Aqara flipped the “on” switch Tuesday for a new multipurpose RGBCCT smart light strip, its first such product — the LED Strip T1.
It works with HomeKit and other smart-home platforms and features Apple Home’s Adaptive Lighting.
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Aqara LED Strip T1
Aqara’s new LED Strip T1 displays up to 16 million colors and provides tunable white accent lighting. It supports various smart home platforms for easy integration with smart home setups.
The light strip works on the Zigbee protocol and serves as a repeater for greater network strength. A compatible Aqara hub like the Hub M2 makes the strip Matter-compatible, so it works with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home and IFTTT, and you can control it with voice assistants like Siri.
Extend it and cut out pieces of it
You can extend the 6.6-foot LED Strip T1 with Aqara’s 1-meter Extension Kit up to 33 feet. You can also cut the light strip into 7.9-inch intervals to customize it (cut lines show where to do so).
And you can attach cut sections to a separate Aqara LED lightstrip with a 5-core ribbon cable and 5-pin connector (not included), the company said.
Highly customizable RGB effects
Photo: Aqara
LED Strip T1’s RGB effects are “independently addressable with a 20-centimeter interval,” Aqara said. That means you can use it to display up to 10 different colors with dimming and other effects.
Using the Aqara Home app, you can take advantage of built-in effects and customize the lighting how you like. And you can do that with any automation or scene you set that involves lighting.
Here are Aqara’s examples:
Users can amplify the home alert system with the LED strip, using different colors or effects to indicate whether the security system is armed or not and if there is a potential threat. It’s also possible to create customized home scenes, such as an evening scene with warm lighting or an entertainment scene that dims the lighting for a better movie watching experience.
Control scenes with Home app, too
And better yet, with a recent change, Aqara’s Home app started letting users sync scenes to HomeKit. So now you can control scenes using Apple’s Home app, not just Aqara’s app.
According to Aqara, other features of the LED Strip T1 include:
- Manual controller for easy access: a physical controller allows users to turn on/off, switch lighting modes and activate the music sync mode without using any mobile apps.
- Local music sync mode: the LED Strip T1 can sync to the music locally without relying on the mobile device.
- Circadian lighting: the LED Strip T1 supports Adaptive Lighting in Apple Home and allows user to customize the circadian lighting schemes in Aqara Home with automations.
- Outdoor friendly: the LED Strip has an IP44 rating and can withstand dust and moisture, making it suitable for some outdoor user cases.
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: Aqara
The expandable and cuttable 6.6-foot RGB+IC LED light strip features 16 million colors and tunable white/gradient effects. Works through the Matter smart-home standard with HomeKit and the Home app. Requires Zigbee 3.0 Hub.
