Govee Outdoor Lights Install to hide your wires
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 พ.ย. 2024
- Do you want to make your Govee Outdoor lights appear like a pro install and not look like a tacky add on? I have some tips and pointers on a few things you may not think about, but a little extra effort is worth the troube!
It took 5 strings/controllers to do all 4 sides of my home. I used mounting clips at every bulb to ensure the adhesive wasn't the only mounting point. Like you, I buried the controllers and power supplies in my attic. I tied into AC power using the outlets mounted in the garage ceiling where the door openers get their power. I'm reluctant to "glue" and paint the wiring between bulbs in case of string failure someday down the road but I agree with you the wiring is unsightly. I guess that's the tradeoff between a DIY product like this and the extremely expensive, pro-installed, alternatives. Thankfully, my soffit color is light enough the bulbs and wiring aren't too obvious. Thanks for the video.
I’ve done the similar thing. I wanted a clean look. I layed out the light strings on two 8’ tables end to end and painted them first. The only white part showing is the top. Outlet in attic. It’s a labor of love kind of thing. 😥 Sparky for 30+ years so this was right up my alley. HOA is happy 🤪
Nice my guy. I've been sitting here scratching my head trying to figure where to start and end. How to get to the peaks with a clean look with these. I made custom lengths with my old C9 strands. I was thinking about adding an outlet at the highest peak. I haven't received my kit yet. So I haven't seen what's all in the box yet. I'm going to have to splice a couple spots in and heat shrink them back together.
The secret to making it look great...staple, caulk, and paint the wires!
Splicing it doesn’t cause a problem. Watched a great video on it and did it myself. No problems at all. But I agree with you that it needs to look better
Looks great thanks for all these tips!
Thanks for this, I have about 200 feet and was going with the Govee pro. I found a loc installer that will do it for $1000. I priced trimlight and they wanted $4500 for 190 feet, I like the fact it has tracks but I hope the Govee pro will be okay.
There are govee tracks you can buy
unfortunately i have vinyl soffit.. I have not seen one installation that looks good. It is the main reason I have not purchased. Looks like crap in the day. Yours looks great though.
If its vinyl under the soffits, you might be able to get it to look acceptable by at least painting the wires the exact same color as the soffit (I would not apply paint to the cubes with the LEDs in them). The wires also don't lay flat, but one thing I have seen done for vinyl houses that fixes that is buying some aluminum channel (search for Muzata shallow LED channel on Amazon), cutting pieces to exactly the length of the wire section between the light bricks, and painting that the correct color. Its a bit of work, but done right Govee soffit lights are awesome!
Great video great install. Do an update and show your corners and tucks.
Great video. I recommend your power adapter be plugged into a GFI or surge protector
I say there's nothing wrong with adding an additional layer of safety. GFI would be a non-negotiable if the power pack was installed in an outdoor location. But since the high voltage conversion is happening entirely indoors, and the outlet will not be used for plugging in any other high voltage outdoor devices operating on 120VAC, you can forgo it. The Govee line voltage you have being exposed to moisture or any outdoor conditions from this is essentially like low-voltage landscape lighting wiring. For folks who aren't comfortable wiring in an outlet or working with anything high voltage, my point was that this group of people can easily make use of a 3 dollar screw-in bulb socket plug adapters in the attic, which I would bet the majority of houses might have.
What's the difference between that and the light show box
Kyle that looks awesome. Very nice and clean which is our style. I took a little extra time with mine also even though we have the vinyl and added a lot of extra clips that I had to buy and ended up painting them so that everything was nice and flat and crisp. Good Job bud.
I did have a question that I haven't been able to figure out yet and have yet to see a video on it elsewhere either. I'm not sure if it's a difference on the kit you have versus the Pro model which is what we ended up with. but can you please do a quick walk through video of how you got the lights to be programmed just to use as accent landscape lighting like yours are being used in your video. This is one of the big reasons I bought these lights and have yet to figure it out. Obviously they will be great for Christmas and be able to do all the fancy light shows, but the rest of the year I just wanted a little accent white light on various spots on our house. If you can please help it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and again nice clean install.
