While I am a huge fan of the Phillips hue lighting system, it is expensive there is no doubt about that. Whenever I visit Home Depot or any other big box store I try to look around the clearance sections as you would be surprised at how often Phillips Hue lights are sitting there selling for a fraction of the cost.
After moving to our house I started to set up my office space and knew that I wanted to add in some wall accent lighting using a Phillips Hue LED strip, sadly at about $180 for the 5m (16ft section) it was going to add up in order to add lighting to the selected wall as it was just about 16ft in length, and that was not including the main piece with the part that actually connects to the hub.
I had read before about people either ordering knock-off brands that had a 50/50 chance of working with the Hue system as well as reading about people cobbling together their own cost-effective setup that worked well.
I read a handful of articles and then began my search for parts so I could get started on this lighting project. Below you will find the parts list that I came up with, all shipped the next day via Amazon Prime.
Parts list
- LEDMO Power Supply, Transformers, LED Adapter, 12V, 5A Max, 60 Watt Max, for LED Strip – $12.99
- LEDENET 22AWG 6pin 33FT 10m Extension Cable Line for 6 Color RGBCCT LED Strip Lights Wire 3528 5050 – $13.99
- GLEDOPTO ZigBee LED Light Strip Controller RGBCCT 2ID Work as 2 Lights Dimmable Compatible with Hue Bridge App Control for RGB Warm White Cold White LED Strip Light Colors Changing Tape – $29.98
- GIDERWEL RGBWW LED Strip Lights 16.4ft, Dimmable RGB+Cold White+Warm White Changing Color 450 LEDs(2700K-6000K),6 Wire 12V RGBCCT Full Color Ambiance LED Lightstrip Plus, Only Strip Light – $29.99
Total: $86.95
As you can see the overall cost was substantially lower than it would have been if I would have bought the initial Phillips Hue LED strip and the extensions. I likely could have gone without the extra extension cable wire and just used some spare wire I had laying around but for the price, I was still coming out ahead and it just looked cleaner.
Once I had it all connected I had to use the third-party Hue Lights app to get it detected and set up with the Hue hub. And that was that the project took longer to get the parts the next day than setting the entire thing up.