I mounted LED strip lights under a small lip going up my stairs (about 25$ for 32 ft) and plugged them into a Wyze outlet. I paired that with a Wyze sense at the top and another at the bottom of the stairs. Paired with the new update to control the time of day for rules, I have it to where when I step on the first stair in either direction, and its after 5pm, the lights will activate until motion clears and then turn off. Looks really cool and feels elegant. The lights are RGB so you can make them whatever color and brightness, but my wife likes this color.
This is a great idea.
What lights did you use?
Looks like they’re 20 bucks now
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SPZ2HGT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_FTv3DbYEV3B4Q
Sexy. Great job!
I’ve got LED strip lighting like this behind my TV for bias lighting, which looks pretty nice and reduces eye strain if you’re watching TV in the dark.
I already have a smart TV, (Roku) so I can turn that on and off with my voice, using Alexa. At first, I had the LED strip lighting plugged into the USB port on the back of the TV. It was sufficient to power the LEDs, but it remained on when I turned the TV off. I could turn it off manually with the LED remote, but that was annoying, and I wanted a more seamless experience.
So I plugged the strip lighting into a Wyze Plug instead, and I made an Alexa routine that turns the TV and Wyze Plug on/off at the same time. The LED strip even fades up when you first turn it on, which looks pretty nice. (That probably varies depending on the LED strip)
It works great now. I can still control it independently if I want to have the bias lighting on when the TV is off, but by default, it turns off, which is what I wanted.
This is my setup. When I say “turn on/off the TV”, it controls the TV and light strip at the same time. If I want to control the light independently, I tell Alexa “turn on/off the TV plug.” Photo and video below
I’ve been looking for strip lights and just had not decided on any yet, have you had any problems with those?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077GP3T12/
This is what I’ve got behind my TV. When I bought it, it was only $7.95. Whatever you buy, just pay attention to the length. This was the perfect length for the back of my TV, but it probably wouldn’t be enough for a staircase.
It has a remote for colors/brightness, but I never really adjust it. I keep it in cool white mode all the time, since that’s most similar to the light that comes off of the TV. It does support RGB colors, and it supports “warm white,” but the warm white option doesn’t really feel natural. It’s too yellow and ugly, compared to the warm white of a normal bulb or the Wyze Bulb, for example.
This works great for TV bias lighting, but if I were using it for ambient home lighting like the staircase, I’d probably want to make sure the warm white looks more natural.
Technically these can respond to music, sort of. But I don’t use that feature either. Haha. I just bought them because they were cheap.
I probably won’t due staircase lighting, not a good way to hide them on mine, I am looking to do behind TV and under cabinet lighting.
Cool. For the TV, I really like these, since TV light is already a cool light and the cool white “halo” around the TV is better to help your eyes adjust to it.
If I were to put lighting under cabinets, I probably wouldn’t use this particular strip. If I used an RGB strip like that, I’d want the chance to see the “warm white” mode in person first, to make sure it blends well with the ambient lighting. You’d probably have better luck on something non-RGB that gives you a Kelvin temperature, or something that’s tunable white, similar to the Wyze Bulb
Great idea on the sensor detection with the stairs hooked to a plug with a light strand. I did something similar with a string of led lights outside of my house connected to a Wyze plug. I put the lights on a schedule to turn them on automatically and provide ambient lighting in front of my house. Everyone in the family likes the extra light as they go in and out of the house.
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this!
I did the same thing but with a light strip under the bed, in a Wyze plug linked to motion sensor that I stuck to the leg of the bed frame, pointing down the hallway. I now have sofr lights come on when I approach the bedroom from the hallway and also when I put my feet on the floor when getting up in the middle of the night. Nice to have lights to see but not too bright for your eyes when waking up. The sensor also had rule with time specifics. Very cool application.
Very cool application. I saw some tech reviewer on YouTube who had done the same thing. Lights come on when his feet come down and turn off after a minute or so.
I’d like to do something similar to this outdoors next spring. I have about a 50ft. Walkway / Stairs leading from my driveway to my house, this is an inspiring idea.
Great job… looks amazing! So do you have an outlet at the very top of your stairs? How did you hide the wires?
Very clever!
This is going to be a spring 2020 project. My idea is to put a junction box on the bottom post up under the hand rail for protection from the weather. I was thinking of using LED strip lights up under the bottom of the hand rail.
Basement steps just got a upgrade!
a little ways down the hallway, just pushed the cord between the wall and carpet (Chose to have the cord end there because of that space to shove it.) otherwise I would have ran it in the little pvc covers to hide cords on walls