@show_the_maw According to Google Play, they collect it for “App functionality, Analytics, Developer communications, Account management.” The whole personal data collection purposes is incredibly suspect. They claim they don’t share it with third parties, but I find that hard to believe.
@Fzero I’m not sure exactly how many combined strips that a single power supply/controller could handle. At a certain length you’ll experience voltage loss, but you could add power at the other end of the chain to solve that.
I had issues getting white to work via voice control (alexa or google home). These are RGB+W, and the W doesn’t seem to work through voice commands. Anyone else? I’ve been looking for a fix.
@MonkRX fair question. Semi-related note: these aren’t even RGB-anything, according to the writer. They’re for the “… inner RBG lighting enthusiast.” Close, kinda like the “Alpine Shepard Boy” reference….
Just your phone… with an app, that as @show_the_maw said, can access a lot of your information and send it back to the manufacturer, which is almost surely in China. Also very likely that these are probably ‘discontinued’ and the already questionable app might not get updates and might not work at all under future OS releases.
@pmarin these are manufactured by tuya and will work with any of their white label apps. (I don’t know the names since I flashed esphome to the ones I bought so I can use them with home assistant and Skip adding Chinese spy devices to my house)
@leaky_wires@pmarin This is exactly why i came to the comments section. What steps did you follow to flash esphome on it? I’d happily buy these if they support esphome
@leaky_wires@pmarin@zaiemv I haven’t done it yet, but was also interested before buying. Search for “merkury innovations homeassistant” and there are some git pages, forum posts, or videos, depending on how you prefer to learn.
@leaky_wires@pmarin I’ll let you know if i figure it out. I found the configs/directions for it on the hass community site. Excited to flash these when they get delivered!
@leaky_wires Can you share your thoughts on how well they work? I understand these aren’t the best around, but I don’t need the best. I just want to play around with them and add some accent lighting. Thanks.
@Kerig3 just like @leaky_wires i got the 12 pack too. I dont use their app I use one that came with lights i got at costco, FEIT Electric. It works well. And the lights respond well. Although as noted by someone else Alexa doesnt understand rgb + white LED strips, it only knows how to set RGB values so when you tell her to set the strip to white its an off white cool blue green “white”. If i want a warm white i have to simply open the Feit app and change it. However Alexa does remember the last color so if you set it to a warm white that uses the white LED in the Fiet app then turn it on and off with Alexa it will be that warm light you want.
@Kerig3 depends on what you mean by work well. They are cheap led strips for cheaper than anything out there.
The adhesive is falling off the cabinets I put them under (wasn’t really expecting it to stick anyway).
Lightwise they are fine. Someone did a bit of math suggesting that they are close to the output of a 60 watt incandescent light bulb (power supply is 1amp at 5 volts so 50 watts).
There a bit of stuttering on some brightness/color changes but that’s probably because I flashed mine with esphome. And I am controlling it via home assistant so it’s not really fair to judge them based on this.
@Chronicle@leaky_wires Thank you both for your insight, it’s much appreciated! My home isn’t smart-controlled so I’m not even playing with any digital assistants to control anything. I know there’s better lights out there with more options and robust features, but as a novice myself I simply wanted to ‘play’ with these for simple ambient lighting applications. At this price I also won’t feel bad if I don’t install them immediately—procrastination always interferes unfortunately.
@stolicat i picked up the 12 pack last time.
Each one is 9.8"
I installed two in my kitchen under the cabinets for counter top lighting and Ithey work pretty well for that on the white setting.
If you turn them on with the button they will cycle through some pre-set color combinations but not white. I use alexa to turn them on and off.
On that point, alexa cannot make these lights white. You need tuya or smart life or similar to set them to white. However alexa is able to turn them on and off and they retain the previous color.
Probably the biggest problem i have come across is that they automatically turn on when they receive power. So if the power goes out in the middle of the night, they turn on again when it is restored. But that does mean you could use these with a switch controlled plug and they would work just like you want.
