Smart Christmas Lights

So you just installed the most epic series of Christmas lights and you have one tiny problem, your lights do not turn on at the same time. If you are as OCD as we are, this small time misalignment can be a big mental distraction. We have listed our options for transitioning from timers/manual lights to smart Christmas lights. As you will soon see, this is only the beginning for what all is possible with Christmas lights.

Christmas Lights Pre-req

Before we get started there are few basic suggestions we would recommend before proceeding to make you Christmas lights smart.

Use LED Lights where Possible

LED Christmas lights have been on a rise these last 5 years and for good reason. LED lights are capable of being brighter and draw significantly less power than the previous traditional incandescent lights. Some LED Christmas lights are even dimmable, perfect for really dialing in the preferred look.

Perhaps the most important reason to choose LED over incandescent lights goes back to one of the original points, they draw significantly less power. This reduction in power consumption allows for more lights to be on the same breaker resulting in fewer plugs in the wall around the house. Fully decorated homes, in many cases, can get away with all lights being plugged into a single 120v outlet reducing the number of smart switches needed or calling your local electrician. This is a great starting place for making smart Christmas lights.

Individually Addressable LED Lights

Individually Addressable LED Lights allow you to control each individual led light for color, brightness and and the on/off state. These types of lights give the very most flexibility for what can be done with a string of led lights. We will not go into too much detail on the usage of these lights as our topic is mainly able simply controlling when to turn the lights on. If you are looking for more content related to controlling these types of lights please visit Dr. Zzzs, he is an expert on this topic and has lots of great easy to follow tutorials.

Wifi Outlets Are a Good Simple Option

The Good

• The ease of initial setup and minimal additional hardware required to get a wifi smart device up and running is what makes these a go to for most consumers.
• Out of the box these device can usually be controlled from any device that has access to the internet

The Bad

• We recommend minimizing as many devices as you can that are connected over wifi due to the burden they cause to the wireless network.
• The wifi devices communicate with services over the internet that are subject to outages, delays in trigger responses and compatibility limitations for service that natively support their api
• Usually each brand of wifi devices offers a separate app and over time you end up with multiple apps to control you smart Christmas lights. Remembering passwords and which app connect to which devices can be a pain for maintaining this integration

Zigsbee/Zwave Outlets are a Great Advanced Option

The Good

• Unlike the wifi, Zwave and Zigsbee communicate on their own network preventing issues overloading your wifi traffic and causing inconsistent performance throughout your house connected devices. For On/Off switching the Zwave cubes are a great indoor option and the Outdoor Zwave Plus is a great outdoor option.
• You can mix and match Zwave and Zigsbee brands and not worry about things like app compatibility which means you can control all these devices from a single app.
• Zigsbee and Zwave devices can you like a mesh network where the more devices you have the stronger the signal and greater distances you can cover. This is a big advantage over wifi devices which will be bound by the wifi signals it can receive.

The Bad

• Price. Zwave and Zigsbee devices tend to be more expensive than their wifi counterparts. There are also more pieces of hardware needed to get started

• Setup dependancies/knowledge are steeper when first setting up a zwave setup. For one you will need a zwave/zigsbee dongle to connect to the device. Nortek offers a great usb dongle that connects to both Zigsbee and Zwave. In addition to the dongle you will need a controller computer that sends and receives commands to and from the zwave device. The cheapest option for this is using and old computer or purchasing a rasberry pi and running Home Assistant (a free open source automation software). As you can see there is quite a bit of setup after buying a zwave device and this option is definetely not for everyone expectually if you do not want to be too involved with the technical elements.

Clever Specialized Lights

Twinkly

Twinkly offers led wifi smart Christmas lights capable of displaying over 17 million colors and controlled via an app. With accessories like the Music Dongle, pre-lit reefs and trees most application options are covered with their product line. Another great thing to note about the Twinkly lights are that they are individually addressable LED lights and using their app you can leverage pre-built lighting presets or create your own.