s not real yet.
You can get partial integration for these by using Alexa Routines as an intermediary, which will be enough for some people, but not everybody.
- Hue bridge + Gledopto controller + dumb strips. Full integration with each strip, looking like one smart bulb to smartthings.
One popular option, which will cost a lot less and give you good integration, although not as many effects options, is just to get any dumb weatherproof light strips you like, and use them with a Gledopto zigbee controller connected to a Hub bridge. Each controller will look like one smart bulb to SmartThings, but you’ll be able to set colors and dim levels and use them in smartthings routines without requiring any custom code.
If the power outlet is a distance from the house, you’ll also need to get a weatherproof project box to put the Gledopto in, but you can get those at Home Depot or Amazon or any place with electrical supplies.
So those are two completely different approaches. Twinkly has amazing effects when used with its own app but very limited smartthings integration at this time.
Gledopto is probably a third of the price, but the effects are pretty much limited to on/off/dim and changing the whole strip to one color. If you connect via hue bridge, you won’t need any custom code at all and you’ll be able to use it in regular smartthings routines by treating each strip as one smart bulb.
The other options I am aware of all require some kind of custom code, but maybe somebody else knows of another.
info on Twinkly lights: