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Thanks for the question! I would say yes. While the lights set to white are definitely not as bright as a dedicated security/outdoor light, they are easily bright enough to light the area to allow someone to safely make a trip to the garage.

@@ianburgess525 the govee are on epic sale but they are square cubes and my mounting point was chain link fence not sure that would work well so doing my research. thanks for reply

Thanks for the comment, great to hear the video was useful! I haven’t tried to use the Govee lights with HomeKit, instead I use Home Assistant to integrate Govee into my smart home.

Great advice! Thanks for the comment.

Within my setup, I've wired a Shelly 2.5 behind the light switch which then controls the Shelly RGBW2. I setup the Shelly 2.5 so that the switch and relay are disconnected. This allows the relay to always be on and powering the Shelly RGBW2 while the switch can trigger an automation to turn the Shelly RGBW2 on and off. In this video I setup something very similar with the lights in my hallway - th-cam.com/video/M6CGARzhCcA/w-d-xo.html Looking at the wiring diagram for the Shelly RGBW2, it does look like you can wire a regular light switch into the 1 terminal on the Shelly RGBW2. I haven't done this myself, so do not have any direct experience with it. Here's a link to the wiring diagram - kb.shelly.cloud/__attachments/63864967/Wiring%20Diagrams?inst-v=74e580f7-921b-4e17-b365-2e8ef8d5fb0e

@@ianburgess525 As you've used the 2.5 to trigger the RBGW2 does this mean it won't work without wifi as there is no wiring between the two? I've had a look at the RGBW2 diagrams but strugglng to make sense of what item 2 provided in the box is?

Correct, if my wifi goes down the Shelly 2.5 isn’t able to control the RGBW2. I didn’t use the black box, but I believe it’s the adaptor in this photo. I struggled to find a good photo of it on the internet. www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flookaside.fbsbx.com%2Flookaside%2Fcrawler%2Fmedia%2F%3Fmedia_id%3D2978484655648405&tbnid=Z8LvzGp0tgdVfM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fgroups%2FShellyIoTCommunitySupport%2Fposts%2F8490111694421453%2F&docid=EYjd8tWZuW2hjM&w=1080&h=2010&itg=1&hl=en-gb&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=81267488e800d692

Thanks for the comment! Great to hear my video helped. 😀

Thanks for the comment! I used the plugin power adaptor for the siren. I included a link to the adaptor in the video description.

For these string lights I believe you only have one of two options. You either have independent light strings for each section you would like to cover or you have a single light string but turn off the segments of the string that cover the sections you don’t want to light up in the Govee app. Another option could be to go for something like the Govee Permanent Outdoor lights. Govee provide extension elements that do not have any lights on them that are designed to allow you to have a single run of lights but cross sections that you don’t want to light up.

By Flux I’m assuming you mean the Octopus Flux tariff? We are not on Octopus Flux, instead we use the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff for import which allows us to buy electricity overnight at 7p/kWh. We then use Outgoing Octopus for our export which pays 15p/kWh.

Thanks for the question! The cable measures about 2.4m (8 foot) from the base to the plug. The cable itself is longer than this, but the rest is attached to the central vertical pole of the lamp. Hope this helps!

Great thanks, just made the purchase 🎄

These available in US?

Looks like it, yes. Here's the link to the Govee US website - us.govee.com/products/govee-cone-tree-lights

This is a fantastic device. I love mine

A Shelly mini 1 gen3 would work well in this situation, although it still requires a neutral. New build houses in the UK tend to run the lighting circuits through the switches rather than the lights, which means that a neutral tends to be available behind the switch. Our current house is the first that has been wired in this way, every house we have lived in before has not had neutrals available behind switches. If you do not have a neutral behind the switch, another option would be to wire the Shelly in the light enclosure. Of course that will only work if the light enclosure is large enough to take the Shelly.

My house was built in 1997...

Is there nothing that will work like the Shelly 1L?

Unfortunately it doesn't look like Shelly currently sell an alternative for the 1L. However, I did a little Googling and found one from Sonoff that is very similar. It's not WiFi and instead uses Zigbee, so you'll need a Zigbee hub to use it, but other than that it looks like a good alternative. Here's the Amazon link. www.amazon.co.uk/Sonoff-ZBMINIL2-SONOFF/dp/B0B74H2P6G

Great to hear the video was helpful! Thanks for the comment.

I think I read that the jingle is similar to a jingle from one of the Final Fantasy games. I don’t know if that is correct though as I haven’t played them myself.

Thanks for the comment! Correct, I don’t have any scheduling setup in the Tesla app at all for the car. Instead Octopus and myenergi control the charging schedule.

Thanks for the questions! 1. I only have a single car and zappi. I had 2 zappi's listed in my mobile app as I had recently had my zappi replaced due to a fault. The old zappi has since been removed from my account and no longer appears in the mobile app. 2. I believe that leaving the charge to add at 100% should work. The only problem I can see is that if adding 100% takes more than 6 hours it could result in the off peak time being extended. If this happens and Octopus don't detect that the car is being charged, then they may believe that you're trying to game the system. Octopus have a warning about gaming the system in the article I linked in the video description.

Haha, it was definitely a pain to move the scaffolding, however it's amazing how far you can reach from the top so I didn't have to move it that often. Plus it was much better than the alternative of installing the lights at the top of a ladder!

Great find, thanks for sharing. I too wish I had known that before trying to install the siren.

No, you only need one Shelly. Using either switch triggers the input ton the Shelly and turns on/off the lights. I included wiring diagrams of how to integrate a Shelly into two way switching in a recent video - th-cam.com/video/M6CGARzhCcA/w-d-xo.html

Thanks for the comment! Eco+ is designed to charge the car from any excess solar. One option would be to set the Zappi to only charge the car if a certain amount is already being exported to the grid first by using the 'Export Margin' option in advanced settings. Using this feature means that only excess solar over the amount configured to go to the grid is diverted to the car. Hope this helps.

That’s great thanks. I’ll set that to above the inverter output so no excess goes to the car and I export as much as I can.

Sorry for not replying sooner. You should not need to press the + button for the overnight schedule to work. From my experience, all you need to do is plug in the car and confirm that Octopus has set a charge plan in their app. Once the plan is there it should charge without needing to do anything else.

Set to Eco+, then add scheduled charge times to match the low rate energy. Works a treat for us. Plug in the car anytime and leave it. Once the zappi scheduled charge comes on, the car charges and it stops at the end of the scheduled charge time.

​@@timhey555 thanks, that was one of the first things I tried, unfortunately without success. Think there's issues with the zappi as I get error messages each time I send a command (but the commands work).

@@twigrose69 ah, sorry to hear it. Sounds glitchy… zappi firmware updates can be helpful to improve this sort of problem.

@@timhey555 I updated the software (thought I already had), put in the boost schedule and tonight we are having the first "automatic" charge. Thanks for your help!

@@twigrose69 delighted to have been of some help. This is now following your programmed schedule, which may be enough for your use day to day - especially once you have the low rate hours programmed for every night. It’s what I use in combination with Octopus Go (not intelligent octopus go - my car didn’t support it and until recently my zappi didn’t support it either). It’s your decision as to whether you reattempt the octopus integration to play fully with intelligent octopus, though that would mean using the octopus app to control your charging. For me, it’s convenient to have the low rate hours programmed in - as it is then as simple as plugging in before turning in for the night and letting it start and stop charging itself. Plus I like the My Energi app. In the past I found Myenergi support to be very helpful too, as I had some problems getting it overnight charging in the beginning too. I also had a problem with the plug solenoid lock which they were able to sort out a warranty repair for. I’ve recently done a firmware update as I opted in to Myenergi’s Powergrid service that allows them to control charge start and stop times when the grid is under strain. Much like intelligent octopus aims to do. Hopefully I can get some small amount of earnings back from that, but it’s new and I’ve only just started, so we’ll see how it goes this winter. I chose this as I wanted to take a fixed tariff Octopus Go 15month offer, whereas from what I could see intelligent octopus is a variable rate tariff. So even though intelligent octopus has the lowest overnight rate, I estimate that increases that I expect in winter/spring to day rate variable tariffs will outweigh that benefit. Anyway - many happy charges.

Thanks for the comment! Which screws are you referring to?

I’m guessing you’re referring to the screws that hold the blades to the fan base. To remove them you need to remove the glass that covers the bulb. Inside that section is a gap that allows you to get a screwdriver through to the screws that you need to remove. You need to rotate the fan base so that the screws you want to remove are aligned with that gap.

The cable on the power supply is 6m (just under 20ft).

Thanks for the comment! The spot lights in my hall are all Zigbee smart bulbs, so I'm using Node-RED to control the smart features of those bulbs. I haven't used one of these myself, but I believe the Shelly Dimmer 2 is designed to control dumb dimmable bulbs. Here's a link with more detail - shellystore.co.uk/product/shelly-dimmer-2/

Thanks for the comment! Great to hear the video was useful!

The lamps are Philips Hue Play Light Bars. All of my AV equipment is connected to a Philips Hue Sync box which then integrates with the Philips Hue Hub and controls the lights. It works pretty well. The lights were attached to the back of my previous TV, but with the change to the new LG C2 I thought I’d try putting the lights on the units instead.

Thanks for the comment! I suspect that a diffuser would make a very marginal difference. Luckily, due to the depth of the channel, you can only see the LEDs if you are directly underneath them. This means the light you see from the strip is always indirect.

When I recorded this video, I was using Homebridge running on a Raspberry Pi to integrate Shelly devices with Apple HomeKit. More detail on Homebridge can be found here - homebridge.io. Since recording this video, I have transitioned my smart home devices over to Home Assistant.