Here's how you do it: Open the app, and click on "Devices". Choose your device. As you scroll down the page, you'll see four tabs, called "Music" "Color" "Scene" and "DIY". Choose the "Color" tab. Now within the "Color" tab, you'll see the choices "Segmented" and "Advanced". Choose "Advanced". Now scroll down the page a little further. In the block of choices called "Effect", it doesn't matter what effect is highlighted, just make sure the slider called "Speed" is set to zero, or off. Now scroll down a little more, and you see below this a block of options that let you now control each individual light. The diagram shows every individual bulb as a segment in a chain for every bulb that your controller is connected to. This is where you can now turn on/off individual bulbs. On the color selection, choose the greyed option with the red slash through it. With that selected, set all the bulbs to this, which is the off state. Now using the color picker, choose the color you want to be used for the few bulbs you want to keep on. Pick this color, then start highlighting the bulbs you want to stay on. You'll accidentally highlight the wrong ones or too many as you do this, but with a little patience you can isolate exactly the right ones to create spotlight effects. I had to use the color wheel to find a color I truly liked to create the nice "soft white" natural look. The color presets were all too white or too yellow for my tastes. Once you get it exactly like you like, you'll see a green camera icon that is always present sliding down the app page no matter where you are at. Tap this, and give this "snapshot" a name. This is how you recall the setting later with one click. Once you have done this, any time you start at the home page and click "Device", you can tap on the "snapshot list" chevron arrow that is directly above the "brightness" slider. This immediately recalls your preset.
@@85antec Awesome man. Thank you so very much. I appreciate you taking the time to write all that out for us. Have a good holidays!
Glad I ran across your video. Great information.
Yeah, unfortunately I have aluminum under there so no go, but painting would definitely help. I actually had to zig zag my spacing to avoid the recesses of the aluminum. So my lights end up being a little tighter together.
Thanks for install tips. Do you have a problem with controller in attic, out of the way? With power surge or WIFI issues have you had to hit controller reset button often? How often?
This system on my house has been up and running since October this year, and hasn't been power cycled or reset since. I've had zero hardware glitches so far. Wifi communication seems to have no issues. I encountered some limitations on reliable Bluetooth, connectivity, but it seems it is only needed during initial setup and for some music sync features.
Thanks for the Vid! I just purchased the Govee Pro 150' set to do the main floor soffits of my house. My wife wants it done in stages, so no second floor for now. In any case, my soffits are like yours. Until I started watching vids like yours, I had in mind mounting the lights just inside the out lip trim on the soffit, thinking that would create a softer and less scalloped look. What are your thoughts on moving the lights to more like 14" away from the house, just inside the edge trim? Thx!
I think that you should put a few lights up like 5 or 10, and experiment with what you think looks best. Because it drastically affects how it looks. You can always buy more of that 3m adhesive on Amazon. If you don't like the triangular/scalloped lighting effect at all then I wouldn't use this product.
Great video. Installing mine and your tips were really appreciated.
glad you found it helpful. I wanted to make a video about technicalities you don't think about upfront when you are looking at all the flashy promo pics of houses with it installed.
I wish they had color options for the wiring to match different colors of different houses. Also, are you concerned at all about mounting that controller in the hot attic? Summertime.well done on the install
Attics can vary in their highest temperatures. In Kansas City, we get summers that can have blistering hot days, and winters that are down in the negative temps. I've had no issues with both of my controllers installed in the attic for some time now. As you can see in my video, I do think it is important to mount the power pack and the controller in a way that at least lets air get around it. That should help it run cooler. But keep in mind, this is billed as a product capable of outdoor install, the controller and power pack has to be able to withstand being in direct sunlight, which would result in it getting very hot. I would say an attic reaching temperatures so hot as to cause damage would also mean that attic ventilation issues need correction before anything else. Electronics have to survive being installed in the interior of parked cars in the Arizona sun, which is far worse than any attic.
