TP-Link isn’t a company you tend to see in the same sentence as the word ‘HomeKit’, but with the company’s Tapo sub-brand, HomeKit is going to get Tapo-branded products, starting with the upcoming release of the company’s Tapo L930-5 RGBIC light strip. Tapo made its debut at CES 2022, with the announcement of a collection of products that all promised HomeKit integration, although so far we’ve seen nothing on those products, which ranged from a smart thermostat, to a light bulb, and even a power strip, and whilst the aforementioned light strip wasn’t part of that initial announcement, it looks like this will be the first of this new range.
At the time of writing, it appears that the new multicolour light strip will initially be released in Japan on July 28th, with an international release to follow. The strip is multicolour, making use of a special RGBIC chip that is increasingly found in other strips from the likes of Onvis, Yeelight, and Vocolinc as part of a range of HomeKit compatible strips.
It seems the strip will come in one 5m / 16.4ft length and have 50 separately controlled colour zones, along with the ability to produce cool to warm whites via separate white LEDs. As is still the case with most LED strips, the Tapp L930-5 uses standard 2.4GHz WiFi for connection and will work not only with HomeKit, but also with Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. There’s no mention of Matter support, but that’s going to be a common theme for a while yet we suspect.
The Japanese retail price seems to be in line with the cost of other HomeKit-enabled multicolour strips, at 6,400 Yen, which converts to roughly US$47/EU€46/UK£34.
Thanks to Bing Feng Yeh for the info