@craigthom There are also other sellers on the listing for $9.99 and $11.49. Previous price on this item was more see Keepa. We could have chosen to stay off of this Amazon listing, but that would have only resulted in a higher comparison price.
@finalremix very small market for something like that, I imagine. As soon as someone thinks, “Hey I need some strip lights”, the next thing they want is color options, and light level options, and from there the feature set has already been designed and programmed so copycat is the simplest solution and you get blinky and patterns and wireless.
@finalremix@Jonas4321 The problem is that not enough of the multi-mode strips remember their last setting through a power off cycle, and they usually don’t default to just steady bright white when the power comes back, or if they do, it’s 2700K. So every time the power drops, you have to scramble to find the remote or you have to pull out the phone to access the app just to get them out of Demo Fancy Blinkenlights Mode or restore the color/temp that you want. (Unless you like 2700K, which I emphatically do not.) LEDSupply.com had the fixed-mode type the last time I looked, and their pricing is actually decent.
@finalremix@Jonas4321@werehatrack Well, this brand seems to remember the last settings. We have some strips around our living room window (very difficult to get two strips to attach properly, but I digress). They always seem to turn back on with the last setting.
We also have some of their lightbulbs in our basement. My kids fell asleep before a storm and we brought them down to the basement while they were still asleep. We were bored and were playing with the strange settings (“rainbow”, “blinking”, “rave”, etc.) when the power went out. It was out all night.
The next morning, my 3 year old was playing upstairs while we hung out in the basement. The power turned on and everything turned back on with it. My 3 year old was scared because of all the sudden noises as everything turned on. He ran downstairs to be comforted by us and entered a room where all the lights were changing colors (he had no idea that could even happen) and got even more scared. It took a second for the WIFI to start back up so I could set it back to the normal settings.
oops.
Fortunately, he figured out the app pretty quickly and as soon as he knew how to do it himself it wasn’t scary anymore.
@finalremix@werehatrack I used a strip as a pantry light and wired in a switch that cut the power to the strip when the door was closed. I actually used a 5V battery power bank instead of the wall wart, but that’s not critical. I set the color to the brightest (by eye) white and months go by between these being turned back on (the pantry is at our camp) and they ALWAYS come back on to that white setting.
However, when using the app, I noticed that they do sometimes revert back to a different hue when changing modes, so that’s not cool, but it did not affect my implementation. I think that when using the app to turn them on and off, the strip always has power applied (for the Wi-Fi) and that can cause erroneous setting changes, but that’s an imperical guess, not a known fact.
@finalremix@Jonas4321@werehatrack How the heck do you guys get the On/Off switch to work? Each time I push it, the darned things go to some other scene instead of turning off. They don’t even cycle to an off mode!
So Sidedeal inflates the price on Amazon and Meh pretends they’re offering a deal. I should’ve moved on from Meh a while ago but this helps to seal it.
@adamwesv alright, I spent more of my precious life time. Differences noted, cheaper listing does not specify Alexa integration nor any IP rating. I also wonder if there is a difference in led density but no clue as apparently that’s not a metric to list. Either way these are a pain to install correctly, if you need to remove it when it breaks you may also also be removing some paint.
One more thing, look at the hands on the second to last picture. Wrong number of fingers on left hand, this is obviously a fake ai generated picture. It’s all fake, inception deception.
@adamwesv There are other sellers on the listing for $9.99 and $11.49. Previous price on this item was more see Keepa. We could have chosen to stay off of this Amazon listing, but that would have only resulted in a higher comparison price.
@qazxto Dunno what you’re talking about, all the images look fine to me…
If you’re talking about the one where they’re holding a phone, the index finger is just supporting the back of it. That is a perfectly normal way of holding a cell phone, and is probably my default hand position now that phones are so big.
@agnesnutter sorry it was a joke about the number of fingers on the hand. Seemed more humorous at 5am when I wrote it. I’m a real comedian when I wake up.