Thanks for making this video. This is the first time I've seen someone show the power source in the attic. How did you get to get the cable out of the attic? Which section did you bore a hole in?
Make a hole starting at a corner where your lights would start, on the underside of the soffit. Since you are going to have to connect power, make sure you can physically reach that same place from within the attic. Use a wire fish tape to push it through, then grab it from within the attic and connect it. You can also run the wire out of a soffit vent if you don't want to drill a hole.
thanks for the suggestions and info
I have about 450 to run around our house. We have an outlet in soffit at front of home. Can I run everything of that 1 outlet daisy chained? or do I need to run 1 direction of the outlet and run opposite direction off other plug of outlet and let them meet in middle at back of home? Will this affect the light patterns/colors? Sorry for so many questions just want to do it right the first time. Thanks for the helpful video
@@Texans_tundraThere are limits in linear feet allowable from the controller to the end. At 450 ft you may be exceeding what one controller can drive. You'll probably need more than one controller. For static light displays, it won't matter much. For multiple controller setups, ultimately the software has grouping tools that allows syncing the actions of multiple controllers.
@@85antec Thanks for the help!
Awesome idea but your attic gets super hot in the summer. I doubt that wiring/controller is rated for those temperatures. 🙂
I considered that too, but then you have to think about just how blistering hot it gets inside a parked car, and all those much higher tech electronic gadgets are expected to last the life of a vehicle. So I would think an outdoor rated appliance that won't even be in use during the daytime should be able to handle an attic that reaches 130 degrees. Electronics do prefer cooler temps though...
@@85antec Heat kills, power supply just might shutdown as it's only rated for 45C which is 114F. Where you have it mounted though will have convection cooling so fingers crossed. ;)
Good tips and info. Much appreciated
great job. did you have any wifi or bluetooth connection issues having power supply in attic?
I did the same thing adding an outlet off of an already existing run in the attic and I am not having any connectivity issues. I will add we do have a home Wifi Mesh system which definitely helps with connectivity throughout and around our house, but I do think we would still be okay with the mesh goes and these lights being able to stay connected.
Luckily, most of the functions run off Wifi which has no connectivity problems. Bluetooth works, but is a little spotty. It seems the only time BT connection is needed is when you are programming the functions that group multiple controllers together for synchronizing a scene.
They came out with the PRO version which comes in black and thinner wiring. Black will help a lot of people with darker homes.
When I first put up the lights, I loved how it looked turned on. But in the daytime, those twisty looking white wires made my OCD go off the deep end. What this product really needs is peel-and-stick backing also on the wires that makes them adhere and lay flat. This is probably one of the easiest ways you could improve the quality and ease of install for this product.
One easy trick to hide speaker wire or low voltage is to simply cut a groove using a drywall knife. Patch and paint
Could you post a picture or video at night showing how the downlighting looks?
Finally someone that thinks like I do 😂
I have a vinyl siding house. Will it stay in place with staple gun?
How did you run the wire out of the soffit?
First you have to go into your attic and then make sure you can physically gain access to the desired area of the soffit from the inside. Then, from the outside, you will drill a hole on the underside of the soffit, big enough to pass the wires AND their round connectors through. You will start by pushing the wire in from the outside. You may find that using a wire fish tape (or any type of flexible wire pushing tool you can get at HD for cheap) may help you get the wire up through the bottom of the soffit and then be reachable from the inside of the attic where you then pull it through.
Appreciate the honesty - Great advice.
Good stuff. Very helpful.
Im stuck between finish installing the Govee RGBIC 1st generation outdoor lights, or take them down and return them for the Govee PRO ones. Im just not sure if I want to spend the extra $400 for the PRO ones. Is it worth it??
This installation was done with the regular consumer version. As discussed in the video, I was not happy with the overall appearance until I stapled the wires flat, ran caulk along the wire's edge, and then painted the wires the matching color. It truly looks invisible after you do that. I would not paint the light cubes themselves.
Is better but still shows