FAQ

Frequently asked questions

These are the questions that actually arrive, from customers of dozens of different brands using hardware and software we built. Where a question deserves more than a paragraph, the answer links to the guide that covers it properly.

One note on scope. We have deliberately not filled this page with general LED theory — chip sizes, colour rendering indices, driver topologies. Those are covered well in a hundred other places and our version would not be better. What we can answer that a general lighting site cannot is how our controllers and apps behave, and why yours is doing what it is doing.

Getting connected

The app cannot find my light during setup. What should I try?

In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the cause:

1. You may have the wrong app. This is the single most common cause and it looks exactly like a broken light — the app opens, Bluetooth is fine, and your device never appears in the list. Our apps are not interchangeable; each speaks a particular control protocol. Check which app your light needs before anything else.
2. Another phone is already holding the connection. Most of our controllers accept one connection at a time. If anyone else in the house has ever paired with the light, their phone will grab it silently whenever it is in range. Close the app on that phone, or move out of its range.
3. Bluetooth permission was denied at install. On recent phone versions the app needs location or nearby-devices permission to scan at all, and denying it produces an empty device list rather than an error. Check the app's permissions in your phone settings.
4. The light is not actually powered. Worth confirming — many controllers give no visual indication until they are connected.
5. You are too far away. Pair within a couple of metres, then move.

Do I need an account, or an internet connection?

No account, and for Bluetooth control no internet either. The connection is direct from your phone to the light, so it works in a garden with no signal, in a van, or during an outage.

Mesh-networked installations behave the same way for local control — grouping and scenes run between the devices themselves rather than through a server.

My light disconnects after a minute or two

Usually one of three things: distance and walls, another phone competing for the connection, or the light being at the far edge of range where a body moving between phone and light is enough to drop it. Test by standing next to the light — if it holds there, the problem is range rather than the device.

How do I reset a controller?

This varies by controller — some have a physical button, some reset through a power-cycle sequence, some through the app. We would rather tell you the right one than guess: send us the product or the brand it came from and we will give you the exact procedure. Contact us.

Colours and effects

My light works but shows the wrong colours — red comes out green

The strip and the controller disagree about which pad is which colour. It is not a fault, and on our apps you can fix it in software rather than rewiring: the setting is called Modify Pin Sequence, and it lives in the settings pop-up rather than on the main control screen, which is why most people never find it.

Full walkthrough, including the ten-second test to confirm this is your problem: wrong colours and the channel-order fix.

Is music sync in the app or in the hardware?

Both, and which one you are using changes what it can do. There are three separate modes:

• Music — the app plays a track from your phone's own library and drives the lights from the file. Tightest timing, but it cannot see streamed audio from Spotify or YouTube.
• Microphone Rhythm — your phone listens.
• External Microphone — a microphone inside the controller listens. Despite the name, nothing plugs in. This is the one most people want and never find: once it is set, you can close the app and walk away and the light keeps reacting.

The three modes compared, and how a built-in microphone changes the install.

Why will my strip not do a chasing rainbow effect?

Because it is a standard RGB strip rather than an addressable one. On RGB, all the LEDs share one control signal, so the whole run is always a single colour. Colour travelling along a strip requires a control chip built into the strip itself. No app or setting can add it — the one-glance test is here.

My chase effect stops early, or looks squashed into one section

The controller does not know how many addressable points are on your strip. The Pixels setting, in the same settings pop-up as the pin sequence, sets that count. Too low and effects compress into the first section; too high and they run off the end and vanish.

The effect looks frantic. Can I slow it down?

Yes, and you almost certainly should. Default speeds are set to catch the eye on a shop shelf, which reads as restless in a room you live in. Every projection and flow product we have tested looks better a notch or two slower than it ships. It is the cheapest improvement available.

Brightness and power

The far end of my strip is dimmer, and slightly red

Voltage drop along the run. The fix is to feed power in at a second point rather than to buy a bigger supply — a larger supply at the same single feed point changes nothing. Sizing the supply and fixing a dim far end covers where to inject and why.

My light flickers, but only sometimes

If it flickers on bright content and behaves on dark content, that is a power problem — current draw scales with how much is lit, so the fault appears and disappears with what you are showing. If it flickers regardless of content, look at the connection between controller and strip first.

On a vehicle, flicker that appears only over bumps is a cracked solder joint or a connector walking apart, and it will become permanent — why vibration kills these installs.

How much power do I need?

Watts per metre × metres, then add headroom. The detail that catches people out is that the controller, not the supply, is often the real limit on how long a run you can drive. The arithmetic is here.

How long can my strip be?

Two different limits apply and the lower one wins: what your controller can address, and how far the voltage holds up. Past the second limit you get the dim red far end above; past the first, the extra length simply does nothing.

Several lights at once

Can I control multiple lights as a group?

Yes. For a handful of Bluetooth lights, the app can switch between them. For a room that should behave as one installation — several ceiling fixtures, a whole wall — you want mesh networking, which is what iMeshting is for: room grouping, group control and offline voice.

Do I need one app per light?

One app per protocol, not per light. If all your lights use the same controller family, one app runs all of them. Mixing an RGB strip and an addressable curtain light does mean two apps, because those are genuinely different control systems.

I joined several light screen panels and the picture is scrambled

The wiring is probably fine. Two things need to be true: power fed into every panel separately rather than chained through the first, and the panel order and orientation described in the app to match how you physically mounted them. The specific way it is broken tells you which — there is a table for reading it.

About the apps themselves

Which app do I need?

It depends on the controller inside your light, not the brand on the box. Three questions and a full table of all forty of our product categories.

Are your apps free?

My light came from a brand I have never heard of, and the app looks like yours

That is probably because the electronics and the software inside it are ours. We design control solutions and build white-label versions of our apps for partner brands who ship them under their own name — so the brand on the box is our customer. More on what we make.

Do the apps work with Alexa or Google Home?

It depends on the product line, and we would rather check than generalise — some of our controllers are Bluetooth-only by design, and voice support differs across the range. iMeshting includes offline voice control, which works without any cloud account or internet connection at all. For a specific product, ask us and we will tell you exactly what it supports.

General LED questions

For chip types, IP ratings, colour rendering, driver topologies and strip lifespan, we would point you at general lighting references rather than repeat them here. Where those topics affect something practical, they are covered in context:

• Cutting, extending and joining strip, and when to start a second run instead — strip length and power
• Adhesive failing behind a warm television — TV backlighting
• Outdoor joints, water ingress and what fails first — firework light installation

Still stuck?

Tell us what kind of light it is, which app you are using, what actually happens rather than what should happen, and send a photo if you can. That combination resolves most cases in one reply. Contact us.