Aqara’s new Zigbee gentle strip helps HomeKit Adaptive Lighting and Matter

Aqara has launched a brand new Zigbee RGB sensible gentle strip referred to as the LED Strip T1. It prices $49.99, requires an Aqara hub, and is appropriate with Apple House, Amazon Alexa, Google House, and IFTTT. When paired with sure hubs, together with the Aqara Hub M2, the sunshine strip can also be appropriate with the Matter sensible residence protocol.

The T1 is without doubt one of the only a few gentle strips that assist Apple’s Adaptive Lighting characteristic — and the one one which helps each Adaptive Lighting and Matter. It doesn’t assist Adaptive Lighting by Matter, sadly; nothing does. Nonetheless, it’s good to see new, Matter-compliant lighting come to market utilizing the stable Zigbee commonplace. (No matter occurred to that Hue-to-Matter bridge, I ponder?)

The 6.6ft (2m)-long gentle strip’s Adaptive Lighting assist means you may set it to mechanically tune its colours all through the day to be hotter or cooler relying on the time. The one different gentle strips that assist Apple’s circadian lighting characteristic for the time being come from Hue and Eve (additionally the outdated Nanoleaf Necessities strip, which doesn’t, er, Matter).

As I mentioned although, connecting the Aqara Strip T1 to Apple House utilizing the Matter protocol as a substitute of the old style manner means you’ll lose Adaptive Lighting, for the reason that still-nascent “common” sensible residence commonplace doesn’t presently assist it. The great factor is that — not like Nanoleaf’s Matter Necessities strip, which solely helps Apple House by Matter and thus doesn’t assist Adaptive Lighting in any respect — Aqara’s Apple HomeKit certification means you don’t have to present that up.

The T1 is an RGBIC strip, that means it will probably present a number of colours concurrently (versus older-style gentle strips that may solely present one coloration at a time). Additionally, Aqara says every of its ten segments is addressable, so you may management them individually when altering colours, although that doesn’t apply to the tunable white gentle portion of the LEDs, which applies to all the strip without delay.

Lastly, like different colourful sensible bulbs and light-weight strips from corporations like Govee, you may arrange customized results inside the Aqara app if you wish to exhibit enjoyable snaking gradients or flashing colours — it will probably even sync to music utilizing a built-in microphone.

The trimmable, IP44-rated Aqara T1 LED Strip prices $49.99, and a 1-meter extension package prices $14.99. It’s out there at Amazon within the US, Canada, and a number of other European international locations and at different retailers listed on its “the place to purchase” web page.