If you connect these together, (assuming they can be connected together) will it look like a single strip, or will there be a gap in the lighting every 9.8 feet? I want to encircle a room for a total of 40-50 feet.
Is it true that “The app to change the lights and settings is $60yr or more if you pay monthly. Not worth it, plenty of low cost options out there.”???
@martytoo I use the Geenie app for mine, which I think is the app in question. I’ve not seen anything about any kind of charge to use the app. The app never asked for any kind of payment info or anything like that.
Got these in the 12-pack last time, Each strip is 9.8 feet long. They come with a coupler to link strips together but the power coming from the 5V USB wall wart included with each kit won’t drive more than 2 of them (at least in my experience). I would recommend planning on single strip installations. The lights are not terribly bright. I used one strip inside a pantry door frame and rigged a switch to turn them off when the door was closed, and that did a satisfactory job. The Tuya Smart app is free, so no fees to own and use these.
My biggest gripe? When you use the Tuya Smart app to control them, they screw up. If I turn them off using the app, they turn back on by themselves. Once that happens, color control is gone. This has been the case with 3 strips so far on 3 different networks, so I assume they all do this.
As with the majority of these types of devices, they are 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only, and unfortunately for me, I use mesh networks that transmit the one SSID for 2.4 and 5GHz, so I have to first disable the 5GHz broadcast, forget the network on my phone, re-add it, then go through and use the app to set up the strip. Not a huge deal, and not uncommon, but worth considering when I own so many strips and am not installing them all at once.
The strips each come with 3 little mounting clips that include tiny little screws to reinforce the adhesive. These are very functional.
Are they worth $3 each? Barely imo. Do they work? Somewhat. YMMV.
@Jonas4321 They will turn on if they momentarily lose power, maybe it’s the cheap USB power adapters they come with. I’ve only setup one so far, but it’s never turned on by itself.
@bmansc I am using the one in the pantry on a battery pack, and it does the same thing as when plugged into the wall wart that came with it. I have not tried a different wall wart but on the 3 that I played with that exhibited this condition, they were doing it using their own wall wart, so that’s 3 for 3.
I would love it if there was a solution, I have lots of ideas for using these where the app would come into play.
@OnionSoup Sure. They come back on when power is applied by default, which is what you want. In my experience, they come back on at the color setting they were at when they lost power (when the lamp timer switched them off). In addition, you can use the Tuya (or other, but I use Tuya) app to do the scheduling instead of a lamp timer. Unlike some other app-controlled smart devices, I do not see a “sunset” or “sunrise” setting (most of my TP-Link devices support that, which is nice), but for a timer set to the same time each day, that would work as well.
Sir, this is meh.com. Were you operating under the (mistaken) belief that you were purchasing high quality, current generation items from top tier manufacturers? Rookie mistake, but that’s OK; you’ll figure it out eventually. Or not. Meh…
Purchased the 12-pack on the previous deal. Haven’t installed them all, but I haven’t had any issues with the installed strips. The Google Home integration was easy. They’re brighter than I was expecting, which is a good thing. $0.31/ft for the brightness and functionality is hard to beat (in my amatuer opinion).
I picked these up last time. I’ve installed about 5 sets in random places in the house (closets, inside cabinets etc). So far, so good.
Google home allows me to use voice commands to set the color, brightness and turn them on and off. To use them with Google, you have to install the geeni app by Merkury. Then add them to your home through the Google app. It was pretty seemless and worked without a hitch.
I am really tempted to pick up more of these for future projects. I am a cabinet maker and make furniture pretty regularly. These lights like are easy to build into my projects.
I highly recommend these if you want to add lighting under your bed or in a closet, or even in a dark corner of your house. They’re easy to hide and simple to use
I bought these on the last go round. Trying to link multiple strips together is a major challenge. The clip they provide doesn’t do a great job of securing them in place and you will easily get a channel disconnect. With that said I’ve been happy with everything else.
