See what you are selling here. Got something went terribly wrong on the actual page. And here I thought it could have been yet another irk and we crashed the page.
@mehcuda67@TehMaliron the entire strip may be addressable by device but the individual leds on each strip are not. This make a huge difference in the use of the strips and the effects available. Its fine if you want to color an entire roomligh in a single color. Of course you’ll need an application that can controll 12 strip controllers at omce or use power injection and a different power supply to chain them together.
@hchavers Bluetooth is considered a peer to peer phone or device connection network. Wi-Fi is considered a whole home static “hub and spoke” connection network. Which is better for a device you plan on mounting to a large object? Probably the Home network. Bt is meant for objects in close proximity too (30ft /10m), Wi-Fi can cover acres if your repeaters are set up right.
@Chronicle@hchavers Also, with Wifi, you can setup other devices such as Alexa or Google Home to control those devices. I use both to control my Geeni/Merkury outlets today along with the app. I can turn devices on and off when I’m away from home too – cannot do that with bluetooth.
@hchavers So you can access them from outside of your network I think. The tough thing is that most consumer routers are good for maybe 20-25 devices per band.
@Chronicle@hchavers I think when they do BTLE in things like smart bulbs though, each bulb serves as a repeater to daisy chain the whole network of bulbs together. For instance, newer Phillips hue bulbs can operate hub free over BT, or in a hub operated mode over zigbee. Since Zigbee kind of works in a chain, they implemented the same sort of behavior over BT to increase the range without needing the hub. Really though, if you plan to do loads of bulbs or strips, it is better to run them via a hub on a different frequency. Putting 100 bulbs on your wifi network is going to lead to interference, while having a single wifi connection to a hub that then handles all the bulbs is better. Then again, you could always run all your internet stuff on 5 ghz, and all your smart devices on 2.4 ghz, and the bulbs would only interfere with each other.
@shahnm Hmmm. If they require a connection to set up, and then respond to buttons for general ons and offs, that would suffice. Hard to tell from the Amazon reviews.
@melonscoop I have used light strips like this, and if it says alexa compatible, or google compatible, you can set it up once on the phone app, and link to the home assistant, then delete the app off your phone and use your voice to do things. Also, the phone is only to change the state, so if you set up a timer and colors and all that, and didn’t care to control them via phone, you can just unplug them, and they will resume whatever schedule you set them to when you plug them back in, though they might lose track of time. For instance though, you could set them up to flash between red, green, and blue at a certain speed, and they will do that when powered back on at the wall if they lose power, so you set them up and delete the app, and they just blink in that one pattern forever unless you reset them(which usually turns them white or to some default setting)
@ChadP@melonscoop@shahnm Hmm, this is super annoying. Lights came in today and I tried one out and the labeled On/Off button does not actually turn them off. It just cycles through the various pre-programmed patterns but never turns them off. Anyone have this experience?
@rkindnessal that was my first thought, using these for glamping. The problem is these aren’t really robust enough for that life, they need to be in a plastic tube. For this price I will try doing that myself
@brennyn in fairness, I’ve been using merkury/geeni Wi-Fi plugs and lights that I bought off meh for about 6 years now, so the app’s been around for awhile
@brennyn They will work in perpetuity because you can use them with the Tuya or Smartlife apps. I would stay away from Geeni and stick to one of those. I personally prefer Tuya which is the main developer’s app.
@brennyn I wouldn’t say it’s standardized. Tuya makes an IOT platform and a lot of companies white label their app. Geeni is an example of that. I have a ton of devices in Tuya so any time I can find something that works on that ecosystem it’s a plus. And then everything in Tuya is immediately recognized by Alexa. So Geeni may disappear someday but Tuya and Smartlife aren’t going anywhere.
@brennyn you could replace the wifi module with another RGBW LED driver. Though to be honest, the price of a stand alone driver is going to be more than these low cost, commodity strips. At $3 ea, you are really just out the nuisance cost.
@brennyn@uscpsycho I still that bad feeling when I have to work with Tuya. Maybe it’s Chinese cloud, maybe it’s the whole home-automation thing… maybe it’s everything but I get the feeling it doesn’t end well.
@mehcuda67 I guess the Meh buyers didn’t get the memo that read “Make sure we only sell things that user @mehcuda67 has a use for, otherwise forget it…”
@2many2no With the included power supply, you might not be able to drive more than one strand. But if you get more powerful drivers you can drive longer strands. I think there is a practical limit of 30 or 40 feet though even with the strongest drivers.
@2many2no they run off a 5v buss since it’s USB. Plugging in more then one strip, the color is going to start degrading and you’re going to quickly use more amps than the controller can provide. Since they’re RGBW, you could theorically get a more powerful 5v powersupply and inject power at the begining of each strings, but you’d have to be able to contol that output separately for each of the 4 led colors. It could be a bit of a chore. It would probably be better just to get a different controller with multiple outputs or just address them separately.
One word of warning about these strips. “Millions of colors” is a gross exaggeration. Even for the most high end RGBW strips there are not millions of colors. Or a million. Or even 1,000. Well, maybe 1,000 but probably not. There are a lot of colors you will not even be able to approximate. Like orange or burgundy or pink or… Especially on a strip like this that has a very low density of lights, you’re not going to get a lot of desirable true colors. These strips are best for red, green, blue and any combination of two of those colors.
Also, you can cut these to smaller lengths, so if you need less than 10’ you can cut these to size. There is a cut location every few inches so you can’t cut them to any size you want.
@uscpsycho I’m not sure I agree with your assessment. When they say 16 million colors on monitors and scanners, that means there are 256 levels of brightness for each individual red, green, and blue led. For 3 colors, 256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216 colors you can choose from. Even if these only had 128 levels, you still get 2,097,152 colors to select. These also have a 4th color of white so add another dimension there – maybe. The controller may not allow you to use the white LEDs at the same time as the RGB ones but who knows.
@cengland0@uscpsycho The problem is that the app which controls the hue will only address two colors at a time, with the exception of its white, which simply turns on the power to all three segments of each chip. So anything that uses R, G and B is unreachable. I see this a lot in these inexpensive SMD strips.
Seems these have a separate white LED independent of the RGB LED. I’ve circled it on the image for you. It looks like an SMD capacitor but there is no need for a capacitor on these strips so I believe this to be the White LED in about 2700K.
I’ve also circled the spot where you can cut the ribbon and it has 5 wires. This is usually for R, G, B, W, GND. Zooming in on those connectors I cannot see the lettering clearly but that is what I believe from my led strip experiences.
It was also mentioned by someone else that you cannot get pink but you can clearly see pink in the photo showing the app.
