In this guide, I’m going to show you how to configure your WLED controller and LED light strip into Home Assistant.
This will allow you create some really cool automations, schedule presets, toggle on or off, change the colors, and much more from – directly from Home Assistant instead of the WLED web interface.
Prerequisites
If you stumbled onto this post from Google and you don’t know where to start with purchasing hardware and setting up WLED, I recommend reading over my Beginner’s Guide to WLED: Hardware and Setup tutorial.
In short, you’ll need to purchase an Athom microcontroller which has been flashed with WLED, connect it to your wifi, and wire up the addressable LED strip to it. No soldering needed!
The hardware you’ll need to get started is:
Integrate WLED into Home Assistant
The first step is to obviously have WLED already setup and on your wifi network. In my Beginner’s Guide above, I advised you to set the AP SSID name to something easy to recognize. This is especially important if you plan on adding multiple LED strips to Home Assistant; the AP SSID name is what Home Assistant will detect.
I’ll show you what I mean in the screenshot below.
WLED should be auto-discovered by Home Assistant.
To get started, open Home Assistant. Then click Settings from the sidebar.
Then go to Devices & Services.
Home Assistant will auto-detect it. Click Configure.
A box will pop up asking you if you want to keep the name. Click Submit if you do.
If you DON’T want to keep the name, you’ll need to open your WLED web interface and change the AP SSID name under Wifi Setup.
View Available WLED Entities
After you finish adding your Athom WLED controller to Home Assistant, go to Settings > Devices & Services. This integration adds 23 different entities.
Here’s just a few of them:
Control WLED from Home Assistant Dashboard
Now that it’s added, you’ll want to create a card to control it.
Just click Add Card from any dashboard, then search for Light.
I use Mushroom Card, which is a custom theme and set of configurable cards, so I am using the Mushroom: Light Card instead.
Clicking on the icon will turn it on or off. For Mushroom Card, you can click the palate to change the color.
Change WLED Presets from Home Assistant
In the WLED webui, there are a bunch of default colors and effects. There is also an option to setup custom “presets”, which are basically just quick ways to start an effect. While you can’t access the default effects from Home Assistant, you can use your custom presets and playlists!
From the WLED webui, select a color, choose an effect, and then click Create Preset.
Note: If you add a new preset in the WLED interface, it won’t show up in Home Assistant until you reload the WLED integration or reboot Home Assistant (Settings > Devices & Services > find your WLED controller > Reload.)
Next, you can add a simple Entity Card to a dashboard and you’ll see your various presets. Search for “preset” when adding the entity to a card. You can also search for “playlist” instead.
The entity names will be something like:
select.ash_led_light_strip_playlist
select.ash_led_light_strip_preset
Wrapping Up
Configuring WLED into Home Assistant is pretty straightforward, so have fun with it! Once you’ve got things added to a dashboard, the next step is to create some automations to turn your LED strips on or off on a schedule, when motion is detected, when a door is opened, or however else you can think of automating it.
My Favorite Home Assistant Devices
Below are some of the Home Assistant-compatible devices I personally use in my home. I highly recommend each of them.
- Zwave/Zigbee hub: Nortek GoControl HUSBZB-1
- Smart Plugs: Sonoff S31 Lite Zigbee
- Motion Sensors: Hue Indoor Motion
- Outdoor Camera: Amcrest IP5M Turret
- Robot Vacuum: Roborock S7
The full list of all Home Assistant compatible & recommended devices I use can be found on my Equipment List page.