I’m looking for a pair of light strips I can use to make cool effects in my house! Since I have a lot of other Inovelli gear, I figured I’d start with their LZW45 light strip first.
Adding it to my ZWave network was basically like every other Inovelli device. Set the hub to inclusion mode, and then tap the action button three times quickly. I thought it was neat that this giant light strip pulsed blue while it was doing the inclusion process and then went to green when it was done, just like every other Inovelli device.
Getting it set up in Home Assistant is a bit tricky. I’m still using the Open ZWave 1.4 stuff, which is pretty old at this point. The directions on Inovelli’s website are mostly correct, however. In a nutshell, you need to update your local open-zwave DB with their latest definition files before you include it into your network. The directions on how to do this are in the installation guide. Here’s the version of it I’m using out of my own config!
After I got it into my Home Assistant config, I noticed that a light entity wasn’t created. I did some searching and figured out that this is a known issue with OZW 1.4, and the workaround for it is on Inovelli’s forums. I made the change listed here, and everything started working fully. Yay!
To be able to control it, I used the script from this forum post. (Take a peek at my own config, too!)
One that script is enabled in HomeAssistant, you can call it from Developer Tools -> Services from the UI. Here’s the service call I used to set it up for the Aurora pattern:
service: script.lzw45_pixel_effect
data:
service: zwave.set_config_parameter
lzw45: light.inovelli_lzw45_light_strip
effect: aurora
brightness_pct: 60
Is the this light strip I’m looking for?
I don’t think so. I’m going to keep on looking. I love how easy it was to get going, and I really like the idea of having a dedicated controller that’s made for it. Controlling a light strip over ZWave is awesome, too.
The problem is, to me at least, that it’s not very smooth. For the single pixel effects (like chase), it looks great, but what I’m looking for it more along the lines of the Aurora effect. When it’s trying to address all of the pixels at once it gets pretty laggy and flickery.
For the $50 I paid for the light strip and controller, however, I think it’s pretty good deal, and I’m gonna find a neat place in my house to use it!