Aqara LED lightstrip supports Matter
- August 21, 2023
- Steve Rogerson
Xiaomi has expanded its Aqara range of smart home products with an LED lightstrip that is Matter compatible.
The multipurpose, RGBCCT lightstrip, the LED Strip T1, will be available globally. The Chinese company’s first smart lighting device that is widely sold across multiple continents displays up to 16 million colours and provides tuneable white accent lighting.
Moreover, it supports a wide range of third-party smart home platforms and can be seamlessly integrated into various smart home setups.
The lightstrip is now available on the company’s Amazon brand stores in North America and Europe as well as via selected Aqara retailers worldwide1.
Built on the Zigbee protocol, the LED Strip T1 has a lower idle power consumption than wifi-based lightstrips. It also serves as a repeater of the Zigbee network, which strengthens network reliability and responsiveness.
With a compatible Aqara hub such as the Hub M2, the LED Strip T1 supports the IoT standard Matter as well as popular systems such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home and IFTTT, and can be controlled by major voice assistants.
It is two metres long and can be extended using the company’s one-metre extension kit. It supports a maximum length of ten metres. The lightstrip can be cut at 20cm intervals, making it customisable. The cut or unused part of the lightstrip can also be reattached to a separate Aqara LED lightstrip using standard five-core ribbon cables and five-pin connectors.
The RGB effects are independently addressable with a 20cm interval, which means it can display up to ten different colours with dimming and other effects. The Aqara Home app provides various built-in effects for the LED strip – both static and dynamic – and allows users to customise the lighting effects as they prefer. All these built-in and customised effects can be used for home automations and scenes so users can integrate smart lighting into the holistic smart home experience.
For example, users can amplify the home alert system with the LED strip, using different colours 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 customised home scenes, such as an evening scene with warm lighting or an entertainment scene that dims the lighting for a better movie watching experience.
The Home app recently introduced a feature allowing users to sync the scenes to HomeKit. This means users can set up specific scenes that were previously only available via the Aqara app and be able to control these scenes with third-party apps such as Apple Home, Alexa and Google Home.
A physical controller allows users to turn it on or off, switch lighting modes and activate the music sync mode without using any mobile apps. It can sync to the music locally without relying on the mobile device.
The strip supports adaptive lighting in Apple Home and allows user to customise the circadian lighting schemes in Aqara Home with automations.
It has an IP44 rating and can withstand dust and moisture, making it suitable for some outdoor uses.