@tentalces1349 I bought some of these the last time they were offered. My son wanted a room update and the price per linear foot was better than I’d seen locally. Except for the fact that they are the definition of a PITA to daisy chain them together and I’ve whittled two sets down to almost nothing to try and them connected properly to make a longer strip. Buy the ones from Harbour Freight instead. They’re SO much easier to string multiple strands together than this sale.
@jennyland@tentalces1349 12v strips will allow you to go farther than these 5v ones without power injection. I can usually get 150 leds before injection on 12v verses 50 leds with 5v ones. You basically have to run a power and ground wire each time you inject. But as i also said earlier, you’re going to need a power supply with more amps than the ones these come with.
These are the new candy corn, apparently. Except they have not yet offered a pallet of them.
I got the original 12 pack (same price) and used, let’s see… one. It was a successful deployment but these need to be near an outlet or use an extension cord (like any LED strip, I know) so finding uses for 12 is hard.
They’re… Ok. Usually leave on a cool blue. Genie app that it recommends, the color changing options are nauseating how quick it switches between them so better to stay on one.
They’re not very bright, especially on some non primary colours, such as orange., But they do work exactly as expected. Easy to hook up. Easy to stick. Easy to connect to Alexa.
I incorrectly said during mehrathon that you can’t daisy chain them. I since discovered you can.
@arlene_wechsler I don’t have numbers but I have seen and used brighter LED strips. These are adequate for illuminating a pantry, which my one installation so far. If you are looking to light up a room, l would look elsewhere. For accent lighting or under counter use, these will work just fine imo.
@arlene_wechsler not sure exact lumens, but these add more of a highlight than any real room brightening. If you need bright, either double strip them, or go with something else.
If you’re just going for something to highlight an area and don’t want bright, these are fine.
I Purchased these when they were for sale back in May.
So they say they connect to each other (which I assume is to mean they will connect end to end) but as far as we can tell they do not.
Is there some thing I am missing that makes them connectable to each other?
And no I was not drinking margaritas when I tried…
@astuart586 Here’s what I was able to do. Keep in mind that it’s not “easy” but it comes with what you need to knock it out.
Step 1: Find where you’re going to splice. Any of the copper link points will work.
Step 2: You’ll peel away some of the rubbery covered bit to expose the connection points where you are splicing. If you cut in the middle you’ll want copper on both sides, if you pull away right at the plug in bit you can expose some soldered end to work with like I have done here.
Step 3: You use the little white junction from the box to connect the exposed ends. This will leave an LED right next to the box so you don’t have a gap in your lighting. Just be sure the parts you’re linking are the matching lines and you didn’t get flipped anywhere.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to make the straight cut and then slip a small blade under the clear rubber to lift it away from that point a bit before you cut or tear it off. You’ll likely also need pliers to close the junction box over it cleanly.
@astuart586 One more shot showing them lit across the light. Something I learned, you should not just rip away the built-in connector cord and use it to splice. This caused an error in the line. I removed that, cut at the very first copper line, and respliced them. The result was strong lighting end-to-end across both strips.
I decided to see if I can use these with the open source WLED controller software, as I have a project in mind… they can no doubt be made to work with it, it’s just a matter of how much extra tinkering is required. It’s worth a shot.
@blandoon they are rgb+w strips, not pixels. The open wled will work if you use a different controller and expect the entire strip to act as a single color / channel. Better off getting ws2811 strips to use with wled.
@braveit1 I saw there is a separate W channel, yeah, and some preliminary research shows WLED might support it with some extra tomfoolery… no doubt there are better choices out there, though for what I’m thinking of doing it might not even matter, and for such a low price per LED I’m willing to take the punt and see what I can do.
will I need a USB extension cable, or do they make extension cables for the 5-conductor connector? My outlets are not close to where I want these things to go.
And if you’ve already bought today’s Meh, consider this a note of affection letting you know you’re one of our favorites. (Feel free to let the community know we love you most.)
