RGB and RGBW LED strip lights

Haven’t done this in a while but the logs don’t seem to indicate anything. Have you tried a reboot? Is it close to the hub? Also, ZigBee uses 2.4 ghz which can interfere with WiFi, Sonos, Chromcast, Harmony, etc. Make sure it isn’t too close to other wireless devices.

I want in on this idea for my kitchen. I found these strips, which are really bright (380lm/ft), and cheap:

https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/led-accent-lighting/led-light-strips-led-tape-light-with-18-smdsft-3-chip-smd-led-5050-with-lc2-connector/1465/4154/

I want warm white, and dimmable. Colors aren’t necessary.

I currently have a crappy old florescent fixture, which is controlled by a regular light switch. I want remove that and wire these LED strips to the light switch, which I would replace with a GE Z-Wave dimmer switch (which we know operates with no problems with ST!) And then add a ST Motion Sensor, so the counter lights fade up when I walk in.

This of course ignores the fact that the strips are DC, and the GE Switch takes AC. The tech guy at Super Bright LEDS pointed me to this power supply:

https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/dimmable-led-power-supplies/magnitude-dimmable-led-power-supply/1692/

…but he couldn’t guarantee it would all work if I wired that thing to a GE dimmer switch. If I cut power on the AC switch side, it might not dim the LED strips on the DC side. But I’d rather not mess with all of these unsupported devices-- I’d much rather get it all to work with a GE dimmer.

Any ideas, anyone?

Haven’t seen one of those before. I would suspect it would work. Otherwise you can try this:

However, your solution should have less of a lag.

Just wondering if anyone can confirm this controller setup would work canalizing parts from the generic kits brought from Ebay?

I will be using the SMD5050 strips (RGB) and the supplied power adaptor.

I do understand some cutting will be required (4 pin connector and power connector).

Thanks

It might work if the WiFi controller is similar to the ‘Limitless’ controller and the various other brands that copy each other but otherwise, you’re probably not going to have a good time of it. At the moment the two favoured controllers are the Dresden FLS-PP IP (ZigBee and may require a Philips Hue Bridge):

https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/funktechnik/solutions/wireless-light-control/wireless-ballasts/fls-pp-lp/?L=1

And the Fibaro Z-Wave RGB controller (Z-Wave and works direct):

I just purchased the FLS-PP lp to use with Smartthings, and I cannot control the W channel. Is there still no support for this?

Where did you purchase the FLS-PP Ip from? It might still have the older firmware on it that doesn’t allow you to control the W channel separately…

I purchased from Amazon. Recieved on Jan 12.

You would have thought that would be plenty enough time for it to have the new firmware, maybe it’s a device type issue.

Do you happen to have a Hue bridge? I have the old firmware and paired to the Hue Bridge (and ST) I can only control RGB in either app.

That’s what I thought! I do not have the Hue bridge. I paired to Smartthings hub, and it connected as “Zigbee Hue Bulb”. RGB works, but no W.

When you say W, what are you after? White color temp control? Or just brightness of W leds?

If you’re looking for white color temp control, try the Osram Flex Strip RGBW devicetype. I believe it’s the only official RGBW using zigbee.

Hi, Scott. The White LEDs do not operate at all when connected to the white channel. If I swap the white wire with one of the RGB channels, they do operate. I tried the Osram device type as you suggested, as well as the ZigBee RGBW bulb, and neither of these made a difference. The RGB functions work fine in all cases. Any other ideas? Thanks!

One more. Can you look at the device screen and post what is in the Data and Raw Description areas? If those aren’t populated, could you reset and re-pair the device while running live logging?

I have a hunch that the W channel is operating on a 2nd endpoint with separate on/off/dim control. Not many devices have usable functions on 2 different endpoints, and it’s not something ST natively handles, but it is something we can accommodate with custom code.

Data
endpointId: 0A
Raw Description 0A C05E 0210 02 08 0000 1000 0004 0003 0005 0006 0008 0300 01 0019

It doesn’t list whether there is a 2nd endpoint. You up for resetting/re-pairing to get the live logs? If you paired it recently, you could check your hub’s events for the join info.

It would look like the screenshot in this post. You can see that this device had 2 endpoints and you can see the raw description for each. If we at least get the other endpoint number, we can code for it since I know what the clusters should be.

1 Like

How about this:

[raw:C05E 0008 0A 01 0100 00 5CDC 00 00 0000 0A 01 000020FE, profileId:C05E, clusterId:0008, clusterInt:8, sourceEndpoint:0A, destinationEndpoint:01, options:0100, messageType:00, dni:5CDC, isClusterSpecific:false, isManufacturerSpecific:false, manufacturerId:0000, command:0A, direction:01, data:[00, 00, 20, FE]]

Unfortunately that’s just a level cluster message from the same 0A endpoint. Did you reset/re-pair?

I think I finally got it! Is this what we are looking for?

1 Like

That’s it! Looks like there is a 2nd endpoint!

To confirm that is the white channel, try replacing the ${endpointId} in the on(), off() and setLevel() commands with 0x0B to address that secondary endpoint directly.

If that works, then it’s just a matter of deciding how you want the white channel to work. Should it have its own separate controls for on/off/dim using custom commands? Should we turn it on in conjunction with the RGB by adding a 2nd “st cmd” line to each of on/off/setLevel?

Edited to add: I’m going to be unavailable until Fri or so, but I can help you work up the final devicetype then.

1 Like

Thanks for helping others out buddy!

In case it’ll help the Aeon RGB bulb device type has a colour wheel for RGB, a slider for brightness and a slider for white temperature.