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Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#81

Post by KPGv2 »

thereticent wrote: post #35
lukevp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have proof that claims are denied due to power supplies not rated correctly? That seems like fear mongering otherwise. Your insurance still covers your house even if you make mistakes on construction or repair yourself, I can’t imagine them denying a claim over a purchased part that you have a good faith reason to believe it will function correctly. Also why do you specifically call out Chinese parts as being…

My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward. I sincerely doubt that an insurance company would be required to cover losses due to DIY electronics using parts that have not been properly safety rated. I'm surprised you think the opposite is obvious. Could just be my US perspective.

> My understanding is that insurance will not cover issues caused by DIY work if you did not have it permitted and inspected properly afterward.

I would be shocked if that's true, considering here in Texas you don't need a permit or inspection to do DIY work on your own house.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#82

Post by KPGv2 »

yumcimil wrote: post #62
entangledqubit wrote: post #27

I ended up buying a couple strings of Twinkly lights a while back - after considering a diy solution. The mobile app has been solid and (assuming they didn't muck it up) there's are libraries out there for interfacing to them as well (over WiFi). The cost is not cheap but seems fair to me and seems to be well built. (The light mapping is pretty fun. You can zigzag a bunch of lights across a wall and basically create…

+1 for twinkly lights. I've had some WS2801s that are about a decade old from Aliexpress for ages. This time lighting the tree, discovered quite a few scorch marks and melted insulation. Twinkly lights were 66% off locally, so gave 'em a go. They're still RGB, but blend into the tree a fair bit better. The LED spatial mapping stuff kinda works - it's not perfect, but gives you enough to be able to have decent fades t…

Yeah the Twinkly stuff is crazy. I bought some for my wife, who is a major Christmas decor-head, a couple years back. She throws those things on the tree, uses the app to do the mapping, and the animations are really impressive. Very much like what you see on the website.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#83

Post by whatevertrevor »

dyauspitr wrote: post #80
binary_slinger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal pet peeve are white LED lights. If you're not careful to buy the ones labeled "warm" they look cold, and imo, not very festive and inviting. I completely agree. This is true also for all household LED lighting. I prefer cold for kitchen food prep areas and bathrooms, but warm everywhere else.

Warm everywhere for me. There’s something about cold white that is very depressing. You would think more blue would mean less depressing but not in my experience.

Funnily enough we're currently in the process of replacing warm lights everywhere in our house with white lights. The warm lights make us feel sleepy and depressed especially in the winter, where there's already very little sunlight up here in Canada.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#84

Post by Tepix »

beala wrote: post #67
Tepix wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, i want as little tech as possible, i imagine entering the date and the latitude and perhaps the number of minutes before/after sunset/sunrise.

Just about any wifi smart plug will do this. If you don't want your plug to rely on other people's servers, a quick google found this one: https://mytouchsmart.com/mytouchsmart-outdoor-indoor-sunsmar... . I'm sure there are others.

Thanks. Looks like there are timer switches with calendars, they are sometimes called "astro timer switch".

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#85

Post by diggan »

whatevertrevor wrote: post #83
dyauspitr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warm everywhere for me. There’s something about cold white that is very depressing. You would think more blue would mean less depressing but not in my experience.

Funnily enough we're currently in the process of replacing warm lights everywhere in our house with white lights. The warm lights make us feel sleepy and depressed especially in the winter, where there's already very little sunlight up here in Canada.

Yeah, this aligns with me too, as a Swede living in Spain. In the winter time, I need strong indoor lightning that many would describe as cold and almost hostile, otherwise my body seems to go into hibernation-mode by itself. In the summers though, warm lightning is just cozier and doesn't seem so draining anymore.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#86

Post by croisillon »

dyauspitr wrote: post #80
binary_slinger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal pet peeve are white LED lights. If you're not careful to buy the ones labeled "warm" they look cold, and imo, not very festive and inviting. I completely agree. This is true also for all household LED lighting. I prefer cold for kitchen food prep areas and bathrooms, but warm everywhere else.

Warm everywhere for me. There’s something about cold white that is very depressing. You would think more blue would mean less depressing but not in my experience.

oh we could write a depressing song called "blue christmas"

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#87

Post by F7F7F7 »

linsomniac wrote: post #19
tannedNerd wrote: post #3

I’ve been super impressed so far with the Govee lights I’ve gotten. The app is pretty easy to use has tons of cool effects, and they have a LAN API ( https://app-h5.govee.com/user-manual/wlan-guide ) for most of their lights that have WiFi. Don’t have enough time this year to program a custom show but was going to start earlier next year now that I have a couple of these. The new scene stage thing they just released…

That's very good to hear, because last year on Black Friday I got a couple of dual 36' Govee light strips and am just planning on putting them up today, as a permanent install. It's been a long-time dream of mine to have permanent holiday lights. These are the ones that are the strips with an LED every few inches, individually controllable. Looking over at Amazon it looks like they have the 65ft kit I got for $70 rig…

Just keep in mind that unless you’re hitting 60 LEDs a meter you’ll be able to clearly see the individual lights. Even with frosted lenses.

I just mention it because you’re planning on putting the time and effort into a permanent install.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#88

Post by F7F7F7 »

havnagiggle wrote: post #11
tannedNerd wrote: post #3

I’ve been super impressed so far with the Govee lights I’ve gotten. The app is pretty easy to use has tons of cool effects, and they have a LAN API ( https://app-h5.govee.com/user-manual/wlan-guide ) for most of their lights that have WiFi. Don’t have enough time this year to program a custom show but was going to start earlier next year now that I have a couple of these. The new scene stage thing they just released…

Is Govee the down-cone style? Or are there also others doing that? There's been a couple of houses that have this and I wasn't sure what they are using, but it's the only one that I would consider doing whole house exterior. Many others look too sharp.

Govee has a plug and play solution. You can accomplish that he same thing with WLED and programmable strips, however.

Half the price but four times the headache.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#89

Post by xattt »

mbesto wrote: post #79
pwg wrote: post #2

https://kno.wled.ge/ Many 'effects' already prepackaged. Plus the ability to schedule time based changes (on/off/change pattern/etc.). Includes a web server to provide "app like" control over a phone or PC. Also includes integrations for several "home control" systems and a http API for programmatic control from another system. Can even synchronize plural controllers into a whole 'net' (note, I've not used this featu…

Also, since on one has mentioned it yet, the go-to LED strips are from BTF-Lighting. I personally buy them from AliExpress since I dont care if they arrive in a week as opposed to 1-2 days from Amazon. https://btf-lighting.aliexpress.com/store/1100777574

The missing middle appears to be tree lights that have a traditional appearance (and don’t look like robot spaghetti). Adhesive LED light strips are meant to be only indirectly visible.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best programmable holiday lights?

#90

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

leptons wrote: post #51
pwg wrote: post #2

https://kno.wled.ge/ Many 'effects' already prepackaged. Plus the ability to schedule time based changes (on/off/change pattern/etc.). Includes a web server to provide "app like" control over a phone or PC. Also includes integrations for several "home control" systems and a http API for programmatic control from another system. Can even synchronize plural controllers into a whole 'net' (note, I've not used this featu…

WLED is nice for 1-dimensional LED strips, or if you don't really care how the animations project on your LEDs, but anything in 2 dimension is painful, the grid mapping in 2D is just overly complicated and obscure. I barely got my simple LED matrix working and I've been doing LED grids with my own software for over 10 years (so I know how easy it can be). WLED was just an awful experience for 2D led arrays or anythin…

Have you used it recently? The matrix configurator is much improved.
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