I bought these last year when Side Deals indicated they could be daisy-chained. Those units were not. I tried to get Side Deals to take them back because of the incorrect description. I had to make a call to Merkury directly and they were mystified why SD claimed those units could not be connected. Long story short, Side Deals customer service gave me a bad time about this and told me I could return them. However, shipping costs back to SD were about the same as the cost of the item. So I have 9 perfectly useable units that can not be daisy-chained. I am not capable of doing the workaround. Life is a bitch and I am very realistic about this kind of BS.
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
$119.88 for 12 at Amazon
Warranty
One year limited warranty
Estimated Delivery
Thursday, Aug 24 - Monday, Aug 28
.efil ym pu thgil uoY
@yakkoTDI huh
@yakkoTDI
!teews os uoy …ewA
@yakkoTDI Did you install them backwards?
@yakkoTDI ⊥ᗡʎMSI
tacocat
@yakkoTDI Yvan eht nioj!
@RogerWilco
stackcats
Gee. Look who the Amazon Marketplace vendor is for that link.
@craigthom Didn’t they get banned, or paved over, or something?
@craigthom
Good catch!
@craigthom what the actual…?
What the actual? - The Amazon comparison link, look at who sells and ships the item, Sidedeals!
@craigthom There are also other sellers on the listing for $9.99 and $11.49. Previous price on this item was more see Keepa. We could have chosen to stay off of this Amazon listing, but that would have only resulted in a higher comparison price.
I just bought the 5 pack on sidedeal last night
I hate how impossible it is to just buy a damned set of strip lights that aren’t the blinky, 8 patterns, wifi BS that everything is these days.
@finalremix very small market for something like that, I imagine. As soon as someone thinks, “Hey I need some strip lights”, the next thing they want is color options, and light level options, and from there the feature set has already been designed and programmed so copycat is the simplest solution and you get blinky and patterns and wireless.
@finalremix @Jonas4321 The problem is that not enough of the multi-mode strips remember their last setting through a power off cycle, and they usually don’t default to just steady bright white when the power comes back, or if they do, it’s 2700K. So every time the power drops, you have to scramble to find the remote or you have to pull out the phone to access the app just to get them out of Demo Fancy Blinkenlights Mode or restore the color/temp that you want. (Unless you like 2700K, which I emphatically do not.) LEDSupply.com had the fixed-mode type the last time I looked, and their pricing is actually decent.
@finalremix @Jonas4321 @werehatrack Well, this brand seems to remember the last settings. We have some strips around our living room window (very difficult to get two strips to attach properly, but I digress). They always seem to turn back on with the last setting.
We also have some of their lightbulbs in our basement. My kids fell asleep before a storm and we brought them down to the basement while they were still asleep. We were bored and were playing with the strange settings (“rainbow”, “blinking”, “rave”, etc.) when the power went out. It was out all night.
The next morning, my 3 year old was playing upstairs while we hung out in the basement. The power turned on and everything turned back on with it. My 3 year old was scared because of all the sudden noises as everything turned on. He ran downstairs to be comforted by us and entered a room where all the lights were changing colors (he had no idea that could even happen) and got even more scared. It took a second for the WIFI to start back up so I could set it back to the normal settings.
Fortunately, he figured out the app pretty quickly and as soon as he knew how to do it himself it wasn’t scary anymore.
@finalremix @werehatrack I used a strip as a pantry light and wired in a switch that cut the power to the strip when the door was closed. I actually used a 5V battery power bank instead of the wall wart, but that’s not critical. I set the color to the brightest (by eye) white and months go by between these being turned back on (the pantry is at our camp) and they ALWAYS come back on to that white setting.
However, when using the app, I noticed that they do sometimes revert back to a different hue when changing modes, so that’s not cool, but it did not affect my implementation. I think that when using the app to turn them on and off, the strip always has power applied (for the Wi-Fi) and that can cause erroneous setting changes, but that’s an imperical guess, not a known fact.
@finalremix @Jonas4321 @werehatrack How the heck do you guys get the On/Off switch to work? Each time I push it, the darned things go to some other scene instead of turning off. They don’t even cycle to an off mode!
