I’m in search of a Zigbee controlled light strip much like a Philips Hue Gradient Lightstrip but those are crazy expensive so I’m considering building my own light strip using a RBG+CCT compatible zigbee controller.
Does anyone know if I can just buy any brand and add it as a generic zigbee device and get all functionality directly inside Homey Pro (2023)?
I have found a controller that is directly compatible with Philips Hue Bridge and since Homey can act as a Philips Hue Bridge itself I assume that it would probably work?
It doesn’t work that way;
The generic zigbee driver is very basic, for light type devices there’s not much more functionality but on/off, dim and color settings.
I’m afraid a LED controller can only be turned on/off, if you’re lucky and if presents itself as either light or switch.
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Not true at all; only Home Assistant has a Hue bridge emulator available.
Homey, without a Hue bridge, only can connect and control certain Hue zigbee device types, as mentioned here
I see, so the question then becomes, what options do I have?
What I want is super simple, a RGB+CCT light strip that I can control locally (preferrably zigbee) through Homey without the need for another bridge (like philips hue bridge) and without having to use another app or account etc etc.
Options that need to work are on/off , dim level, RGB values and that it remembers the last state after power shortage. Animations are not something I care about, I mainly need static light.
I thought I could just go to any smart home shop and just buy one that met my needs but it seems like it isn’t really that simple
With Homey:
For most smart devices, just always assume you need an app, and that this app also supports the device of your choice > because, if a brand has an app, this does not necessarily mean that all smart home devices from that brand are automatically supported
Only for Matter devices (and basic zigbee/z-wave like lights & relays), it’s kinda true, they don’t need apps for standard (basic) functionality;
Matter has more need to knows: only IF supported by Athom’s current Matter implementation, AND if the device is Matter certified.
However, Matter devices can have custom functions / functionality, which require an dedicated app
Still with me?
To help making your choice:
These are recommended Led strips by Athom:
For each app found, you can check which led strips are supported.
When you ‘hover’ a device in the app sore pages, the protocol is shown, like, zigbee.
Matter support for apps is (very) minimal, they can basically only assign a custom icon to a device. Everything else needs to be supported by Homey’s Matter implementation, so there’s simply no support for custom Matter functionality on Homey.
I had previously found that recommended led strips post but they don’t list any CCT-strips, only up to 60leds/m and also none of them were an option for me for other reasons I can’t remember currently (some were simply not available to buy and some were too short or too pricy or had the wrong protocol or relied on cloud service etc)
However, I managed to decipher the market a bit and found a controller by gledopto that supports RGB+CCT strips that works with Homey without an additional app since Gledopto has a Homey App available (when i talk about additional apps and accounts, I do not mean the apps inside Homey, those are a part of the Homey ecosystem afaik. What I mean is having to go to google play store and download an app to my phone that I also need to create an account for in order to link/configure the device properly)
I noticed that you shared a link to a Gledopto GL-C-002P RGB+CCT controller that you bought. Were you able to get it working with the Homey Pro (2023)?
I bought a Gledopto GL-C-202P. I can add it to Homey, but I can’t control it from the Homey app. It’s also listed as being compatible with Homey, so I’m wondering if you’ve had any better luck.