I use Home Assistant and was able to integrate these into that system by adding the strips via the Smart Life App. This app then has an api I’m able to use to pull the strips into Home Assistant. Overall for 3 bucks a pop these hit the spot!
Is it just me or do you surgical gear and nearly as steady hands to trim and tie these together? I’m finding it hard to justify dedicating 12 seperate outlets in the house strictly to mood lighting.
I buy anything geeni/merkury as soon as I see it. Somehow, all other smart home things sync with their app (tuya, smart life, etc) I bought these to put into little projects I make.
Everyone says linking two sets together is a pain in the butt. If you can’t link them correctly, are they just trash or can you do anything with the failed linked pair like unlink? I assume you lose one and not both strings at that point right?
Has anyone used second or third sets as redundancy on the same project to make the lights extra extra bright and or not to have to unbuild your project later? Just curious if they seem to have similar color temps at a given color name. “Red” looks very different on each of my bulbs because they are from different manufacturers. I assume no one has problems with color matching.
Got some hoping they will work in a dorm setting for my kid and some of her friends. One strip should just about do one wall.
I’m also hoping the adhesive will be strong enough to hold them up since most dorm rooms won’t allow anything more permanent than adhesive on the walls. She may have to get creative with fun-tak if they won’t stick.
Very nice lights and having it connect to our google home was so nice. Only problem we had were the connecting strips being very finicky and hard to use. Other than that they’re great!
Specs
Product: 6-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
$71.94 for 6 at Amazon
Warranty
One year limited warranty
Estimated Delivery
Monday, Oct 28 - Thursday, Oct 31
Light this candle!!
OH MY GOD THEY STARVED AND SLIMMED DOWN GLEN!!!
@shahnm Looks more like Glen’s tapeworm.
Poopsie, I can do something cool with anything.
I laughed. I could imagine Irk saying that.
any reason my lights need my email address and phone number? Are they going to call me if my Hummel figures start acting up?
@show_the_maw. Use the Feit app not the Merkury app.
@show_the_maw According to Google Play, they collect it for “App functionality, Analytics, Developer communications, Account management.” The whole personal data collection purposes is incredibly suspect. They claim they don’t share it with third parties, but I find that hard to believe.
@KevinS10 @show_the_maw Does share mean the same thing as sell?
How many total can be linked together? edit- I am not even sure they can be linked.
@Fzero they come with a little coupler thingy. I haven’t tried it but…
Also I don’t think I would try and run more that 2strips off 1 controller
@Fzero I’m not sure exactly how many combined strips that a single power supply/controller could handle. At a certain length you’ll experience voltage loss, but you could add power at the other end of the chain to solve that.
Being “Smart Wi-Fi” tells me the manufacturer has no idea how Wi-Fi works, so you know they got the best security. [That is sarcasm.]
I had issues getting white to work via voice control (alexa or google home). These are RGB+W, and the W doesn’t seem to work through voice commands. Anyone else? I’ve been looking for a fix.
@MonkRX fair question. Semi-related note: these aren’t even RGB-anything, according to the writer. They’re for the “… inner RBG lighting enthusiast.” Close, kinda like the “Alpine Shepard Boy” reference….
Just your phone… with an app, that as @show_the_maw said, can access a lot of your information and send it back to the manufacturer, which is almost surely in China. Also very likely that these are probably ‘discontinued’ and the already questionable app might not get updates and might not work at all under future OS releases.
@pmarin these are manufactured by tuya and will work with any of their white label apps. (I don’t know the names since I flashed esphome to the ones I bought so I can use them with home assistant and Skip adding Chinese spy devices to my house)
@leaky_wires @pmarin tell me more about this esp home app…?
@leaky_wires @pmarin This is exactly why i came to the comments section. What steps did you follow to flash esphome on it? I’d happily buy these if they support esphome
@leaky_wires @pmarin @zaiemv I haven’t done it yet, but was also interested before buying. Search for “merkury innovations homeassistant” and there are some git pages, forum posts, or videos, depending on how you prefer to learn.
