Smart LED Tea Light Candles

Flameless LED tea light candles are one of those things everyone likes, until you actually have to use them. Turning them on one by one is annoying, and turning them off is even worse. Forget once or twice and you are left with a drawer full of empty batteries or candles that are constantly charging.

As a smart home enthusiast, my first instinct was Zigbee. But my search quickly turned up a familiar pattern: plenty of people asking for low-power Bluetooth or Zigbee LED tea light candles, and almost no actual products you could buy. In practice, Zigbee-powered LED tea lights are surprisingly hard to find.

I also came across several DIY solutions where people hard-wired multiple candles directly to an ESP development board. While clever, this approach quickly becomes time consuming and messy, with wires running to every single candle. Not exactly the elegant solution most of us are aiming for.

The Simple and Elegant Alternative

The solution I ended up with is both cheap and surprisingly effective.

I opted for battery powered LED tea lights with an infrared remote control. A set of six rechargeable candles costs just under 8 euro at Action:
https://www.action.com/nl-nl/p/3218116/oplaadbare-theelichten/

They come with a simple IR remote to turn all candles on or off at once. That remote turned out to be the key.

Adding Them to Your Smart Home

Instead of building something new, I used a infrared blaster that I already had laying around: https://frankever.com/fk-ufo-r4-wifi-smart-ir-remote-controller/

The FK-UFO-R4 is ESP8266-based and costs less than €10, which makes it a surprisingly powerful little blaster for the price. I flashed it with Tasmota and, using Tasmota’s console, captured the on and off commands from the original candle remote. Once learned, these commands can be triggered directly from Home Assistant or any other automation platform. This allows the candles to:

• Turn on based on presence detection
• Turn off automatically when the room is empty
• Follow time-based schedules
• React to light sensors, only turning on when it actually gets dark

No manual interaction needed, ever.

Battery Life That Actually Makes Sense

Fully charged, these candles last up to 24 hours when left on continuously. In practice, they are only on when I am actually in the room, usually just a few hours per day. Because of that, they easily last weeks on a single charge.

It is worth noting that there are also alternative LED tea lights with an infrared remote control that claim over 75 hours of battery life. Those models are typically a bit larger, but they can be a good option if maximum runtime is more important than size.

Looks vs Atmosphere

Let’s be honest: these LED tea lights are not great to look at directly. But once you place them inside a lantern, candle holder, or any kind of diffuser, the flickering flame animation becomes surprisingly convincing. The result is warm, cozy lighting without open flames or constant maintenance.

Final Thoughts

This approach avoids complex wiring and daily charging routines altogether. With an inexpensive set of IR-controlled candles and a simple infrared blaster, you still get fully automated, smart, and safe ambient lighting.

Sometimes the smartest solution is not the most complex one.