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To an almost universal extent, Light strips have an unchanging feature, that is, although they can produce up to 16 million ubiquitous colors, they can only produce one color at a time. There are two examples that are not the case, one is LiFX Z Strip and the other is LifeSmart's Cololight Strip, although both have some limitations. Joining these rare ranks is the Onvis Kameleon Light Strip (K1), which serves the same purpose as the other two, but may be more worthwhile and adds some extra bargains. If this is something you are interested in, please continue reading.

Many times, you will see the packaging of the light strip showing multiple colors on one light strip, which is far from most of the effects they can achieve. What you see on the packaging here is not the case, this is a WYSIWYG*. Apart from showing its compatibility options (Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa), there is nothing to talk about on the positive side, although the slogan "Paint your light" gives you further clues about the multi-color features of the strip. 2m It is basically the same as the 5m version of the strip, except for a few details related to the length of the strips and the power they consume.

*What you see is what you get 

If you have any questions about its above features, spell it out on the side of the box and list items such as "multicolor effect", "free drawing" and "independent unit control" next to the usual suspects phrase. We will go into these details later.

We focused on the 2m version in this evaluation, but apart from the length of the two options, there is nothing to distinguish the two in terms of use.

In the box, you get the most important power supply, a "clip-on" adapter suitable for your area, and a spare controller double-sided tape. In any case, it already comes with a sticker, five clips and screw stickers. Bar, although it already comes with a standard adhesive, at the end there are manuals in several different languages, and an example of HomeKit code.

The connector on the strip is a 3-pin connector, which is connected to the corresponding connector on the power supply. Once connected to each other, they are screwed together with a "washer" to be firmly fixed in place.

The controller adopts a strange diamond or "coffin" shape, as mentioned before, with a sticky backing, nothing more. There is also an instance of HomeKit code on the side of the controller. There are three buttons on the front of the remote control, and there is a small house with a miniature microphone for "music" mode, which we will discuss later.

On the surface, the buttons on the remote control only act as power (middle), and the plus and minus buttons are used to control the brightness of the strip, but these buttons have much more functions than you might think. Will be introduced in detail later.

At first glance, the strip seems fairly standard, but there will also be a separate chip for every three LEDs that can perform all the multi-color magic that K1 can achieve.

In essence, this can be a standard strip that can provide a single solid color for the entire strip, but even so, Onvis managed to make this staple more interesting.

In the basic color mode, you can set the way the strip transitions from one color to another. There are five different options, and a random option that mixes the above five transitions. The transition began with...

Also in this main section, you have several options to further control the conversion.

The painting mode is the star of the show for me, being able to "paint" various colors on the strips. As you can see in the first screenshot, the strips are represented at the top of the screen in two ways, first an overview of the strips, and then a longer half-folded version, which makes it easier to select "units". You can also see in the third screenshot that the second one of the strips is longer because it is the 5m version.

To color the strip, select one of the color boxes below the strip and start drawing the parts with your finger, just tap or slide your finger along the overview of the strip. If you click on one of the seven boxes that have been selected, you will enter the editing mode, so you can change the color to your favorite color. The app allows a total of six presets, and you can overwrite these with your own "creation", but if you want to revert to the six presets that come with the app, this is easy to do.

In terms of color, the strips can well represent different tones. Although we do not have an official figure for the maximum lumens, in my opinion, the strips are mainly used for accent lighting, so brightness is generally secondary. What's impressive is that although the strip is only RGB, it can still handle cool white and warm white well. Warm white is impressive because it does not over-match with orange like many color temperature lighting.

To be honest, apart from the painting mode, I am not very interested in other modes, especially the music mode, because I am not very interested in turning the living room into a dance floor...That’s not to say that it’s not impressive, if you want Using it for family gatherings will be an excellent addition to the range of functions that the strip can perform and can easily "surpass" its competitors (pun intended).

So, having said that, I will slide through many options in this mode, and many of them. You have four basic modes-Beat, Move, Dash, and Bounce. They determine how the light reacts to sound. It can be something as ordinary as a pop or a complete EDM repertoire. The most important is the six "fashion" sub-options, the seventh is random, choose from six options...random. The most important thing is that you have a sensitivity option, which just allows you to choose a low or high degree of response to sound. The only mode that deviates slightly is the Bounce mode, which has a separate "single" or "dual" option.

Like the music mode, Twinkle is something I haven't really studied in depth. Compared with the music options, there are a lot of choices! Twinkle, as the name suggests, aims to replicate the Christmas lights that you may drag from the attic once a year. The lights will flicker from time to time and give out the appearance of moving along the line of lights. Twinkle mode achieves this through a series of preset options. These options also include the ability to select the range of the color spectrum used and to set the minimum and maximum values ​​for brightness and saturation. Hope you can understand why I don't have time to explore all the variables! There are separate labels labeled "Rand" (random) and Routine. Near Christmas, Eid, Diwali, etc., go explore and tell me how you are.

