RGBW Ballast missing W control in Almond UI

[garrettloy]

Hey there!

I bought a FLS-PP Zigbee RGBW ballast (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NMSQ4QQ) and I am really happy with how easy it was to pair with my almond+.

I can control the module with the following interface:  http://i.imgur.com/FCqE5H3.png   http://i.imgur.com/DASwLgL.png 

I bought an RGBW strip to go with it that has both RGB LEDs and White LEDs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JR44O2U). There are 4 wires to control the LEDs... red, blue, and green wires for the RGB LEDs, and a 4th white wire for the white LEDs.

The controller works great for lighting up and changing the color of the RGB LEDs as long as I don't have the white wire from the strip plugged into the ballast.

If I plug the white wire in, the white LEDs are always on with no way to turn them off and they completely drown out the colored LEDs.

There doesn't seem to be a way to selectively turn on or off the white LED channel through almond's current interface, so I'm left with either leaving the white wire unplugged so I can see vivid colors, or having the colors faded/drowned out by the overpowering white LEDs.  Changing the saturation or brightness in the Hue settings doesn't kill the white LEDs, nor does messing with the color temperature, as far as I could tell.

Am I missing something or is this just not supported yet? I'd imagine another option would need to be added, maybe like this: http://i.imgur.com/E41eKlQ.png or this: http://i.imgur.com/xUCOlym.png

Thanks

[sfalc]

That is odd.
Securifi supports several RGBW Zigbee lights (osram, philips etc) with quasi-independent control of the white-channel.
They have UIs for it so in this case just a small-ish bug.

[garrettloy]

Seems like it's an issue with my specific ballast not being properly configured in/known by the current firmware, then.

I'd love to see what the white channel "quasi-independent" control looks like in the user interface so I know what to look for if/when this gets resolved. Anyone have an image of a connected RGBW sensor's UI control for the white channel?

Hopefully this gets fixed eventually! Until then I like my vivid colors so the white wire stays unplugged.

[fillibar]

I love this controller but have never tried the RGBW because I do not have any strips with white. With RGB alone it has always been excellent.

Can you try plugging just the white in, not the rest, to see if anything affects the white?

[garrettloy]

I just unplugged the rgb wires leaving black and white plugged in and the only setting to have any effect is brightness, which works as expected. All other settings (temperature, hue, saturation) do nothing.

I guess I didn't quite describe the effect changing the brightness has accurately in my first post. With all wires plugged in, the brightness setting affects all channels equally, so the overall (faded) color stays the same as the light gets dimmer or brighter.

[fillibar]

No, I think you had it fine before. I just wondered if any of the other settings would have any impact, with the RGB out of the way. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity on that.

On a related note, besides this controller issue, how has the RGBW strip been working for you? I have a bunch of RGB ones but keep wondering about getting an RGBW. Not sure how much the white adds to the overall though. So any opinions would be appreciated.

[garrettloy]

On a related note, besides this controller issue, how has the RGBW strip been working for you?

The strip I bought comes in "white" and "warm white" and I think either one is better than rgb by itself as these are producing a pure white when you just want to brighten an area up as opposed to add color. When you have to use just rgb to show white, you tend to have a Venn diagram effect with your three combined colors as there are three separate LEDs that aren't exactly on top of each other. They're only $15, try one out

[garrettloy]

Any word from a dev or admin on whether the FLS-PP ballast will get white channel support in a future update? Is there anything I can provide that would help?