Here is the app showing pink:
And here is an image showing what I believe to be pink as an output:
@Jonas4321 We’re not sure where those reviews came from. We saw them ourselves but these have been tested by our team and the geeni app is free and as djslack mentioned you can use the Tuya app to control them (this was verified by our team for these and the lightbulbs we sold previously)
@elliedan the geeni app (which is what these use) does not require a subscription and as djslack just mentioned, you can use the Tuya app to control them (this was verified by our team for these and the lightbulbs we sold previously)
So, as a Boomer teacher who should not even be thinking about my classroom next year in these waning days till summer break, all “the kids” (teachers who are younger than me) have variations of these in their classrooms on bulletin boards. Can they be stapled to a bulletin board? There is no plug? I come in each day, and the kids are doing their morning work, I go to the app, choose a color, and turn them on? I do teach light to fifth-graders, so I am not hating it. Can I activate different strands in different colors? “Stand by the green board if you understand the concept.” “How many reds are still confused?” “Aiden, you are always red!” lol (Truth, I have three Aidan-Aidens in one class.) BTW, I am home today “sick.” I do not shop while teaching, usually! lol
@ZooDoctor Stapled: theoretically, but only if the staple doesn’t go through the strip and hits a wire (there are 5 of them). But, yeah craft a little plastic over it and staple that above and below the strip.
The strip is 5V with a 120V power adapter. As long as you can connect it to some wifi, you can control each strip from your phone.
@ZooDoctor I’d probably use sticky tack or some double stick tape rather than a staple on these. They do come with a double stick tape style backing on them if you can leave them up and don’t have to take them down at the end of the year, but you’d really want extra wide staples to straddle these so you don’t risk puncturing the staple into any of the thin electric wires inside the tape itself.
I am considering using them to provide lighting under the noses of my 10 steps to my front entry deck, one strip per 6’ step.
Can I daisy-chain them so I only need to plug in one or two of the strips?
Although I would love to be able to use the suggestion of @davedirkse to use a motion sensor I would need to use two sensors, one for people arriving and one for people departing my home. I doubt there is a way to accomplish that.
@jeffreywsnyder daisy chaining these comes down to providing them enough power. Whether you’ll be able to do it effectively with what’s in the box I cannot say. My gut says what’s in the box will do a single one of the 10 foot strips and not two but I can’t back that up other than judging by the size of what’s pictured.
BUT, if that 10 foot of LEDs will do for you if you cut it up and provide wire between the strips you’ll be golden. You’d just need to cut and connect/solder wire between them. Say just put 1.3’ of LEDs on each step.
As far as motion sensors on both directions, I am sure you could do this without too much difficulty with WLED and an ESP32 - you’d just have two different sensors with each on one input pin. If you start with this video you will surely be able to follow the algorithmic rabbit hole till you find someone discussing that sort of thing.
@jeffreywsnyder Daisy chaining: Each strip needs about 9-10W. If you put the strips in a daisy chain, the controller won’t be able to handle the current. Or you could just tie the power supply together and use separate controllers. You would either cut off the usb plugs or add usb outlets to a box. All usb + and all usb - goes together and then you run a cable to a converter box (2A per strip, so a 20-30A cable). And you would need a converter that can do 20A at 5V.
Probably easier to get a long 12V strip instead and cut that into matching pieces for the steps. Either daisy chain the pieces or better connect them in parallel.
@jeffreywsnyder Motion sensor:
(a) The cool-kid too many gadgets home automation way:
Set up a home automation controlled light, get two home automation compatible motion sensors, set them up as switches for the light in software with a custom timer.
(b) old school: get two motion sensors with timers that can run on low voltage and drive a relay. Put the relays in parallel and connect the low voltage light to it. (Yes works with 120V as well, but…)
@jeffreywsnyder If these work in the Tuya app as others have reported, you can get two tuya compatible wireless sensors, and the sensors can control anything via the smarts within the app. Even if Tuya doesn’t officially support it, tuya has an IFTTT(if this then that) support, so you can get the IFTTT app, and say, “if either this sensor or that sensor senses motion, then turn on the strip lights”. IFTTT is fairly simple to set up for something like this too, so it should be fairly straightforward, it is just relying on an app on your phone to program the initial logic.
Does anybody know what the default color temp for the white looks like? Since I can’t control all three channels to build the color temp that I want, that’s kind of important.
My Amazon home automation system actually recognized a different light strip, with the exact same plastic case, and button on it without ever having to install the lightstrip’s app. So you may want to check and see if your home automation solution may connect without a bespoke app.
@Chronicle The idea behind tuya-convert is getting rid of the device stock firmware and flashing with tasamota/esphome so I can hook it into home assistant.
This opens up the interoperability and security of the device.
@clutchdude My gut feeling is that it doesn’t work anymore. Almost every newer tuya rebrand now has the incompatible chips.
But since it is a separate controller and since it runs on 5V, it would be about $1 per LED strip to replace the chip in the controller with an ESP board. That, and hours of soldering fun.
@clutchdude Some of the not-ESP controllers are starting to be flashable as well. Esphome and Openbeken work on some of them. For some firmware there is OTA (tuya-cloudcuttter), but otherwise attaching wires to the controller works, which would be fine with these strips anyway.
With that in hand, I’m pretty confident I can confirm this will be flashable to support Home Assistant using cloudcutter,etc. I’ll confirm once it’s in hand.
@clutchdude Ended up pulling the flash file and sending it in - the team confirmed that it uses an older version 0.0.2v vs the 0.0.3v that was previously available.
I used lightleak(after stubbing my toe figuring out the docs, I’ve since issued a PR to make it easier for folks to use it!) to dump the flash and sent it in.
They’ve since updated the profiles and I can happily say that tuya-cloudcutter/libretuya will flash and load these lightstrips.
Be sure to select MI-EW010-999WW LED Strip v0.0.2 when using cloud cutter and it will happily work.
I should hopefully have a link to a esphome profile later today.
Ok. Got it semi-working. The Red Channel isn’t cooperating, it remains dimly lit despite having tested and confirmed the channel it’s on.
I’m guessing it’s a PWM frequency issue and I need to go find the proper config for it - I tested the lightstrip via the tuya app to double check we didn’t get a bunch of junk ones.
Had a few pins swapped leading to false positives. Tested in Home asssisstant - though the Red is weaker(Light red is really purple, etc.) AND, if you have white channel on, seems to suck power from Red.
@clutchdude Thanks again. I just finished flashing all 12… I must be some sort of digital masochist.
Here’s my starter config if anyone is interested.
I also got the button working nicely. Single click toggles on/off. Multi click cycles through 5 different colors. Should be a good starting point if anyone needs/wants it.
