Hello! I’m wondering if anyone has been able to find outdoor colored string lights that are compatible with Smartthings? Thinking of something that can hang around a deck.
Could be something that looks like the G Soul
Any ideas?
Thank you!
You can get dumb LED lights and connect them to a Fibaro or a gledopto RGBW controller. That’s usually the least expensive approach. You’ll also have a wide choice of dumb lights to choose from.
You can also get the Osram/Sylvania garden spots, which work well with smartthings, but you have to individually remove the spikes in order to mount them which is kind of a pain. 
also they’re really more for decoration, they don’t give off much light. So it just depends on how you intend to use them.
You can find discussion of some of these projects by going to the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki, looking down near the bottom of the page for the “project reports” section , Going down a little further to the projects by room, and looking for the “yard“ list. There are also some on the “pool“ list. There should also be some on the “holidays“ list, although again those will be the more decorative ones like fairy lights. ( there’s also a “lighting“ projects list, but it’s going to have way too many other threads to really be useful.)
I should also say that since the G’soul will work with Alexa, You could use an Alexa routine (not a smart things routine) as a “man in the middle” and get good smartthings integration that way for this kind of use case.
So if you like those lights that might be the best solution for you. 
Thank you this is very helpful! I’m super new to this so I have some research to do. By “dumb” lights are you suggesting that I get something that doesn’t connect to wifi or a hub but just has a separate remote control that I could switch out for a fibaro controller? Would something like this work?
I assume that the fibaro controller would then connect to the smartthings app?
I know this is an old tread, but wanted to see if anyone knew of anything new to hit the market?
Two big players are expected to have something by the end of this year, for both the UK and US, but they aren’t available yet.
- Hue has a new line of fairy lights, Festavia, but they were only briefly available for sale last December and now are on hold until late this year, reportedly, so they can test possible outdoor use. Not sure if those will be outdoors or not, but possible. We will have to wait to see.
- Twinkly, who, dominate this category, has promised Matter support, which would bring them into SmartThings. Again, we will have to wait and see if it actually arrives.
Andrea Tellatin, CEO at Twinkly, told The Verge that it will make Matter updates available on all of its existing Wi-Fi smart lighting products and build Matter support into its new products.
- and I would expect matter to bring a number of inexpensive Chinese knockoffs of twinkly, but nothing available yet.
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So I think if you can wait a few months, you should see several new candidate options, most of which will not require any custom code.
i have both white and color patio light strings on smart switches with routines. for the most part they are maintenance free, but every once in a while i have to unplug the iris smart outlet and tap it on a hard surface to revive it. LOL
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