@pmarin @zaiemv tuya cloudcutter is a project that takes advantage of an exploit to hack the device and enable custom firmware.
Libretiny is the fork(ish… details are fuzzy) of the esphome firmware. There are links in the 12 pack thread and I linked a gist with my esphome yaml.
I’ve got them working nicely with home assistant.
I’m not a fan of the double/triple click in my config so if you come up with something better tag me.
@leaky_wires @pmarin I’ll let you know if i figure it out. I found the configs/directions for it on the hass community site. Excited to flash these when they get delivered!
@leaky_wires @pmarin @zaiemv Link?
Hmm…I wonder if these can be hacked to work like a color organ. RAVE ON!!
I bought the 12 pack last time and so fast have only used 4 with concrete plans for another 4… I think I might be a hoarder at heart.
@leaky_wires Can you share your thoughts on how well they work? I understand these aren’t the best around, but I don’t need the best. I just want to play around with them and add some accent lighting. Thanks.
@Kerig3 just like @leaky_wires i got the 12 pack too. I dont use their app I use one that came with lights i got at costco, FEIT Electric. It works well. And the lights respond well. Although as noted by someone else Alexa doesnt understand rgb + white LED strips, it only knows how to set RGB values so when you tell her to set the strip to white its an off white cool blue green “white”. If i want a warm white i have to simply open the Feit app and change it. However Alexa does remember the last color so if you set it to a warm white that uses the white LED in the Fiet app then turn it on and off with Alexa it will be that warm light you want.
@Kerig3 depends on what you mean by work well. They are cheap led strips for cheaper than anything out there.
The adhesive is falling off the cabinets I put them under (wasn’t really expecting it to stick anyway).
Lightwise they are fine. Someone did a bit of math suggesting that they are close to the output of a 60 watt incandescent light bulb (power supply is 1amp at 5 volts so 50 watts).
There a bit of stuttering on some brightness/color changes but that’s probably because I flashed mine with esphome. And I am controlling it via home assistant so it’s not really fair to judge them based on this.
@Chronicle @leaky_wires Thank you both for your insight, it’s much appreciated! My home isn’t smart-controlled so I’m not even playing with any digital assistants to control anything. I know there’s better lights out there with more options and robust features, but as a novice myself I simply wanted to ‘play’ with these for simple ambient lighting applications. At this price I also won’t feel bad if I don’t install them immediately—procrastination always interferes unfortunately.
So is each one 9.8 ft, or is the the total for the six?
Also, are these bright enough for under shelf task lighting in the kitchen or are they just ambiance-level stuff?
Also also, if you just turn them on with the button on the controller thingie, with no app happening, do you get white at max brightness?
@stolicat i picked up the 12 pack last time.
Each one is 9.8"
I installed two in my kitchen under the cabinets for counter top lighting and Ithey work pretty well for that on the white setting.
If you turn them on with the button they will cycle through some pre-set color combinations but not white. I use alexa to turn them on and off.
On that point, alexa cannot make these lights white. You need tuya or smart life or similar to set them to white. However alexa is able to turn them on and off and they retain the previous color.
Probably the biggest problem i have come across is that they automatically turn on when they receive power. So if the power goes out in the middle of the night, they turn on again when it is restored. But that does mean you could use these with a switch controlled plug and they would work just like you want.
@pcunning218 @stolicat
@hugacrv that’s what i get for typing that out before picking up my coffee
If you connect these together, (assuming they can be connected together) will it look like a single strip, or will there be a gap in the lighting every 9.8 feet? I want to encircle a room for a total of 40-50 feet.
@Limarick You cut and splice at very particular places on the strip, so there’s no gap.
Is it true that “The app to change the lights and settings is $60yr or more if you pay monthly. Not worth it, plenty of low cost options out there.”???
This was a comment I copied from Amazon.
@martytoo Not sure what app they were referring to in that comment, but they work with the Tuya app (which is free).