This is almost certainly just WS2812 strips and a controller and a proprietary power supply. As such, this is a pretty good deal even for just the strips. Last roll I bought was 30ft and I paid about a buck a foot. No controller, no power supply. That was 300 pixels for the 16 foot run - 60 pixels per meter. This seems a less tightly packed, with the Amazon sheet saying it’s 150 pixels for the 9.8 feet. But this is still cheaper than equivalent spools of that, though you would want to account for the cost of splices.
Anyway, if you wanted different control than the proprietary app you could get an ESP32 and install wsLED.
The bigger challenge if you want to daisy chain these things is power. It gets intense to power 25+ foot runs and this looks like they give you pretty small adaptors that will just barely power each 10 foot stretch. But as I said, I think this is a pretty good price so even if you end up needing to buy a bigger power supply if you want to get complicated you’re still doing well price-wise and this would be a nice way to fiddle with something that works out of the box before you decide to get wild.
Just beware. It’s east to get sucked into putting this stuff everywhere once you get the taste for it.
@Chronicle I dunno. Until mine come in the mail I can’t say for sure. I was guessing based on how cheap the tech has gotten and how much the price difference has narrowed, but with clearance stuff like this it is certainly possible it’s not - could be old inventory from when it would be way cheaper to have non-addressable.
@DonWhiteside Doesn’t look like it. The Amazon page shows current limiting resistors for all colors, So it is just a RGB-LED and a separate white LED on each cutable unit.
@DonWhiteside youre information is not correct. These are 5 wire, dumb rgb strips with a controller that connects to a smart app to adjust the voltage to each of the 4 channels (RGB+W). From the pictures, there is no ws2812 processor near the smd 2020 leds. They are not individually addressable. Ws2812 protocol is over 3 wires. Positive, negative and a control/data line. You can clearly see 5 trace lines in the pictures. I hope i’m wrong and they send you sonething else, but i dont believe that’s what is in the pictures.
@braveit1 You’re probably right. I made an assumption and we all know how that works out. Oh well. While this is power-hungry it’ll still be useful for me for several purposes. Most places I need LED strips I have no need for individual addressing. Happily WLED supports non-addressable strips as well so I can maintain some consistency across the house.
@MyJoy@troy Plug-in, but they are 5V with a 120V adapter, So you could connect a solar charger to a 5V power bank and run a strip directly off the power bank. But maybe not worth it, because you also have to have wifi.
@JaneGB I think, since they are 5V usb powered devices they wouldn’t have to be. - Which leads to the question: is the adapter UL rated? Most likely not, but you could replace it with something better.
Looking at the amazon page gives some more details:
There are four resistors on each unit; RR 751, RB 561, RG561, RW 241.
Meaning, each cutable unit consists of a RGB-LED (basically just a red, green, and blue led put together in one case) and a separate white LED. Each of the four color LEDs is connected to its own power supply and
and sits in series with one of the four current limiting resistors for the different colors red, green,blue,white; R,G,B,W.
Basically the same layout you see in cheap 12V LED strips, except that instead of having three LEDs of the same color in series before you need a resistor you only have one. Which makes it slightly less efficient. The red led, for example, runs at about 2V, so the current limiting resistor will see 3V: 40% of the power are used for light here, 60% for heat. With white, green, or blue at around 3V, 40% are wasted. Would be somehow better with a 12V strip (3 led in series); red still wastes 50%, white and the other leds only 25%.
The red resistor is RR751 meaning 750 Ohm (75 and 1 zero), which gives a current of 4mA (3V/750Ohm), about the same for green and blue (2V/560Ohm). So 10-12mA for colors, 12 mA for the white LED (2V/240Ohm) by itself.
Assuming 75 units of 4cm each (description says 150 light sources), that’s around 1.8A, or 9W. The white LEDs use 2.7W (3V12mA75), which gives max 250-290 lumen when white is used alone, maybe the same brightness coming from colors.
Pieces are cutable and, since it is setup for 5V, would work directly with microcontroller pwm or blinky led projects. If you use more than a couple pieces, you would need 4 mosfets as drivers, which you most likely find in the controller. With some extra mosfets and arduinos (or microbits, esp32, pi, whatever) these would make nice classroom projects. I think it is highly unlikely that these strips contain an esp8266, like they would have 3-5 years ago, so if you want to use them with tasmota, you most likely have to spend another $1 per strip to replace the microchip.
I believe these are rebranded Shenzhen JBT Smart Lighting LED Strip EW010 with the FCC ID: 2AKG3-EW010.
From the FCC filing internal photos it has a WB3S module / Belen micro in it. The Belen is pin compatible with the ESP8266 but uses different firmware.
This means you can’t use the old Tuya Convert, however, there is a new OTA method. Also, these should be pretty easy to open up and hit with pogopins to flash.
They should support either OpenBK7231T/OpenBeken (Tasmota Replacement) or the LibreTiny-ESPHome
fork.
However, I was able to flash the Merkury bulbs from last week OTA with the Tuya-Cloudcutter tool. That can flash either of the alternative firmware above but also gives you the option to remove the cloud from the Tuya firmware but keep the local API intact, so you could use something like TinyTuya to control them with Home Assistant. You might have to dump the firmware first (either directly with pogopins / soldering wires or OTA with lightleak on an Android phone) and send it to the developers to add support for this particular device.
It helps if you have an extra Raspberry Pi and microSD around. You will want to use the 32-bit version of Raspbian or there is a bit more difficulty in configuring the cross-compiler.
@clutchdude I didn’t do anything with an esphome profile (yet). I was figuring that I could deal with that after getting the esphome firmware flashed. I guess I’ll go read more to figure out where to put that…
I followed the prompts in the cloud cutter script(using both v2 and v3…) it got through on the 4th or 5th try. But failed when it tried to flash the firmware.
At that point I was too tired to try and trouble shoot anymore.
I’m thinking I should probably try on a fresh pi install since the one I’m using is a couple of years old. I had to modify the common.sh to get it to properly strip some newlines from the gateway IP check. (I’ll put up a pr if the issue persists on the fresh install).
@leaky_wires You should put together a barebones ESPHome profile so that cloudcutter can flash it when it runs. The baked in profile is for cloudcutter to use when exploiting the device, not for a firmware to put on it post-exploit.
Just got these in the post today. They work like I expected. They pair with my previously installed Home automation app. No need to download, install, or pay for anything new.
I must say, this was a great value. The LEDs are not the brightest but each strip only draws 0.46A, so fair balance. I don’t intend to use these on Wi-Fi, I will use them to brighten up dark closets in our camper. An 8-pack of door switches ran me under $10 and I have a number of those otherwise useless 2200-2600mAh USB “phone chargers” that companies throw their logo onto and give away (the ones about the size of a rectangular package of Halls cough drops). A full charge on one of these yields 2-3 hours of on-time for one strip. Given how often I open those closets, that would be several years.
Just plugged these in and I’m having an issue addressing these via Google Home or Alexa via Geeni integration.
