Permanent LED soffit lights?

Are you talking about rope style Christmas lights along your roofline or 4 inch wafer (can) lights to go under your soffit and shine down onto the house?

They actually I think are on strip track that matches soffit color (similar to like led boat stuff). They are flush mount.

a lot of people use a esp32 boards and WS2811 lights with a power supply. purchase some J channel from home depot in the same color as your eaves, drill holes every two inches and pop the lights into the jchannel. they also sell a more durable channel more specifically for led lights if you don't mind spending more money. The wled program to run the lights by app is actually free too.

Is this what you're looking for?

I spent around $600 on this setup that I did myself. It was a lot of work but not too bad if you’re handy and not afraid of heights.

I do not have these and have not worked with these directly, but on AliExpress there are a handful of options for 5050 LED. This is a complete kit that has a few available colors. You can also buy each piece individually and do it yourself. And if you want to be insane, you can go to AliBaba and source different pixels (I found some 24v ones once and had calculated that if I just ran power to both ends it would be enough, and I wouldn’t have to run injection wires). I do currently have c9 ws2811 12v pixels (they look like Christmas lights) and hang them. They’ll go up this weekend and be Halloween colors (purple/orange and a few “spooky” effects), then static green/white/orange for November, then December I have them set to cycle hourly between a handful of Christmas scenes, then on 1/6 they’ll swap to purple/green/gold and stay that way until Ash Wednesday. then I’ll pull them down for the year. They’re zip tied to PVC and the PVC has J hooks that hang from my gutters, so they go up pretty quickly.

WLED is the app I use. If you use this kit, check on what app is used first. There is a fair amount of data online about getting these pixels (too lazy to look. UCS2904 or something like that) to work with WLED. There are, of course, other control apps, but WLED is a very popular one with a very good community.

And it will allow you to, eventually, if you’re into that sort of thing, make that system a controllable effect in xlights (like all those videos of the homes you see playing transiberian orchestra). I haven’t gone that far yet, but I’ve bought another 500 pixels to stake in the yard and a DigiOcta controller to sync them up. I’m not doing light shows anytime soon, but I like coordinated effects (most of which are static but change every hour or so to a new static effect).



ETA- you also have the option of using PermaTrack pixel mounts for ws2811 11MM pixels. It’s not particularly expensive, but if you are totally DIY, you can buy J channel that matches your soffit and drill it out (you can buy a template on Etsy, you’ll need a drill press. You can get 5 or 12v ws2811. There is a thread on the tech board (and pics above) about putting strips in a C-channel with diffuser cover.

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Depending on what you have, 2 story, tons of lights, shouldn’t cost you $3,500

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I walked to someone at a booth at a home and garden show and this seems to be in line with what he told me. Never pulled the trigger, but we've been tossing around the idea. Can turn on certain sections to act as "regular" decorative soffit lighting for most of the year. Then can set up colors and such for holidays. I believe he said average in our area was 2,500ish.

OP's issue is that the price for labor is pretty expensive and at his age, he doesn't want to go through the hassle with the sloped roofs.

Govee website seems to be a lot cheaper. The only issue I can see is that you might need to buy separate controllers if you split up the lights.

I want to do this with my home and since we have a two story, I would need to find a way to power strips in different sections to different controllers.

I've seen a couple videos online. Govee's outdoor light strips seem to be the cheapest, but I have their TV backlight strip kit and it has been pretty great for the last 5 years.