Wled and Govee curtain

Has anybody managed to control their Govee curtain using WLED ?

Just spent some time trying to do that exact thing. So far I’m only getting spastically flashing lights. The nature of their spazzing out changes as I make adjustments in WLED, but they’re definitely not behaving correctly, and certainly not at all useable. I’ll keep playing with them, as time permits.

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Turns out that time permitted a few minutes ago. I had originally been attempting to do this using the Govee power supply to power the esp32 and the curtain lights. Just for kicks I took the power supply out of the equation entirely and wired in a 5V/5A power supply (originally posted that I used a 5V/15A power supply. I swapped that out for a smaller one) that I had laying around. I used wago connectors to get power and ground to both the lights and the esp32. Connected data directly to the esp32. Plugged the power supply in and off it went. WLED is configured for WS281X, length of 520, with a 20x26 2D Matrix. I left the auto-brightness limiter on, and set to 5000mA. The pixels get super duper upset if you push more power to them.

Good to hear you got something working :grin:

What exactly does the string do “…if you push more power to them.”?

You realize, the ABL doesn’t “push” more or less power to the LEDs - they draw the amount of power they need according to the brightness levels you tell them to display for each colour.
The ABL just does some math based on what you tell it about the current your LEDs need and the size of your power supply. If it figures your current brightness level will end up needing more power than your supply can deliver, it turns down the brightness.

It may very well be that your power supply and/or the wiring to the string is not adequate to supply all the LEDs. When you ask too much of the supply/wiring, the net effect is a voltage drop that can drastically affect the LEDs (and/or your ESP).

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Controlling Govee curtains directly with WLED isn’t officially supported, as Govee products typically use their own app and communication protocols. However, some users have had success using third-party solutions or integrating Govee devices with home automation platforms like Home Assistant, which can then interface with WLED.

Possible Approaches:

  1. Home Assistant Integration: If you use Home Assistant, you can set up both WLED and Govee integrations. This way, you can create automations or scripts to control your curtains alongside your WLED lights.

  2. Custom Scripts: If you’re comfortable with programming, you could potentially reverse-engineer the Govee API (if available) and write custom scripts to control the curtains from a WLED-compatible device. https://www.oemstron.com/

  3. IFTTT or Smart Home Hubs: Some users have also explored using services like IFTTT or smart home hubs that support both platforms for basic control functions.

If you’re looking for a specific method or need help with a particular approach, let me know!

Did you trie using them in xlights?

Hi, yes, I’m aware that the LEDs draw power rather than have it pushed to them. In the interest of posting a quick and (useful ?) update to the question, I phrased it that way. To answer your other questions, with the exception of the wiring used to connect the power supply, and ESP, it’s all the original Govee wiring. The Govee curtain comes with a 5V/5A power supply. At this point I’m using a Mean Well 5V/5A as a replacement. The same ESP and power supply quite happily work with several hundred 2812 pixels. One of the complaints of the Govee lights is that, with the stock controller, you can’t make them really bright. So my working theory, without actually testing the factory wiring, is that their controller probably has some current draw limiting built into it. At any rate, when you tell the lights to pull :wink: more power, they start to get flickery. Color reproduction still seems to be accurate, but the flickering is pretty intense. I have no need, or desire, to make them brighter, so I’m calling it good.

Yep! Got them working in xLights yesterday. That took a bit of fiddling too. Eventually got them going as a horizontal matrix, no zig-zag, 1 string, 520 nodes, 26 strands.

Did you use 1 curtain or maybe more?
Can you show me some settings? I ordered to test a 5V/15A power supply like you mentioned

Best Regards,

Sylvain van Uffelen

Just using the 1 curtain for now. I got it on sale, and was curious to see if I could make it work. Otherwise I probably would’ve gotten a cheaper curtain from AliExpress.

What settings would you like to know about?

What is the spacing between pixels on it?

Hie did you configured it in WLed? Only the 1d setting or are there also settings to be made in sync options?

For me it was working for a moment with the original power supply but after restarting xlight after crash it suddenly stopped and i tried a day configuring but no luck. All light flickering. Also was thinking that wled and xlights are working against each other. Get a message to overrule ddp in wled because it sees the communication but i don’t want it to overrule. There should be a setting to just use wled as a bridge and not doing any controlling from the wled interface.

So i wander are there more settings to do :sweat_smile:

Best Regards,

Sylvain van Uffelen

If you see that message in wled. The controller is being told what to do from xlights. If you want to stop xlights from controlling the controller, you would click override.

Do you have FPP setup on a pie, or running xschedule? If you have a sequence running from one of them at the same time you are trying to output from xlights you will have flickering.

About 3 inches in both axes.

I didn’t change anything in sync settings. I’m just using DDP as the protocol, in xLights, and WLED listens for that by default. as @Jinx mentioned, if you’re getting that message in WLED, it means that the controller is receiving data from some outside source.

So basically do you use govee power supply and then WLED as data control .
What are the connections + - and data ( wich wire is wich ? )

I am guessing those Govee curtains are the same as these: Amazon.com: TCL Curtain Lights, Smart LED Curtain Lights with Music Sync, Dynamic DIY Window String Lights, 5 x 6.6FT, 540 RGBIC, Waterproof, Great for Bedroom, Living Room Backdrop Indoor Decoration : Home & Kitchen

The TCL ones are MUCH cheaper and are also 3in spacing. I actually bought that TCL one back in July for $27 on Amazon when it was on sale. I don’t recall having any issues with flickering. If I get a chance next week I’ll power it up and see if it will run @ 100%

They’re very similar. The Govee curtains have 520 pixels instead of 540, and it looks like the chips at the top, that send the signals down each line, might be a little different. I’m basing that solely on appearance though. Those TCLs look pretty compelling though. Particularly at that price. If I wind up needing more curtains, I’ll almost definitely go that route. Thanks for sharing!

I took the Govee power supply out of the equation as well. Just using a Mean Well 5V/5A. When you pop the Govee controller open you can see which wire is which. It goes positive, ground, data. The data wire is much smaller gauge, and the positive wire has very faint dots on it’s shielding.

TCL do not have any chips @ the top.