How To Set Up Philips Hue Light Strip

Smart low-cal options from Philips Hue are pretty expensive, but perhaps nix is every bit pricey every bit the Hue LightStrips. The good news is that you can relieve quite a bit of cash by putting together some DIY Hue-compatible lite strips.

RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Philips Hue Lights

The Hue LightStrip kit costs a cool $xc and comes with two meters worth of lite strips. You can add on 1-meter extensions for $30 each. To get five meters worth of Hue LightStrips, y'all'd have to spend $170. All the same, if you're willing to do but a chip of assembly yourself (no fancy skills required), you lot can get the aforementioned length of Hue-compatible LED light strips for just a picayune over $40.

The only downsides are that your calorie-free strip won't work with HomeKit or Hue Sync, and transitions aren't as smooth as the real affair, but if y'all're still interested in saving a lot of cash, then proceed reading.

What You'll Need

To create your Hue-compatible LED light strips, you lot'll need three chief components: the LED light strips, the controller module, and a ability supply. Unfortunately, you can only find the correct controller module on Aliexpress, so be prepared to look a few weeks, since information technology ships from China.

Here'due south what you'll need:

• Gledopto ZigBee RGB+CCT LED Controller: This controller lets you change the colors, as well every bit the color temperature of the white spectrum.
• Five Meter LED Light Strip: You can cut these down to a shorter length if demand be, or yous tin can buy more if yous desire something even longer (by using connectors).
• 12V 3A Ability Supply: Three amps will get the job done for five meters of light strips or fewer. If you're adding more, you'll want to go with a 5A power supply.

In total, this all toll me only $43.90. This same kind of setup using the official Hue LightStrips would cost $170, and that's not including sales tax.

Assembling Everything Together

At that place's not a whole lot you need to do to go it all up and running, and it takes near five minutes to put together everything.

To showtime, have the vi wires on the end of the LED calorie-free strip and plug them into their corresponding slots on the controller module. To do this, use a pen or small screwdriver to press down on the terminal, slide the wire into its slot, and release the terminal to lock the wire in place.

Here's a photograph of what the connections look like then that you tin can match it with yours. Have note that the white wire doesn't actually plug into the "W" slot, but rather the "V+" slot. Also, at that place are two red wires—the 1 next to the blue wire plugs into the "R" slot. The other ruby wire plugs into the "Westward" slot.

Once yous've made all the connections, plug the ability supply into the controller module. Plug the other end into an outlet.

The LED light strip should light up correct away. If not, brand sure that the green lite on the controller is lit up. If the indicator lite is on, then check the wire connections. Also, make sure to cut down the other end of the light strip and then that the tips of the wires don't touch each other. If they are touching, it won't short out the lights, but it will outcome in displaying different colors than what yous chose.

Once your light strip is working correctly, it's now time to connect it to your Hue Bridge and control information technology from your phone!

Connecting It to Hue

Connecting the light strip to your Hue Bridge and controlling information technology from your telephone is the same as adding whatsoever other Hue calorie-free. Start past opening upward the Hue app and tapping the "Settings" tab at the bottom.

Select "Calorie-free Setup" from the listing of options.

Tap "Add together Lite" in the top-left corner of the screen.

Hit "Search" at the bottom.

The app volition brainstorm searching for new lights. Somewhen, it will discover the new light strip, which volition exist named something like "Extended Color Calorie-free."

From there, go back and add together the new low-cal to a room under the "Room Setup" option. This lets you lot control the low-cal and include it with your other Hue lights in that room.

At this point, your DIY light strip acts like any other Hue light, and yous would never know the difference otherwise from within the app.

Once again, the downside is that it won't work with HomeKit or Hue Sync, and transitions are rather sudden when dimming or turning lights on and off, at to the lowest degree compared to the shine transitions of an official Hue light. It'south not a huge deal, though, especially when you lot're saving a ton of money.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/361560/how-to-make-your-own-philips-hue-lightstrips-for-cheap/

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