Author: Craig Lloyd / Source: howtogeek.com
Smart light options from Philips Hue are pretty expensive, but perhaps nothing is as pricey as the Hue LightStrips. The good news is that you can save quite a bit of cash by putting together some DIY Hue-compatible light strips.
RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Philips Hue Lights
The Hue LightStrip kit costs a cool $90 and comes with two meters worth of light strips.
You can add on one-meter extensions for $30 each. To get five meters worth of Hue LightStrips, you’d have to spend $170. However, if you’re willing to do just a bit of assembly yourself (no fancy skills required), you can get the same length of Hue-compatible LED light strips for just a little over $40.
The only downsides are that your light strip won’t work with HomeKit or Hue Sync, but if you’re still interested in saving a lot of cash, then keep reading.
| Celebrities Then and Now | |
| |
| Photo gallery of celebrities then and now! | |
| Stanton Daily | |
| View Now |
What You’ll Need
To create your Hue-compatible LED light strips, you’ll need three main components: the LED light strips, the controller module, and a power supply. Unfortunately, you can only find the right controller module on Aliexpress, so be prepared to wait a few weeks, since it ships from China.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Gledopto ZigBee RGB+CCT LED Controller: This controller lets you change the colors, as well as the color temperature of the white spectrum.
- Five Meter LED Light Strip: You can cut these down to a shorter length if need be, or you can buy more if you want something even longer (by using connectors).
- 12V 3A Power Supply: Three amps will get the job done for five meters of light strips or fewer. If you’re adding more, you’ll want to go with a 5A power supply.
In total, this all cost me just $43.90. This same kind of setup using the official Hue LightStrips…
The post How to Make Your Own Philips Hue LightStrips for Cheap appeared first on FeedBox.