I added a 16 ft light strip under my kitchen cabinets. Not Wyze and not multi-color. I had to cut slots in the edge/lip of the cabinet to allow the strip to slide across between cabinets. It worked out great. Looking at eye level towards the front of the cabinet, the strip is not visible. The strip LEDs face toward the backsplash. And don’t bother with the self sticking tape. Even the 3M will not stick. I used Elmer’s and blue tape until it dried. Then carefully peeled the blue tape. No maintenance for almost a year so far.
Yea, that is referring to connecting 2 16.4 together. The # of LED’s the controller controls is critical, which is why they are implying you cannot connect 2 16.4 together.
But cutting a 16.4 and piecing it back together should be fine. But as indicated, I have not done this yet, will test it in the future as I purchased more than I needed.
Wait, the strips are plastic and plain old Elmer’s white glue worked?
Yes sir. Wipe off the excess. It is a goo-y mess while working, seeing as how must turn back side up to pour glue, then turn 90 degrees to mount/stick it. Wipe the excess and apply blue tape.
One of my other lives is I run a music synchronized Christmas light show. The Wyze light strips are what we Christmas lighters call “dumb strips” and the Wyze light strip pro is what we call “smart strips”. I have LOTs of experience with both - for years.
Dumb strips can be spliced fairly easily, however there are current limits with the controller, and also current carrying capacity on the strips themselves. If I were to hazard a guess, the current capacity of the Wyze controller does not allow adding much in the way of additional length, so I would not try it. If you need to cut a strip and splice it back together (for example to turn around a corner), that should not be a problem. Note that the strip connectors that spamoni4 posted are likely garbage. On the lighting groups, no one has ever found any similar connectors that actually worked well and lasted very long. You really have to solder some wire at the end of one strip and solder that to the end of the other segment.
As for smart strips, the same splicing issues apply excdept you really can’t exceed the 50 pixels per strip because the controller will not be sending any data to anything beyond the 50th pixel. The controllers we use for Christmas lighting will drive more than 50 pixels, but quite certain that the Wyze controller will not.
These connectors do not work with Wyze! I tried them in order to make the gap under the microwave, btween cabinets. Cut carefully, connected these carefully, but the strip does not make the connection. It looks like it should, but does not!
Wyze says you can cut, but does not offer appropriate information to reconnect with working connectors…not good! Haven’t found one that will work yet.
Bummer to hear.
So much promise for these lights. Will have to look at other brands since it’s one thing to cut/reconnect, but the app needs to be revamped and improved. And I’m not waiting around for v2 or future iterations, the pre-order and wait with pandemic shipping/logistical issues is not worth it anymore.
@robvelez
Understood. I have been super slow in ordering more devices due to the app difficulty. There needs to be a “home” button in the app to easily get back home & to another device. Endlessly taping the back button gets very irritating, and is preventing me from purchasing more!
You can splice the connections and just order from Amazon I bought one today and it worked perfectly fine I have video if needed just contact me directly if needed
Yes, it’s a good idea reuse LED light strips by cutting and splicing them back together. You just need to make sure that you connect them in the same order as they were before they were cut. This way, the controller will still work for them. However, you should not add more than 16 feet of LEDs in total.
Don’t waste your money. Read my post from last November for details, but based on LOTS of experience from thousands of Christmas lighting people, NO ONE has ever found any of these similar quick connectors to work reliably for very long. If you need to splice a strip, solder wires in place to accomplish the splice.
For the Wyze Pro, they do not need to be in the same order as they were before. What is important is the direction of data flow. The strips are directional and will not work if reversed. There is an arrow on the strip that indicates the direction of data flow.
On the non-pro strips, the direction is not even critical. There are four connections: Voltage (or power), Red, Green, & Blue. As long as you hook up the correct connections together (red to red, green to green, etc), the NON-Pro strips will work fine.
I just finished installing the strip Pro and wanted to add my input, in hopes it helps someone else. I searched for a “cut and reconnect” solution that took me to this thread and ultimately tried the solder technique. I have a Weller solder iron and overcooked one of the copper flats which peeled up from the base and broke off. On a whim, and in an effort to salvage my mistake, I decided to try a solderless connector and found these:
I’m being told that as a new user, I’m only allowed one embeded media link. So I"ll have to post my reply in the following chain.
Here’s the amazon link to the connectors.
The strip Pro I received was 3 conductors, so I went with the 3 pin. The connector kit also advertised that it worked with the coated waterproof strips so I figured it would work with the Wyze Pro design. I cut the strips into the desired lengths and clamped the connectors and extension wires I needed for my design. bench tested for continuity and to my delight everything lit up. Here’s a few pictures of the installed layout (In my home gym). I was worried a connector would loosen up or something while moving around during installation, but everything stayed solid.
Looks great. That indirect lighting makes the room larger and softens the wall color. Really like the effect.
I have added LED strips on the underside of my bed, to the frame. The LED point down toward the carpet. Then I added a WiFI plug. And added a Dot 4th gen to the bathroom. I get up half a dozen times a night to whiz. When I enter the bathroom, an Alexa routine with person detection triggers a 30 second wait, then then the WiFi plug turns on the LED strip for 2 minutes. Give me time to get my job done, walk back to the bed with the light guiding me. Since doing this I have saved dozens of stubbed toes. And the LED lights turn themselves off after two minutes.
Good luck. Read my post from Nov. 2021…
Hi! How are the lights holding up? Just found this post, thanks!
I recently purchased the WYZE Light Strip Pro and needed to bridge a gap between kitchen cabinets. I bought the Zhengmy 20 Pack Solderless LED Strip Connector (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BG1DMRG3). It comes with 16.4’ of bare wire, along with 3-pin connectors. One end of the connectors accepts in the WYZE strip you cut (have to peel back the waterproof covering a bit to get to just the strip), then close down the connector lid, which pushes metal contacts into the strip to make contact with the copper inside. You then peel apart the three red/green/white wires, so you can put them into the other side of the connector, then close it down. Do the same with the other side (making sure the different color wires are contacting the same part of the strip (i.e. if red wire is in “GND” on one end, make sure red is in “GND” on the other end). I ran the wire to the other cabinet and made the other connection, and after plugging the strip back in, it works perfectly! See my Amazon review on that product mentioned above for pictures too.