I’ve basically finished filling my home with inovelli dimmer switches. I love them, and I love you guys.
I’m looking into getting some LED strip lights for my son’s room (age 5), for an under-bed play area. I would really like him to be able to control the lights, and their effects, independently, without using a phone or similar device with a screen.
I’d like to be able to let him use as much functionality as possible (color, effects, etc).
I’m running hubitat and home assistant. I have a strong z-wave mesh. If the best solution involved putting a raspberry pi in his room, I could do that too. I’m a software developer, and I love to get into the weeds to make something work better. My wife would like something that works without me sinking a ton of time into it.
Does anyone know of a controller that would allow a child to manage these awesome lights? The only idea I’m coming up with at the moment is a cheap IR remote designed for led strip lights, and a networked IR receiver to translate the commands into MQTT messages, which I could set up to control the lights.
Do you have an Inovelli dimmer or switch in his room. I have a switch in my kitchen setup where 4x up enables party mode (rainbow aurora) and my year old can do it most of the time.
Not yet, but I’ve got one in the garage that’s destined for his room. It won’t be as straightforward as other installs, since I’m going to need to add a second device to the box (currently there’s a fan controller, and I can’t use the LZW36 because there would be no way to reverse the fan).
Fortunately, it’s already a 4" square box, with a 1-gang mud ring on it, so It’s just a matter of cutting some drywall and putting on a new mud ring, but that (plus the fact that the existing light works fine) makes it lower on the priority list.
I’d really like something with more buttons, though. I’m leaning towards the networked IR receiver solution, but I haven’t found a commercial one that looks right (lots of things transmit IR, but they all seem to only support receiving for learning commands). There are some directions for building it out of circuit boards and components, which I could do, but I don’t know how I’d build a case for it so I can mount it in his room.
How customizable do you want the interface? There are some battery powered scene controllers where you could preset 4 or more scenes or modes. Or do you want a UI where he can pick any one of the 40 something pixel effects, static colors, etc?
Could easily use a button remote for switching through the presets. Top button present 1 + 1 to advance through presets , bottom button present - 1 to go back. Middle button be a predefined 3000K dimmed level.