@finalremix @jjnova @werehatrack I don’t use the included switch, I wired a pushbutton switch online with the power wire.
UM … someone needs to update the specs!! They state:
Unless you’re only sending folks 4 packs when they think they’re buying 12!!
@IndifferentDude Fixed. Dunno who got it, but it’s fixed now.
Meh, if it’s quite all right with you (& even if it isn’t), I can play around gloriously without sending you 36 bucks.
So Sidedeal inflates the price on Amazon and Meh pretends they’re offering a deal. I should’ve moved on from Meh a while ago but this helps to seal it.
@adamwesv
Per CCC, there is a long price history of two months showing this sale price. https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0BR8FF47J
Today’s deal is $36 for 117.6 feet. Or you can get 100 feet for another similar no name drop shipped led strip. Mehs deal is 30.6 cents a foot, other fake name is 11.5 cents a foot. https://www.amazon.com/Bedroom-Control-Changing-Christmas-Decoration/dp/B09BMWGRFM/ref=mp_s_a_1_19?keywords=merkury+led+strip&qid=1692004322&sr=8-19
I only quickly looked at listing but send similar enough for large amount of questionable quality lighting.
Meh has to pay for its advertising on ATP podcast somehow guys.
@adamwesv alright, I spent more of my precious life time. Differences noted, cheaper listing does not specify Alexa integration nor any IP rating. I also wonder if there is a difference in led density but no clue as apparently that’s not a metric to list. Either way these are a pain to install correctly, if you need to remove it when it breaks you may also also be removing some paint.
Life is too short for dog vomit led lighting.
One more thing, look at the hands on the second to last picture. Wrong number of fingers on left hand, this is obviously a fake ai generated picture. It’s all fake, inception deception.
@adamwesv There are other sellers on the listing for $9.99 and $11.49. Previous price on this item was more see Keepa. We could have chosen to stay off of this Amazon listing, but that would have only resulted in a higher comparison price.
@qazxto Dunno what you’re talking about, all the images look fine to me…
If you’re talking about the one where they’re holding a phone, the index finger is just supporting the back of it. That is a perfectly normal way of holding a cell phone, and is probably my default hand position now that phones are so big.
@agnesnutter sorry it was a joke about the number of fingers on the hand. Seemed more humorous at 5am when I wrote it. I’m a real comedian when I wake up.
Can these be daisy chained?
@tentalces1349 you’re going to need a better power supply and inject power if your goal is to do longer runs and connect multiple strips together.
@tentalces1349 I bought some of these the last time they were offered. My son wanted a room update and the price per linear foot was better than I’d seen locally. Except for the fact that they are the definition of a PITA to daisy chain them together and I’ve whittled two sets down to almost nothing to try and them connected properly to make a longer strip. Buy the ones from Harbour Freight instead. They’re SO much easier to string multiple strands together than this sale.
@jennyland @tentalces1349 12v strips will allow you to go farther than these 5v ones without power injection. I can usually get 150 leds before injection on 12v verses 50 leds with 5v ones. You basically have to run a power and ground wire each time you inject. But as i also said earlier, you’re going to need a power supply with more amps than the ones these come with.
These wife strippers are getting cheaper with every Meh sale.
@hchavers never marry the stripper
These are the new candy corn, apparently. Except they have not yet offered a pallet of them.
I got the original 12 pack (same price) and used, let’s see… one. It was a successful deployment but these need to be near an outlet or use an extension cord (like any LED strip, I know) so finding uses for 12 is hard.
@Jonas4321 yeah. I’ve used two so far.
They’re… Ok. Usually leave on a cool blue. Genie app that it recommends, the color changing options are nauseating how quick it switches between them so better to stay on one.
They’re not very bright, especially on some non primary colours, such as orange., But they do work exactly as expected. Easy to hook up. Easy to stick. Easy to connect to Alexa.
I incorrectly said during mehrathon that you can’t daisy chain them. I since discovered you can.
@OnionSoup how much less bright were they when you daisy-chained them, and how many did you connect together?