If controlled via app, I can set the colors (RGB LED) fine, and also whites (White LED + Blue channel on RGB LED) just fine.
However, on Alexa and Google Home - (via app or voice command) - White colors do not work. Anything that requires RGB LEDs to color mix will successfully change the light, but commanding it to do “cool white” or “white” or “warm white” will -turn off- the RGB LED and won’t turn on the white LED.
@MonkRX Did you ever get that sorted out? I finally cracked mine open to replace some non-W RGB strips I have and am running into the exact same situation.
@ncr100 I’m not sure I understand. I’m using Alexa, but I also can’t get it working using direct commands instead of using the group they’re in.
@Fourhundred57 I gave up after two weeks. I might give them a whirl in the future but not any time soon. They don’t suit my needs with them being broken the way they are. After the two week period - same issues, same problems.
@dave Here’s a tip. According to the manufacturer, Merkury, these strips are NOT extendable to a longer length. That is not made clear in the MEH listing.
I purchased 12 Merkury LED strips a few weeks ago. It turns out that these are not extendable. I spoke to the manufacturer and they told me that the box has an incorrect instruction manual. That manual explains how to extend these. However, this model number is NOT extendable according to them. It is a mistake that they are aware of. I seem to remember that the original listing you posted indicated that these were extendable. Since I can’t see the original listing, I can’t validate that. I have spent 10 days on the phone with Merkury support and they claim that nothing on the box indicates these are extendable. The fact that the instruction booklet shows how to extend these is an error. These are useless to me if they can’t be extended. I am requesting a return authorization and subsequent credit for these units. My order number was bulbous-pristine-pleasure. Merkury has asked me to return these to Meh.
Specs
Product: 12-Pack: Merkury Innovations Smart Wi-Fi LED Strip (9.8’)
Model: MI-EW010-999WW
Condition: New
Works with the Geeni App
What’s Included?
Price Comparison
$143.88 for 12 at Amazon
Warranty
One year limited warranty
Estimated Delivery
Tuesday, May 30
Merkury poisoning?
See what you are selling here. Got something went terribly wrong on the actual page. And here I thought it could have been yet another irk and we crashed the page.
@Kidsandliz That happens to me every night when I refresh at midnight eastern. Do you usually get the new product listing immediately?
@cengland0 No. If I want to see it immediately I have to click on the forum. They need to fix that. @shawn
Would you consider this merkury to be in retrograde?
@studerc Instant Regretrograde?
These look like they are RGB only, not individually addressable. Anyone know for sure? If they are addressable then this is a steal.
@TehMaliron your optimism is admirable, but almost certainly misplaced.
@TehMaliron They’re 100% addressable - you enter your shipping address on the order page. Unfortunately can only send to one address per order.
@TehMaliron Looking at the photos it appears they are only RGBW. They would have 3 solder joints for WS2811 but there are 5 (R,G,B,W,Ground)
@braveit1 Good point, didn’t think to check the number of wires. Figured they weren’t addressable, but worth checking.
@braveit1 @TehMaliron Well, there’s 12 of them and I’m pretty sure they’re addressable by device, so there’s that.
@mehcuda67 @TehMaliron the entire strip may be addressable by device but the individual leds on each strip are not. This make a huge difference in the use of the strips and the effects available. Its fine if you want to color an entire roomligh in a single color. Of course you’ll need an application that can controll 12 strip controllers at omce or use power injection and a different power supply to chain them together.
Why always WiFi? Why not Bluetooth? It’s not like that have to be colored blue.
Why not just have a little damned physical dial and have no “smart” nonsense at all?
@hchavers Bluetooth is considered a peer to peer phone or device connection network. Wi-Fi is considered a whole home static “hub and spoke” connection network. Which is better for a device you plan on mounting to a large object? Probably the Home network. Bt is meant for objects in close proximity too (30ft /10m), Wi-Fi can cover acres if your repeaters are set up right.
@Chronicle @hchavers Also, with Wifi, you can setup other devices such as Alexa or Google Home to control those devices. I use both to control my Geeni/Merkury outlets today along with the app. I can turn devices on and off when I’m away from home too – cannot do that with bluetooth.
@hchavers So you can access them from outside of your network I think. The tough thing is that most consumer routers are good for maybe 20-25 devices per band.
@Chronicle @hchavers I think when they do BTLE in things like smart bulbs though, each bulb serves as a repeater to daisy chain the whole network of bulbs together. For instance, newer Phillips hue bulbs can operate hub free over BT, or in a hub operated mode over zigbee. Since Zigbee kind of works in a chain, they implemented the same sort of behavior over BT to increase the range without needing the hub. Really though, if you plan to do loads of bulbs or strips, it is better to run them via a hub on a different frequency. Putting 100 bulbs on your wifi network is going to lead to interference, while having a single wifi connection to a hub that then handles all the bulbs is better. Then again, you could always run all your internet stuff on 5 ghz, and all your smart devices on 2.4 ghz, and the bulbs would only interfere with each other.
Eh, if they could be switched on and off without a phone, I’d buy a dozen.
@melonscoop They seem to have an on/off button…
@shahnm Hmmm. If they require a connection to set up, and then respond to buttons for general ons and offs, that would suffice. Hard to tell from the Amazon reviews.
@shahnm alright, upon further reading of the product specs on Amazon:
“Set a timer, adjust color or hue, brightness, and turn on/off with a touch of a button.”
Closer, but man, 12 at just under $40 feels like a small gamble versus getting a few proven light strips.
@melonscoop @shahnm Yes. Use the phone to setup initially. Then it has an on off button on the switch.
@melonscoop I have used light strips like this, and if it says alexa compatible, or google compatible, you can set it up once on the phone app, and link to the home assistant, then delete the app off your phone and use your voice to do things. Also, the phone is only to change the state, so if you set up a timer and colors and all that, and didn’t care to control them via phone, you can just unplug them, and they will resume whatever schedule you set them to when you plug them back in, though they might lose track of time. For instance though, you could set them up to flash between red, green, and blue at a certain speed, and they will do that when powered back on at the wall if they lose power, so you set them up and delete the app, and they just blink in that one pattern forever unless you reset them(which usually turns them white or to some default setting)
@ChadP @melonscoop @shahnm Hmm, this is super annoying. Lights came in today and I tried one out and the labeled On/Off button does not actually turn them off. It just cycles through the various pre-programmed patterns but never turns them off. Anyone have this experience?
@ChadP @fring @melonscoop Congratulations on achieving peak Meh. Your experience is now complete.
@fring Yes. On/off switch doesn’t truly turn them on/off for me either.
I have absolutely no idea WTF this is, or these are.
@gertiestn Should we get off your lawn?
So think of a carnival but really small, and without the smell of carny’s or animal poop. But I repeat myself.
