Totally new to WLED - looking for advice for a 10m fairy / string light setup

Questions
1

Hey there,

I’m totally new to the world of WLED (found out about it from researching smart light options to work with Home Assistant), however it sounds like the most appealing thing for custom DIY lighting setups, and I’d love to try it out.

I’m looking to run 10m of fairy / string lights (not a LED strip) to go around the inside of my front door for holidays like Halloween and Christmas. I’d like to be able to control these with WLED and then, when that’s up and running, integrate it into HA.

Given those requirements, does anyone have any advice for what sort of stuff I should look at getting?

Many thanks.

2

I bought some of these the other day and have a 10m string that I have draped around the room right now and it works well.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005721000627.html

You need to solder to the wires yourself, I went for the 5cm between LEDs so there is space to strip the wires back for soldering, the wires are thin. (I also tried some of the 1.5cm LED spacing but my soldering skills aren’t good enough right now).

I have 240 LEDs in my string and as they are 12V there doesn’t seem to be any colour drop along the length.

If you want a simple setup just buy an Athom controller (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003776848515.html) and a power supply for the LEDs, the controller will do 5, 12 or 24v so less messing around.

A couple of getting started videos: