Looking for something with warm hues (should be available with any rgb right?) and a long lifetime. I dont want to ever replace light fixtures again. Any help / suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
I will say, make sure whatever light string you get is RBGW, I.e. has a White LED since the white created by RGB is off and it'll make a room feel off. Beyond that though idk
Yeah, the RGB "white" is so often a sickly pink colour that makes the whole space feel bad. make sure the White LEDs are temperature controllable or at least a warm white, rather than a cool white.
People have suggested RGBW, I would go even further and suggest RGBCCT. Get something with a decently high CRI, 85 at the least, 90~95 is better. Some good sellers on Ali include BTF-Lighting and Auxmer (my favorite, good seller, I believe to be actually factory direct).
Thanks, friend! This is really helpful and contains more useful information than I was finding on my own
Let me know if you have other questions. How are you installing the strip? What will you be using for diffusion if necessary? What do you plan to use for drivers? Do you have some sort of home automation? Or all stand alone?
I would probably try to keep my first install simple, expanding later if I want. Ive got 12 ft ceilings, so I was thinking about installing hooks / anchors on the cieling to hold the LED strips and then 3 mm semi translucent acrylic panels suspended below that. Havent looked at drivers too in-depth, Ive worked with one from Amazon, cut off the controller board and set up a potentiometer to change the pwm signal to get a dimming effect. Ill probably dig arojnd to see if theres something a little more out of the box.
havent had the time to get home automation going, its just too low on my list of priorities
I mean I recommend Philips Hue for all lighting products if you are looking for the "best", but they're expensive af
Geeni makes a Walmart specific brand that does alright as a Hue replacement. I had a few Hue lights but after we moved into our house I wanted to get more lights for all rooms and saw them and tested one out in my kid's room for a while and it worked so I swapped them all out and offloaded my Hue lights at a garage sale we had a while after.
How are they holding up? Ive heard that the bulb based solutions degrade over time due to heat dissipation issues. Strip lighting is more attractive to me because i can replace a single LED if it goes bad, as opposed to throwing away a whole bulbs worth plus the power supply, SoC and wifi
I picked them up like 3 years ago and not a single one has failed l. The real issue is that the app isn't great and it can be finicky trying to get a bulb on your network. The app also has telephony and it their servers are down they don't work.
I actually want them to fail so I can eventually replace them with regular ones. Trying to do home automation is starting to be more of a hassle than I care about. I can still see the appeal of it though.