Will these run of the many power banks I have? The whe I lose power the neighbors will think I have power. Oh an backyard parties
@rkindnessal that was my first thought, using these for glamping. The problem is these aren’t really robust enough for that life, they need to be in a plastic tube. For this price I will try doing that myself
@rkindnessal
@ChadP @rkindnessal I opened mine up after clamping over the long weekend and see they are sealed with plastic, very nice for the price!!
How unusable will these be when the app disappears?
@brennyn in fairness, I’ve been using merkury/geeni Wi-Fi plugs and lights that I bought off meh for about 6 years now, so the app’s been around for awhile
@brennyn They will work in perpetuity because you can use them with the Tuya or Smartlife apps. I would stay away from Geeni and stick to one of those. I personally prefer Tuya which is the main developer’s app.
@uscpsycho Huh, neat. I didn’t know this stuff was at all standardized.
@brennyn I wouldn’t say it’s standardized. Tuya makes an IOT platform and a lot of companies white label their app. Geeni is an example of that. I have a ton of devices in Tuya so any time I can find something that works on that ecosystem it’s a plus. And then everything in Tuya is immediately recognized by Alexa. So Geeni may disappear someday but Tuya and Smartlife aren’t going anywhere.
@brennyn you could replace the wifi module with another RGBW LED driver. Though to be honest, the price of a stand alone driver is going to be more than these low cost, commodity strips. At $3 ea, you are really just out the nuisance cost.
@brennyn @uscpsycho I still that bad feeling when I have to work with Tuya. Maybe it’s Chinese cloud, maybe it’s the whole home-automation thing… maybe it’s everything but I get the feeling it doesn’t end well.
Can these be remotely controlled by somebody’s OnlyFans subscribers? Asking for a friend.
Can you turn different strips on and off separately, or are they all going to turn on and off at the same time?
@khearn You can definitely control them separately. Controlling them together can only be done through routines or scenes.
Good grief, meh is selling yet another thing that I have absolutely no use for.
/giphy puzzled-respective-thing
@mehcuda67 I guess the Meh buyers didn’t get the memo that read “Make sure we only sell things that user @mehcuda67 has a use for, otherwise forget it…”
@aciarlotta @mehcuda67 No, they’ve observed that mehcuda will buy them anyway so it doesn’t matter!
How many strands can be connected to one power adapter and wi-fi controller? 20 feet, 30 feet, more?
What is the power draw for each 10 foot strip?
@2many2no With the included power supply, you might not be able to drive more than one strand. But if you get more powerful drivers you can drive longer strands. I think there is a practical limit of 30 or 40 feet though even with the strongest drivers.
@2many2no they run off a 5v buss since it’s USB. Plugging in more then one strip, the color is going to start degrading and you’re going to quickly use more amps than the controller can provide. Since they’re RGBW, you could theorically get a more powerful 5v powersupply and inject power at the begining of each strings, but you’d have to be able to contol that output separately for each of the 4 led colors. It could be a bit of a chore. It would probably be better just to get a different controller with multiple outputs or just address them separately.
One word of warning about these strips. “Millions of colors” is a gross exaggeration. Even for the most high end RGBW strips there are not millions of colors. Or a million. Or even 1,000. Well, maybe 1,000 but probably not. There are a lot of colors you will not even be able to approximate. Like orange or burgundy or pink or… Especially on a strip like this that has a very low density of lights, you’re not going to get a lot of desirable true colors. These strips are best for red, green, blue and any combination of two of those colors.
Also, you can cut these to smaller lengths, so if you need less than 10’ you can cut these to size. There is a cut location every few inches so you can’t cut them to any size you want.
@uscpsycho I’m not sure I agree with your assessment. When they say 16 million colors on monitors and scanners, that means there are 256 levels of brightness for each individual red, green, and blue led. For 3 colors, 256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216 colors you can choose from. Even if these only had 128 levels, you still get 2,097,152 colors to select. These also have a 4th color of white so add another dimension there – maybe. The controller may not allow you to use the white LEDs at the same time as the RGB ones but who knows.
@cengland0 @uscpsycho The problem is that the app which controls the hue will only address two colors at a time, with the exception of its white, which simply turns on the power to all three segments of each chip. So anything that uses R, G and B is unreachable. I see this a lot in these inexpensive SMD strips.
@werehatrack still not sure that’s accurate.
Seems these have a separate white LED independent of the RGB LED. I’ve circled it on the image for you. It looks like an SMD capacitor but there is no need for a capacitor on these strips so I believe this to be the White LED in about 2700K.
I’ve also circled the spot where you can cut the ribbon and it has 5 wires. This is usually for R, G, B, W, GND. Zooming in on those connectors I cannot see the lettering clearly but that is what I believe from my led strip experiences.
It was also mentioned by someone else that you cannot get pink but you can clearly see pink in the photo showing the app.
Here is the app showing pink:
And here is an image showing what I believe to be pink as an output:
@werehatrack
Color codes for different shades of pink. Notice all of them use more then 2 colors.
any way to make these motion sensitive?
@marymaryk Easy. Get a plug in outlet with a motion sensor. I have them inside all my closets running light strips around the door frames.
Westek Plug In Motion Sensor Outlet Light Control, 2 Pack - Indoor Motion Sensor Device Activates Lights When Motion is Detected - Ideal for Dark Hallways - 25ft Range, 6 Foot Cord (MLC12BC-4) https://a.co/d/bdpLIjX
Hmmm… “/buy” doesn’t work!
@Barefooted Must be at the start of a line, same for all / commands.
Some, like showme, must be the first line.
With the app, can these be on a timer?
@islandkiwi The Geeni app lets you put other Merkury smart devices on a timer, so I’d be very confident that they can be.
@islandkiwi they can. In fact, you can even group rooms together and put rooms on a timer
2 questions:
Thanks.
@Jonas4321 last I checked the Tuya app is free and will run a ton of of WiFi based smart stuff.
@Jonas4321 We’re not sure where those reviews came from. We saw them ourselves but these have been tested by our team and the geeni app is free and as djslack mentioned you can use the Tuya app to control them (this was verified by our team for these and the lightbulbs we sold previously)
/buy
@CrazyJeff It worked! Your order number is: deeply-brave-flag
/image deeply brave flag
@CrazyJeff @mediocrebot slava ukraini!
ALERT!
Well, It appears to be that the app, which is required to operate these, is where “Merkury Innovations” makes their money.
SERVICE/SUBSCRIPTION FEES AHEAD!
So yeah, I’m out.
@elliedan just use the Tuya app to control them
@elliedan the geeni app (which is what these use) does not require a subscription and as djslack just mentioned, you can use the Tuya app to control them (this was verified by our team for these and the lightbulbs we sold previously)
@mandirose The ‘pay to play’ requirement is noted in a lot of reviews, so that is rad news! Thanks!!
So, as a Boomer teacher who should not even be thinking about my classroom next year in these waning days till summer break, all “the kids” (teachers who are younger than me) have variations of these in their classrooms on bulletin boards. Can they be stapled to a bulletin board? There is no plug? I come in each day, and the kids are doing their morning work, I go to the app, choose a color, and turn them on? I do teach light to fifth-graders, so I am not hating it. Can I activate different strands in different colors? “Stand by the green board if you understand the concept.” “How many reds are still confused?” “Aiden, you are always red!” lol (Truth, I have three Aidan-Aidens in one class.) BTW, I am home today “sick.” I do not shop while teaching, usually! lol
@ZooDoctor
@ZooDoctor Stapled: theoretically, but only if the staple doesn’t go through the strip and hits a wire (there are 5 of them). But, yeah craft a little plastic over it and staple that above and below the strip.
The strip is 5V with a 120V power adapter. As long as you can connect it to some wifi, you can control each strip from your phone.
@ZooDoctor I’d probably use sticky tack or some double stick tape rather than a staple on these. They do come with a double stick tape style backing on them if you can leave them up and don’t have to take them down at the end of the year, but you’d really want extra wide staples to straddle these so you don’t risk puncturing the staple into any of the thin electric wires inside the tape itself.
/giphy fortunate-questionable-minister
I’ll find a use for these somewhere. If not, my kids will.
ADVICE PLEASE:
I am considering using them to provide lighting under the noses of my 10 steps to my front entry deck, one strip per 6’ step.
@jeffreywsnyder daisy chaining these comes down to providing them enough power. Whether you’ll be able to do it effectively with what’s in the box I cannot say. My gut says what’s in the box will do a single one of the 10 foot strips and not two but I can’t back that up other than judging by the size of what’s pictured.
BUT, if that 10 foot of LEDs will do for you if you cut it up and provide wire between the strips you’ll be golden. You’d just need to cut and connect/solder wire between them. Say just put 1.3’ of LEDs on each step.
As far as motion sensors on both directions, I am sure you could do this without too much difficulty with WLED and an ESP32 - you’d just have two different sensors with each on one input pin. If you start with this video you will surely be able to follow the algorithmic rabbit hole till you find someone discussing that sort of thing.
@DonWhiteside Thanks Don
@jeffreywsnyder Daisy chaining: Each strip needs about 9-10W. If you put the strips in a daisy chain, the controller won’t be able to handle the current. Or you could just tie the power supply together and use separate controllers. You would either cut off the usb plugs or add usb outlets to a box. All usb + and all usb - goes together and then you run a cable to a converter box (2A per strip, so a 20-30A cable). And you would need a converter that can do 20A at 5V.
Probably easier to get a long 12V strip instead and cut that into matching pieces for the steps. Either daisy chain the pieces or better connect them in parallel.
@jeffreywsnyder Motion sensor:
(a) The cool-kid too many gadgets home automation way:
Set up a home automation controlled light, get two home automation compatible motion sensors, set them up as switches for the light in software with a custom timer.
(b) old school: get two motion sensors with timers that can run on low voltage and drive a relay. Put the relays in parallel and connect the low voltage light to it. (Yes works with 120V as well, but…)
@jeffreywsnyder If these work in the Tuya app as others have reported, you can get two tuya compatible wireless sensors, and the sensors can control anything via the smarts within the app. Even if Tuya doesn’t officially support it, tuya has an IFTTT(if this then that) support, so you can get the IFTTT app, and say, “if either this sensor or that sensor senses motion, then turn on the strip lights”. IFTTT is fairly simple to set up for something like this too, so it should be fairly straightforward, it is just relying on an app on your phone to program the initial logic.
Does anybody know what the default color temp for the white looks like? Since I can’t control all three channels to build the color temp that I want, that’s kind of important.
/showme droopy-miraculous-pistachio
I’m going to buy these and see if tuya-convert still works on them.
My gut is that it does.
Follow this comment and I’ll update as soon as I get them.
My Amazon home automation system actually recognized a different light strip, with the exact same plastic case, and button on it without ever having to install the lightstrip’s app. So you may want to check and see if your home automation solution may connect without a bespoke app.
@Chronicle The idea behind tuya-convert is getting rid of the device stock firmware and flashing with tasamota/esphome so I can hook it into home assistant.
This opens up the interoperability and security of the device.
@clutchdude like! Share!! Smash that subscribe button!!!
@clutchdude My gut feeling is that it doesn’t work anymore. Almost every newer tuya rebrand now has the incompatible chips.
But since it is a separate controller and since it runs on 5V, it would be about $1 per LED strip to replace the chip in the controller with an ESP board. That, and hours of soldering fun.
@formfeed We’ll see! it comes down whether they are ESP or realtek - I can see this being the older stock - hence why they are on meh.
Barring that, the tuya custom integration home assistant might be worth trying.
Since there are so many strips to play with, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to test them, including convenience things like this: https://www.amazon.com/Connector-Solderless-Extension-Connection-Multicolor/dp/B08ZYFG2R8 (EDIT- needed 5 wire, not 4 wire)
@clutchdude This seems like a similar project to disconnect from the cloud, that mentions this model:
https://github.com/tuya-cloudcutter/tuya-cloudcutter/issues/119
@clutchdude Some of the not-ESP controllers are starting to be flashable as well. Esphome and Openbeken work on some of them. For some firmware there is OTA (tuya-cloudcuttter), but otherwise attaching wires to the controller works, which would be fine with these strips anyway.
@dreamcypher Awesome - I haven’t had a edit: beken device yet so that’s pretty good to know about.
Thanks!
VAN GOGH! MANGO! TANGO! AWESOME!
Ok - these have the C3BS chipset using the beken https://developer.tuya.com/en/docs/iot/cb3s?id=Kai94mec0s076
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/detailed-guide-on-how-to-flash-the-new-tuya-beken-chips-with-openbk7231t/437276
With that in hand, I’m pretty confident I can confirm this will be flashable to support Home Assistant using cloudcutter,etc. I’ll confirm once it’s in hand.
And confirmed cloudcutter has the json file:
https://github.com/tuya-cloudcutter/tuya-cloudcutter.github.io/blob/master/devices/merkury-innovations-mi-ew010-999w-led-strip.json
Got it it today - just about have everything setup to do a flash on the first light strip.
Raspberry pi is giving me network grief but I did test the proof of concept script and confirmed it looks exploitable.
@clutchdude Ended up pulling the flash file and sending it in - the team confirmed that it uses an older version 0.0.2v vs the 0.0.3v that was previously available.
I used lightleak(after stubbing my toe figuring out the docs, I’ve since issued a PR to make it easier for folks to use it!) to dump the flash and sent it in.
