Light Strips: have I been doing it WRONG for years?

foreign I've been putting it off way too long it's time to upgrade these light strips but I'm wondering should I use some pre-assembled light strips like these Gobi M ones with matter or be brave and build them myself [Music] I love pre-assembled light strips they make it so easy and sometimes when I watch DIY light strips videos it feels like I need an electrical engineering degree to understand it all and sometimes you just can't beat the price like these light strips under my bed are twenty dollars that's so cheap and they get the job done they turn on when I get out of bed and turn off when I get back in bed I don't need them to do anything fancy or these light strips right here are only 26 dollars and they have really good warm and cool white colors that's why I put up some old Govi light strips here in the corner because there are only 30 bucks which is pretty inexpensive for some addressable light strips that are that long that include the power and controller so should I just put up some Gobi M1 light strips and call it a day well let's see what the DIY options have to offer first foreign so recently I put up some light strips in my bathroom and I decided to go the DIY route and the reason for that is I want a really good warm and cool whites and colors and I wanted two strands connected to one power source if I would have gone the pre-assembled route it would have cost a lot more than going the DIY route and once I did the DIY light strips I realized they were way easier than I thought they were going to be now probably the most difficult thing out of this entire process is figuring out what to buy so I'll link some really good combination of light strips controllers and power sources down in the description so you can pick them up on Amazon so that's all great but I was wondering is the quality much different from the pre-assembled to the DIY version so I put some head to head to see if the quality was better or not and for the first one I'm using whiz which is in my family room with the light strips that I'm using in the bathroom thank you foreign so if you're using some accent lighting in a small area like we have in our family room or behind your desk in your office you could easily get away with something that are pre-assembled but if you want to put some light strips like all over and light up your entire room with like really good warm or cool whites well that might be a little different so if you're comparing something like the whiz which has really good warm and cool whites because they have the warm and cool white diodes with some DIY light strips that have a really high CRI score you can see a massive difference between the warm and the cool whites so a really high CRI score which means there are a lot more color accurate it's going to look way better if you're lighting up a really big area and not only do these light strips have a really good CRI score but they're the Cobb style so it looks like they're one big LED light even though there are a bunch of tiny little LEDs right next to each other and this makes it look so much better if they're installed underneath cabinets where you might be able to see the LED diodes normally and when you see these it looks like one big light and it looks way more professional now how close the little LEDs are on the light strip doesn't make a huge difference if it's bouncing off a wall or a ceiling but if you have the light strips facing you like I have right here in the corner it makes a really big difference because if you don't have good enough diffusion you can see the little LED diodes and it just doesn't look as good so one benefit of the Gobi M1 light strips is that the LEDs are closer together than normal light strips that's a big reason people are liking these things but I tested it out with this channel cover in the corner with the diffusion and you could still see the LED diodes it was better than like the ones I have in right now but you could still see them if you were using some deeper Channel covers and some better diffuse the Gobi m1s would be perfect for that it would all blend together and you wouldn't see the little LED diodes but I wanted something that would fit in this corner Channel cover and I found a really good option their Cobb style so they look like one big LED and their dream color they're pretty sweet because these DIY light strips are addressable you have a few different options to control them you can get some kind of controller that will do it all for you they're a little more expensive but it will make it easier I'll link one of them down in the description or you can use a little ESP device like a esp32 or 8266 and what's great about one of these is they're only about five or six bucks so you can save quite a bit and still get all the same functionality that control your light strips but it does take a little bit of extra work and I made a whole second Channel video explaining how to get this connected with these light strips and walk you through the process the wiring and all of that so after seeing how difficult it is to go the DIY route versus the pre-assembled Govi option I think a lot of people are going to choose Gobi because the RGB colors look amazing it has cool effects it's just really easy to get up and running but if you're like me and you have some specific requirements like I have right here in the corner the DIY option might be a better route because you can get those Cobb lighting it's going to look great in these Channel covers plus the smart home integration is going to be slightly better because even though Gobi works with matter which is great to see you can only change the colors and the brightness with matter you can't do all the effects you can in the Gobi app with matter so if you want to integrate that into your smart home it might be slightly more difficult but if you're going the DIY option you can use wled and that integrates really well with home assistant so you can set some cool effects as presets and integrate those into home assistant and you can use those for automation and that's the reason I kind of want to use DIY right here but I get it if you don't want to solder and all the complications with DIY I think pre-assembled light strips are a great option for most people but I will be using the DIY light strips here in this corner so time to take these down and put the new ones up foreign [Music] you're the most beautiful thing I've ever laid My Eyes on You Light Up My Life me wait uh uh [Music]

Channel: Smart Home Solver

Views: 83,511

Keywords: smart light strips, diy light strips, best smart light strips, how to build light strips, led light strips, how to put together light strips, light strips tutorial, light strips comparison, building led light strips, smart home solver, smart home, home automation

Id: pDdNZ-sPZ7k

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023