As the name suggests, it is intended as an add-on to any security automation you may already have. It is very basic and does not even have its own screen to make any adjustments, so it only does one thing. This "thing" is basically a series of animated light sequences using blue, red, and white lights, designed to replicate the various flashes you might see on a police car. Combining alarm automation and sirens, this can be very effective, although it is a bit gimmicky. Still, flashing lights and sirens can do wonders at stopping most opportunistic thieves-or I have heard of them!

The preset mode is exactly that, it has a series of preset lighting effects-five to be precise, hopefully there will be more over time. As with safe mode, these are not customizable, so you either like them or hate them.

Personally, I like those animations that are more subtle, namely cherry blossom, romance and rainbow. The latter looks great as an animation sequence, especially on the 5m strip. I also like Meteor, it will randomly display a colored LED light strip, randomly across the length of the light strip. I think this means that the only thing I really don't like is Fairground, whose lights flicker fast. That kind of lighting is likely to be irritating or even disgusting after a period of time.

You may be thinking, all of this is fine, but how can I introduce these modes (especially the multi-color mode) into the Home app? The good news is that it's easy. It just involves taking any preset you created in the Onvis app and saving it as a scene. Then the scene will appear in the Home app! You can use any mode to do this, and each sub mode can also be added to the scene.

Although previously reported (including our own reports), the light strip can be cut, although the process of getting this work to work is still in progress. The update of the application and the firmware update of the strip will be provided next month. These updates will allow you to deactivate individual units, although only in sequence starting from the end of the strip. After you deactivate the area in the app, you can continue to cut these cells from the strip. The good news is that you can still deactivate these areas without actually cutting the strips, in case you find the full length of the strips to use in the future.

It should be noted that if you decide to deactivate one or more units (up to 50% of the available units can be deactivated), the six presets in Paint mode will not match exactly; for the three on the 2m strip The first of the rainbow color presets, the first three colors are dark pink, purple and blue, so if you disable the first three cells on the strip, the rainbow color preset will not be re-adjusted, which means The first three colors will be completely lost. This simply means that you have to re-adjust the preset or create a new preset that fits all relevant colors. Likewise, if your effect relies on a specific color in the center of the strip, after deactivating a few cells, it will no longer "show" as centered. If you want to create your own color presets that don't rely on some form of symmetry, this is not a big deal, but for some presets, this is something you need to pay attention to.

Since Kameleon light strips are very special, because they have a variety of customization methods, inevitably, you will have to use the company's own application, which is not uncommon for many products with specific functions or not reported to the Home application framework Public options.

In daily use, I have never been a big fan of the Onvis app or any other related apps, but as far as the light strip is concerned, it can do the job well. I don't plan to spend too much time changing the strip presets, so I can accept some of the design choices used in the application, even if my graphic designer wants to completely change its appearance.

In other words, the Onvis application sometimes crashed or freezes in the past. The company seems to have solved these problems, but the freezing seems to come back when using the light bar, so in the process of testing the light bar, I encountered a situation where I had to force quit the application several times and restart it. This is not ideal. Whether you want to review and test all aspects, or just a normal consumer, I hope to resolve the freezing issue as soon as possible.

In addition, I found it to be easy to understand to a large extent, thanks in large part to a Beta tester I know who has been pushing various changes, which has led to many improvements, not only This is reflected in the way the UI of the application is presented, as well as additional features that did not exist when the product was first tested in Beta.

I have used it long enough to measure its functionality and its stability in terms of functionality and connectivity. Regarding the former, there is no problem except for the above application freezing, so the light strip performs well in each mode, and it fully meets my hopes.

As for connectivity, obviously your experience will almost certainly depend to a large extent on your own network, but the 2m and 5m strips I have used in the past few weeks have not shown any signs of problems when disconnected from the network , This is something we are all afraid of. In this case, I would say that "rock solid" would be the appropriate term.

Am I satisfied with Kameleon? Of course it's good! Since I heard about its existence, I have been anxiously waiting for its arrival to try its multi-color options. Of course, I know LiFX Z-Strip and how it does the same thing in multiple colors, but in the price point of Kameleon and the many available options, it’s hard to deny that Onvis is pushing as much customization as possible to this product. Well done, they got my vote in this regard. As hardware, it has been flawless, but occasionally I get disappointed by application problems. In fact, my multi-color scene can also be exposed in HomeKit, which is a huge reward that I have been waiting for, and for some people, this will be a deal breaker.

Some people may compare it to the features of the Hue Play Gradient Strip, which is very unfair in many ways-especially because of the huge cost of getting the strip to work with your TV. If the strips that match the content on the TV are important to you, then Hue Play, Hue Sync Box, and Hue Bridge are all you need. Kameleon cannot and will never, but what it does is great in my opinion, especially in terms of price. highly recommended.

Full disclosure: Onvis provided Kameleon K1 light strips (2m and 5m) for HomeKit News for this review. No other compensation has been made, requested or otherwise affected our opinions on this product in any way.

Editor-Musicians, graphic designers and HomeKit enthusiasts.

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