They’ve since updated the profiles and I can happily say that tuya-cloudcutter/libretuya will flash and load these lightstrips.
Be sure to select MI-EW010-999WW LED Strip v0.0.2 when using cloud cutter and it will happily work.
I should hopefully have a link to a esphome profile later today.
Ok. Got it semi-working. The Red Channel isn’t cooperating, it remains dimly lit despite having tested and confirmed the channel it’s on.
I’m guessing it’s a PWM frequency issue and I need to go find the proper config for it - I tested the lightstrip via the tuya app to double check we didn’t get a bunch of junk ones.
Here’s the ESP home configuration so far.
Had a few pins swapped leading to false positives. Tested in Home asssisstant - though the Red is weaker(Light red is really purple, etc.) AND, if you have white channel on, seems to suck power from Red.
Working ESPHome light config:
I’ll bang on this more later to make it work a bit nicer with HA - I’ll probably post the full esp home template when I get done(with more info)
Thank you to @dreamcypher for pointing me in the right direction.
@clutchdude
Thanks for the tips. Got it working and figured out the config for the button.
@clutchdude Thanks again. I just finished flashing all 12… I must be some sort of digital masochist.
Here’s my starter config if anyone is interested.
I also got the button working nicely. Single click toggles on/off. Multi click cycles through 5 different colors. Should be a good starting point if anyone needs/wants it.
@leaky_wires Awesome work!
POPSOCKETS! COURT DOCKETS! FOLK ROCK HITS! AWESOME!
This is almost certainly just WS2812 strips and a controller and a proprietary power supply. As such, this is a pretty good deal even for just the strips. Last roll I bought was 30ft and I paid about a buck a foot. No controller, no power supply. That was 300 pixels for the 16 foot run - 60 pixels per meter. This seems a less tightly packed, with the Amazon sheet saying it’s 150 pixels for the 9.8 feet. But this is still cheaper than equivalent spools of that, though you would want to account for the cost of splices.
Anyway, if you wanted different control than the proprietary app you could get an ESP32 and install wsLED.
The bigger challenge if you want to daisy chain these things is power. It gets intense to power 25+ foot runs and this looks like they give you pretty small adaptors that will just barely power each 10 foot stretch. But as I said, I think this is a pretty good price so even if you end up needing to buy a bigger power supply if you want to get complicated you’re still doing well price-wise and this would be a nice way to fiddle with something that works out of the box before you decide to get wild.
Just beware. It’s east to get sucked into putting this stuff everywhere once you get the taste for it.
@DonWhiteside are these addressable LEDs? I know the strips might be but I don’t think they are individually addressable.
@Chronicle
I dunno. Until mine come in the mail I can’t say for sure. I was guessing based on how cheap the tech has gotten and how much the price difference has narrowed, but with clearance stuff like this it is certainly possible it’s not - could be old inventory from when it would be way cheaper to have non-addressable.
@DonWhiteside Doesn’t look like it. The Amazon page shows current limiting resistors for all colors, So it is just a RGB-LED and a separate white LED on each cutable unit.
@DonWhiteside youre information is not correct. These are 5 wire, dumb rgb strips with a controller that connects to a smart app to adjust the voltage to each of the 4 channels (RGB+W). From the pictures, there is no ws2812 processor near the smd 2020 leds. They are not individually addressable. Ws2812 protocol is over 3 wires. Positive, negative and a control/data line. You can clearly see 5 trace lines in the pictures. I hope i’m wrong and they send you sonething else, but i dont believe that’s what is in the pictures.
@braveit1 You’re probably right. I made an assumption and we all know how that works out. Oh well. While this is power-hungry it’ll still be useful for me for several purposes. Most places I need LED strips I have no need for individual addressing. Happily WLED supports non-addressable strips as well so I can maintain some consistency across the house.
Are these solar or do they need to be plugged in?
@MyJoy Need to be plugged in
@MyJoy @troy Plug-in, but they are 5V with a 120V adapter, So you could connect a solar charger to a 5V power bank and run a strip directly off the power bank. But maybe not worth it, because you also have to have wifi.
Are these UL rated?
@JaneGB I think, since they are 5V usb powered devices they wouldn’t have to be. - Which leads to the question: is the adapter UL rated? Most likely not, but you could replace it with something better.
/buy
@midstarrynight It worked! Your order number is: imaginary-nearsighted-tray
/image imaginary nearsighted tray
@midstarrynight
/giphy imaginary nearsighted tray
Looking at the amazon page gives some more details:
There are four resistors on each unit; RR 751, RB 561, RG561, RW 241.
Meaning, each cutable unit consists of a RGB-LED (basically just a red, green, and blue led put together in one case) and a separate white LED. Each of the four color LEDs is connected to its own power supply and
and sits in series with one of the four current limiting resistors for the different colors red, green,blue,white; R,G,B,W.
Basically the same layout you see in cheap 12V LED strips, except that instead of having three LEDs of the same color in series before you need a resistor you only have one. Which makes it slightly less efficient. The red led, for example, runs at about 2V, so the current limiting resistor will see 3V: 40% of the power are used for light here, 60% for heat. With white, green, or blue at around 3V, 40% are wasted. Would be somehow better with a 12V strip (3 led in series); red still wastes 50%, white and the other leds only 25%.
The red resistor is RR751 meaning 750 Ohm (75 and 1 zero), which gives a current of 4mA (3V/750Ohm), about the same for green and blue (2V/560Ohm). So 10-12mA for colors, 12 mA for the white LED (2V/240Ohm) by itself.
Assuming 75 units of 4cm each (description says 150 light sources), that’s around 1.8A, or 9W. The white LEDs use 2.7W (3V12mA75), which gives max 250-290 lumen when white is used alone, maybe the same brightness coming from colors.
Pieces are cutable and, since it is setup for 5V, would work directly with microcontroller pwm or blinky led projects. If you use more than a couple pieces, you would need 4 mosfets as drivers, which you most likely find in the controller. With some extra mosfets and arduinos (or microbits, esp32, pi, whatever) these would make nice classroom projects. I think it is highly unlikely that these strips contain an esp8266, like they would have 3-5 years ago, so if you want to use them with tasmota, you most likely have to spend another $1 per strip to replace the microchip.
/buy
@norman It worked! Your order number is: minute-berserk-temper
/image minute berserk temper
I believe these are rebranded Shenzhen JBT Smart Lighting LED Strip EW010 with the FCC ID: 2AKG3-EW010.
From the FCC filing internal photos it has a WB3S module / Belen micro in it. The Belen is pin compatible with the ESP8266 but uses different firmware.
This means you can’t use the old Tuya Convert, however, there is a new OTA method. Also, these should be pretty easy to open up and hit with pogopins to flash.
