After spending way too many dollars on fragile hardware store LED Christmas Lights, this year I took advantage of a Black Friday sale and ordered up a set of Govee Permanent Outdoor Holiday Lights. These are much more than just cool Christmas Lights, controlled from your phone they can be set to any colour under the rainbow and even more pre-programmed themes than you can possibly imagine!

After reading some helpful How-To's I put together the tools I deemed necessary to take on this project in cold damp typical Newfoundland fall weather. These lights stick on with high quality 3M tape, I planned to wipe clean the section of vinyl soffit with rubbing alcohol (using a microfiber cloth) then dry/pre-heat the area with a heat gun to give the tape its best chance to adhere solidly.

Our house conveniently has a holiday light plug in the eve located centrally near the front door. The Govee power cord was short by about 10 feet so I installed a white extension cord and taped the plugs in quality 3M 33+ electrical tape. The power cord was tucked into the J-Trim all the way to the first light on the West end of the house (right side in the following pics), and the control box above secured with hardware included with the kit.

For this project I ordered the 100' kit which consisted of six sections of lights, each a little over 16' long. They join together with quality weather tight connectors.

According to the instructions, each light is to be mounted 5-10cm from the wall to create the intended lighting effect. I measured the first one then made a spacer to speed up the installation of the rest of the lights. As mentioned earlier, each spot was cleaned with rubbing alcohol then dried/pre-heated with the heat gun which was tedious but well worth the extra time.

The 3M tape on each light is supplemented by these included plastic clips. They also use double sided tape but add a stainless steel screw. I installed them at the beginning of the string then about every 4-5 lights along the string to ensure our severe storms do not take these lights down.

On the East end of the house I had to jump about 10' between eaves which of course did not line up with an end of one of the 16' sections. Rather than slapping lights on the house along the shingles or wall, I decided to cut the harness between bulbs and solder in a plain wire extension. From my research, to prevent flickering you have to use 3 wire ribbon cable same as what's used for these lights. Thankfully the Govee kit came with extension harnesses which are meant to be installed between the 16' sections. I simply cut off the connectors then soldered and heat shrunk the spliced connections for a tidy and reliable modification.

The whole lighting system is controlled through the Govee app on your phone, the section pictured above is found under automation and allowed me to kick the lights on at 4:15pm in Christmas Gift mode, then switch to 4600k white light at 1am, and turn off at 6:50am.

The final product is outstanding and these pics do not do them justice. In this mode each light fades  and switches colour constantly for an absolutely beautiful effect.

In the app there are countless pre-programmed themed options for every holiday of the year. You can also take the time and create your own light show picking colours, brightness, patterns and fading. Lastly, there are an infinite number of further light show options in the Govee community section within the app. Here you can find programs created by other Govee customers which can be applied with the click of a buttom to your own home!

A nice effect for the off season is simple white lighting to illuminate the front of the house all night long.

Once I had my own lights figured out and installed I headed out to Paradise and helped install a 150' set for Natasha & Cory's home!

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A post shared by Mike Smith (@shedheadzmike)

Christmas 2024 compilation.

Cheers, MIKE