@Jonas4321 I discovered you can daisy chain them, but I haven’t actually done it.
Yours is a genuine concern though as these aren’t the brightest LEDs even with just one strip.
@Jonas4321 @OnionSoup I daisy chained two together and saw no reduction in brightness. Can’t vouch for more than two.
What’s the lumen rating/foot for these? They’re pretty sparse, spaced at .784 inches (based on length and # of LEDs). I’m guessing it’s low.
Can anyone recommend a brighter RGB LED strip that can be app-controlled?
@arlene_wechsler I don’t have numbers but I have seen and used brighter LED strips. These are adequate for illuminating a pantry, which my one installation so far. If you are looking to light up a room, l would look elsewhere. For accent lighting or under counter use, these will work just fine imo.
@arlene_wechsler not sure exact lumens, but these add more of a highlight than any real room brightening. If you need bright, either double strip them, or go with something else.
If you’re just going for something to highlight an area and don’t want bright, these are fine.
/giphy lolling-lapping-feast
@aperfecttool72 wow, finally giphy nails one.
I Purchased these when they were for sale back in May.
So they say they connect to each other (which I assume is to mean they will connect end to end) but as far as we can tell they do not.
Is there some thing I am missing that makes them connectable to each other?
And no I was not drinking margaritas when I tried…
@astuart586 There’s instructions in the manual, but I’ll admit they’re not incredibly user-friendly:
@astuart586 Here’s what I was able to do. Keep in mind that it’s not “easy” but it comes with what you need to knock it out.
Step 1: Find where you’re going to splice. Any of the copper link points will work.
Step 2: You’ll peel away some of the rubbery covered bit to expose the connection points where you are splicing. If you cut in the middle you’ll want copper on both sides, if you pull away right at the plug in bit you can expose some soldered end to work with like I have done here.
Step 3: You use the little white junction from the box to connect the exposed ends. This will leave an LED right next to the box so you don’t have a gap in your lighting. Just be sure the parts you’re linking are the matching lines and you didn’t get flipped anywhere.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to make the straight cut and then slip a small blade under the clear rubber to lift it away from that point a bit before you cut or tear it off. You’ll likely also need pliers to close the junction box over it cleanly.
I hope this helps!
@astuart586 One more shot showing them lit across the light. Something I learned, you should not just rip away the built-in connector cord and use it to splice. This caused an error in the line. I removed that, cut at the very first copper line, and respliced them. The result was strong lighting end-to-end across both strips.
Good luck!
I bought these in May. Also in the first two didn’t work.
I decided to see if I can use these with the open source WLED controller software, as I have a project in mind… they can no doubt be made to work with it, it’s just a matter of how much extra tinkering is required. It’s worth a shot.
@blandoon they are rgb+w strips, not pixels. The open wled will work if you use a different controller and expect the entire strip to act as a single color / channel. Better off getting ws2811 strips to use with wled.
@braveit1 I saw there is a separate W channel, yeah, and some preliminary research shows WLED might support it with some extra tomfoolery… no doubt there are better choices out there, though for what I’m thinking of doing it might not even matter, and for such a low price per LED I’m willing to take the punt and see what I can do.
will I need a USB extension cable, or do they make extension cables for the 5-conductor connector? My outlets are not close to where I want these things to go.
@customers If you need a few more of these LED strips, guess what we’ve got on Meh today? (Hint: it’s a few more.)
And if you’ve already bought today’s Meh, consider this a note of affection letting you know you’re one of our favorites. (Feel free to let the community know we love you most.)
I bought these last year when Side Deals indicated they could be daisy-chained. Those units were not. I tried to get Side Deals to take them back because of the incorrect description. I had to make a call to Merkury directly and they were mystified why SD claimed those units could not be connected. Long story short, Side Deals customer service gave me a bad time about this and told me I could return them. However, shipping costs back to SD were about the same as the cost of the item. So I have 9 perfectly useable units that can not be daisy-chained. I am not capable of doing the workaround. Life is a bitch and I am very realistic about this kind of BS.