@martytoo sounds like review contamination, possibly referring to one of the video products that has cloud storage?
@martytoo no this is not accurate. The Merkury app and the Tuya app are both free
@martytoo I use the Geenie app for mine, which I think is the app in question. I’ve not seen anything about any kind of charge to use the app. The app never asked for any kind of payment info or anything like that.
Got these in the 12-pack last time, Each strip is 9.8 feet long. They come with a coupler to link strips together but the power coming from the 5V USB wall wart included with each kit won’t drive more than 2 of them (at least in my experience). I would recommend planning on single strip installations. The lights are not terribly bright. I used one strip inside a pantry door frame and rigged a switch to turn them off when the door was closed, and that did a satisfactory job. The Tuya Smart app is free, so no fees to own and use these.
My biggest gripe? When you use the Tuya Smart app to control them, they screw up. If I turn them off using the app, they turn back on by themselves. Once that happens, color control is gone. This has been the case with 3 strips so far on 3 different networks, so I assume they all do this.
As with the majority of these types of devices, they are 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only, and unfortunately for me, I use mesh networks that transmit the one SSID for 2.4 and 5GHz, so I have to first disable the 5GHz broadcast, forget the network on my phone, re-add it, then go through and use the app to set up the strip. Not a huge deal, and not uncommon, but worth considering when I own so many strips and am not installing them all at once.
The strips each come with 3 little mounting clips that include tiny little screws to reinforce the adhesive. These are very functional.
Are they worth $3 each? Barely imo. Do they work? Somewhat. YMMV.
@Jonas4321 They will turn on if they momentarily lose power, maybe it’s the cheap USB power adapters they come with. I’ve only setup one so far, but it’s never turned on by itself.
@bmansc I am using the one in the pantry on a battery pack, and it does the same thing as when plugged into the wall wart that came with it. I have not tried a different wall wart but on the 3 that I played with that exhibited this condition, they were doing it using their own wall wart, so that’s 3 for 3.
I would love it if there was a solution, I have lots of ideas for using these where the app would come into play.
@Jonas4321 Yes, useless beyond on/off/brightness level when using Google Home. There are definitely some sync issues as well.
@Jonas4321 Thanks for the hands-on review … bought them anyway, but appreciate the opportunity to lower my expectations
Use the Feit Electric App. It’s what I use. It’s free and uses email only for security to log into the app. As far as I can tell.
/buy
What the heck, it’s cheaper than raw RGBW strips, and I plan to void the warranty.
@blaineg It worked! Your order number is: wishful-shrill-coral
/image wishful shrill coral
@mediocrebot A route sheet?
/giphy wishful-shrill-coral
@blaineg Looks like announcements of upcoming (at the time) major horse races and the competitors.
@awilkey Yea, I shouldn’t post that early. I saw “seven furlongs” and “two miles and a-half” and my brain ran with it.
/showme wishful-shrill-coral
/image wishful-shrill-coral
Had to test it
Coral ≠ corral
Can these be used with a timer, so they provide ambient lighting at night, but not having to bother with turning them on/off?
@OnionSoup Sure. They come back on when power is applied by default, which is what you want. In my experience, they come back on at the color setting they were at when they lost power (when the lamp timer switched them off). In addition, you can use the Tuya (or other, but I use Tuya) app to do the scheduling instead of a lamp timer. Unlike some other app-controlled smart devices, I do not see a “sunset” or “sunrise” setting (most of my TP-Link devices support that, which is nice), but for a timer set to the same time each day, that would work as well.
DO NOT BUY
I had some DOA issues and I’ve been waiting over a week for the Merkury to respond for support.
Sir, this is meh.com. Were you operating under the (mistaken) belief that you were purchasing high quality, current generation items from top tier manufacturers? Rookie mistake, but that’s OK; you’ll figure it out eventually. Or not. Meh…
@SinNYC
I know, I had such high hopes of something better than woot.
You spelled “clamber” right.
