Ikea launched the Ormanäs, its first smart RGB LED light strip, in the Netherlands. The news comes by way of Dutch tech site Tweakers, which notes that the Ormanäs is a four-meter, or roughly 13-foot, dimmable Zigbee affair for €29.99 (about $32) that works with the company’s Dirigera smart hub. The light strip is only available in the Netherlands for now, but Ikea typically starts its rollouts there before bringing products to the US and beyond.
The strip is simple and, judging from the images on Ikea’s site, won’t have individually addressable LEDs like some of the fancier strips on the market — which means the whole strip will show only a single color at a time. Still, it supports multiple control methods like the Ikea Home app and the Ikea Styrbar remote as well as Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa smart home platforms (through the Dirigera hub). It also supports Google Home and Amazon Alexa. And being a fairly standard LED strip, you can cut it to length in designated places.
The Ormanäs has a nice balance of features — it’s affordable, long, dimmable, and with Zigbee control, is likely to be very responsive. It’s rare to see a smart LED strip that ticks all of those boxes and also supports HomeKit and out-of-home control via the maker’s app — something the Dirigera hub improves on over Ikea’s now-defunct Trådfri Gateway.
They do say the old hub is now obsolete, so you’d be rolling the dice on it. It’s Zigbee like the rest of their stuff, so just go hubless.
I set up the old hub before I set up home assistant, so i think my HA is talking to everything via the hub. I guess it’s straightforward to have HA talk directly to the devices but I’ve never actually looked into it.
On advice from here, I got a ZigBee dongle and, once ZHA is up and running, you just go into pairing mode and HA picks them up. Bulbs, plugs, and control devices are all running smoothly now. The hub is packed away in a box.
Good to know, cheers!