They should support either OpenBK7231T/OpenBeken (Tasmota Replacement) or the LibreTiny-ESPHome
fork.
However, I was able to flash the Merkury bulbs from last week OTA with the Tuya-Cloudcutter tool. That can flash either of the alternative firmware above but also gives you the option to remove the cloud from the Tuya firmware but keep the local API intact, so you could use something like TinyTuya to control them with Home Assistant. You might have to dump the firmware first (either directly with pogopins / soldering wires or OTA with lightleak on an Android phone) and send it to the developers to add support for this particular device.
It helps if you have an extra Raspberry Pi and microSD around. You will want to use the 32-bit version of Raspbian or there is a bit more difficulty in configuring the cross-compiler.
@naething Actually, looks like someone already provided the firmware: https://github.com/tuya-cloudcutter/tuya-cloudcutter/issues/119
Perhaps it is this device in the profiles? (just missing an extra w at the end)
https://github.com/tuya-cloudcutter/tuya-cloudcutter.github.io/blob/master/devices/merkury-innovations-mi-ew010-999w-led-strip.json
@naething Now I’m kicking myself for not buying those Merkury lights from last week. Maybe they’ll turn up again and I can get some.
@yeppers I think you are in luck?
@naething Whoa. Mercatalyst (or whatever they’re called this week) is going to put a hurting on my wallet.
@naething And this is only 10 of them, not 24, so it won’t be an outrageous number of light bulbs, merely an excessive quantity.
@naething Turns out this chip was actually an OLDER version of the existing profile - cloudcutter wouldn’t work out of the gates.
I’ve pulled the flash file and the cloudcutter folks have created a new profile for this light strip. I can confirm it works now using the 0.0.2v
@clutchdude @naething did the included esphome firmware flash correctly for you? It kept failing for me on the flashing step
@leaky_wires @naething
Mine is working fine - a few things to answer:
You can find the esphome yaml I used in another comment: https://meh.com/forum/topics/12-pack-merkury-innovations-smart-wi-fi-led-strip-98#64739db65407ce7871ed45ad
@clutchdude I didn’t do anything with an esphome profile (yet). I was figuring that I could deal with that after getting the esphome firmware flashed. I guess I’ll go read more to figure out where to put that…
I followed the prompts in the cloud cutter script(using both v2 and v3…) it got through on the 4th or 5th try. But failed when it tried to flash the firmware.
At that point I was too tired to try and trouble shoot anymore.
I’m thinking I should probably try on a fresh pi install since the one I’m using is a couple of years old. I had to modify the common.sh to get it to properly strip some newlines from the gateway IP check. (I’ll put up a pr if the issue persists on the fresh install).
@leaky_wires You should put together a barebones ESPHome profile so that cloudcutter can flash it when it runs. The baked in profile is for cloudcutter to use when exploiting the device, not for a firmware to put on it post-exploit.
Read through: https://digiblur.com/2023/04/10/tuya-cloudcutter-with-esphome-how-to-guide/
Note you need to use the branched libretiny version of ESPHome for now.
/giphy pathetic-venomous-baseball
/giphy fishy-violet-advice
/giphy coarse-artsy-pizza
If this has been posted already in this string, forgive me - TLDR… but… has anybody mentioned these lights have the tensile strength gummy worms?
@djsleptroq I don’t think you are supposed to be chewing on them
I expected these to kind of suck for the price but they actually work pretty well. Just don’t try to chain them together it’s a frustrating process.
Just got these in the post today. They work like I expected. They pair with my previously installed Home automation app. No need to download, install, or pay for anything new.
This was an amazing deal.
Got my order today, flashed them with some ESPHome firmware and now working great in Home Assistant!
@mechmyday Any chance you can share how you did it? I’m about to buy today’s deal and try to flash with esphome as well.
I must say, this was a great value. The LEDs are not the brightest but each strip only draws 0.46A, so fair balance. I don’t intend to use these on Wi-Fi, I will use them to brighten up dark closets in our camper. An 8-pack of door switches ran me under $10 and I have a number of those otherwise useless 2200-2600mAh USB “phone chargers” that companies throw their logo onto and give away (the ones about the size of a rectangular package of Halls cough drops). A full charge on one of these yields 2-3 hours of on-time for one strip. Given how often I open those closets, that would be several years.
Just plugged these in and I’m having an issue addressing these via Google Home or Alexa via Geeni integration.
If controlled via app, I can set the colors (RGB LED) fine, and also whites (White LED + Blue channel on RGB LED) just fine.
However, on Alexa and Google Home - (via app or voice command) - White colors do not work. Anything that requires RGB LEDs to color mix will successfully change the light, but commanding it to do “cool white” or “white” or “warm white” will -turn off- the RGB LED and won’t turn on the white LED.
Anyone have any ideas?
@MonkRX I was only able to ask Google directly to set it to white, and that seems to work
@MonkRX Did you ever get that sorted out? I finally cracked mine open to replace some non-W RGB strips I have and am running into the exact same situation.
@ncr100 I’m not sure I understand. I’m using Alexa, but I also can’t get it working using direct commands instead of using the group they’re in.
@Fourhundred57 I gave up after two weeks. I might give them a whirl in the future but not any time soon. They don’t suit my needs with them being broken the way they are. After the two week period - same issues, same problems.
5 days later, still no support from Merkury on faulty strips.
@customers We’ve got the Merkury LED Strips back up on Meh, this time as a 6-pack for $18. Got any tips for potential buyers? If you’ve gotten them installed, share a pic in our forum or tell us how it went
@dave you’re welcome
@dave Here’s a tip. According to the manufacturer, Merkury, these strips are NOT extendable to a longer length. That is not made clear in the MEH listing.
I purchased 12 Merkury LED strips a few weeks ago. It turns out that these are not extendable. I spoke to the manufacturer and they told me that the box has an incorrect instruction manual. That manual explains how to extend these. However, this model number is NOT extendable according to them. It is a mistake that they are aware of. I seem to remember that the original listing you posted indicated that these were extendable. Since I can’t see the original listing, I can’t validate that. I have spent 10 days on the phone with Merkury support and they claim that nothing on the box indicates these are extendable. The fact that the instruction booklet shows how to extend these is an error. These are useless to me if they can’t be extended. I am requesting a return authorization and subsequent credit for these units. My order number was bulbous-pristine-pleasure. Merkury has asked me to return these to Meh.
@arthurrosenthal I have found the original listing on this item and it clearly states: "
@arthurrosenthal Pleae write in to us via meh.com/support and ask for thumperchick. I’m looking into this for you now.
@arthurrosenthal I also ordered these, so I broke out my box and found that! there’s a cable connector in the box. Here’s what it looks like:
@arthurrosenthal there’s also some great info HERE.