Purchased the 12-pack on the previous deal. Haven’t installed them all, but I haven’t had any issues with the installed strips. The Google Home integration was easy. They’re brighter than I was expecting, which is a good thing. $0.31/ft for the brightness and functionality is hard to beat (in my amatuer opinion).
I picked these up last time. I’ve installed about 5 sets in random places in the house (closets, inside cabinets etc). So far, so good.
Google home allows me to use voice commands to set the color, brightness and turn them on and off. To use them with Google, you have to install the geeni app by Merkury. Then add them to your home through the Google app. It was pretty seemless and worked without a hitch.
I am really tempted to pick up more of these for future projects. I am a cabinet maker and make furniture pretty regularly. These lights like are easy to build into my projects.
I highly recommend these if you want to add lighting under your bed or in a closet, or even in a dark corner of your house. They’re easy to hide and simple to use
I bought these on the last go round. Trying to link multiple strips together is a major challenge. The clip they provide doesn’t do a great job of securing them in place and you will easily get a channel disconnect. With that said I’ve been happy with everything else.
I use Home Assistant and was able to integrate these into that system by adding the strips via the Smart Life App. This app then has an api I’m able to use to pull the strips into Home Assistant. Overall for 3 bucks a pop these hit the spot!
Great buy, I’ll probably give a few away
Is it just me or do you surgical gear and nearly as steady hands to trim and tie these together? I’m finding it hard to justify dedicating 12 seperate outlets in the house strictly to mood lighting.
To strip or not to strip? These lights are meh_r_valous
working well for me!
I buy anything geeni/merkury as soon as I see it. Somehow, all other smart home things sync with their app (tuya, smart life, etc) I bought these to put into little projects I make.
@ophirf15 Those are really cool!
@ophirf15 Printed or toy cars?
@blaineg printed!
@ophirf15 Nice. Resin or filament?
@blaineg filament. Don’t have a resin printer (yet)
Bought the last go around. Linking two sets together is a serious pia. So bad I gave up and use them as gifts for people I don’t really like.
Heads up to those that buy- you need to use the Geeni app, NOT the Merkury app, to get these to pair.
Everyone says linking two sets together is a pain in the butt. If you can’t link them correctly, are they just trash or can you do anything with the failed linked pair like unlink? I assume you lose one and not both strings at that point right?
Has anyone used second or third sets as redundancy on the same project to make the lights extra extra bright and or not to have to unbuild your project later? Just curious if they seem to have similar color temps at a given color name. “Red” looks very different on each of my bulbs because they are from different manufacturers. I assume no one has problems with color matching.
Thanks for the input guys.
Anybody know if these use the ws2812 serial protocol?
@mehakane They don’t. Just 4 colors. Three of them in a rgb LED plus one white. More info in last times discussion.
https://meh.com/forum/topics/12-pack-merkury-innovations-smart-wi-fi-led-strip-98
Got some hoping they will work in a dorm setting for my kid and some of her friends. One strip should just about do one wall.
I’m also hoping the adhesive will be strong enough to hold them up since most dorm rooms won’t allow anything more permanent than adhesive on the walls. She may have to get creative with fun-tak if they won’t stick.
Anyone with questions: All answered in last sale’s discussion.
I missed the part about them needing to be connected to WiFi when I (accidentally) bought two orders last go.
FYI for people who want plug and play, or to just Bluetooth from their phone.
@mhm does anyone happen to know where I find out how to use them without the WiFi?
@mhm You have to reflash the controller to not require internet.
Any pointers on that, or is it more of a Google it situation?
Very nice lights and having it connect to our google home was so nice. Only problem we had were the connecting strips being very finicky and hard to use. Other than that they’re great!
@customers Hey, we’ve got 12-Packs of the LED strip lights up on Meh today. It might be last call, so if you want more you should grab them now.
And if you’ve had a chance to install your LED strip lights, we’d love to see how they look. Head over to our forum and share any tips or pics.