Best smart bulbs to buy?

Or burned by the guest / cleaners who turned off the light switch that powered a repeating bulb!

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The thing is bulbs in lamps (which I think is the use-case that causes the most issues) are not permanently powered (like a switch), they are dependent on the lamp being turned on. So they can't be guaranteed to always have power. For those of us w/family members who don't play nicely w/home automation (forget and manually turn off a lamp) this causes problems.

It may work perfectly for you, that's your situation, but all of us don't have the same use-case/family members. :slight_smile:

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In my case they are. I explained above.

So, it seems most are a fan of LIFX and HUE for longevity. I already have a few LIFX so I might as well look into replacing with more of them. Thanks for all the feedback. It seems the choice of bulb and how you use them is still a hot topic :joy:

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I get that... :slight_smile: Your "...strongly disagree" statement made it seem like you didn't see that others might have a different use-case/experience than you do. Just trying to explain why all of us don't have to agree about what works best, all the time. :slight_smile:

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Well, I mean, I did kinda make this thread for "my" use case. :wink:

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They also have developed some can lights (I pre ordered some) I think the master bathroom will be a good use case though for those.

Oh man I should totally do that. Funny thing, I only have 4 can lights in my house. All 4 are still those Lightify lights (connected to old smartthings hub using hubconnect to HE, don't ask..). For whatever reason these 4 Lightify BR30 style lights haven't bit the dust yet.

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True, indeed... BUT...

It's my experience, having contributed to many a conversation here, that this topic will popup in someone's search results next year. Having more info seems to help more people over the long term. You today, yes. All the rest, tomorrow too. :smiley:

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That was actually a joke. My wife manually turning things off wasn't shes gotten better (shock collar worked wonders). Seriously, i do have a bunch of zooz and inovelli switches to install, but with the way this house is set up thats beyond me, so i need to get the money together to hire an electrician to come out an just do them all at once.

Unless you go zwave (Inovelli) you are going to have a hard time finding that. Inovelli aren't bad bulbs, they are just higher maintenance than i would have expected. For examole every fee months they randomly change colors to a color I would never use and it is almost impossible to get the bulb to forget that color. But they are solid, and they do act as zwave repeaters.

Thank you for the correction. I had always heard most zigbee bulbs were not repeaters. I had enough problems with my early zigbee's (cree, osram,and Sengled to a lesser degree) that I just went with inovelli. The Innr were a one off I figured I'd give it a try. I've been pleasantly surprised with them. They are rock solid and just work.

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I have heard others state that the newer Zigbee 3.0 bulbs are much better behaved as Zigbee repeaters. Glad to hear your experience is the same as well.

Lots of horror stories regarding GE Link, Cree Connected, Sylvania, Peanut Plugs, and other devices hurting a Zigbee HA1.2 mesh due to poor repeating. Many of those “bad bulbs” behave just fine attached to a Philips Hue bridge, repeating just ZLL instead of ZHA.

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No! Unlike the rest of the brands they haven't improved anything, lamps are still ZigBee LL aswell. So don't go with hue they are expensive and although not crap they are also not good either. They are fine on their own bridge but that's it.

I have loads of brands and innr is by far the best.

They definitely are all of mine have full rooting tables and are ZigBee 3.0 they work really well. I have them joined direct to the hub and direct to the scene plate at my in-laws. It's called "find and bind".

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The consensus is nothing to do with the firmware they all should have standard underlying ZigBee rooting layers.

What it is more likely is that ZigBee LL was never designed to do more than basic control so the buffers were not designed to handle higher traffic. So when connected to a home automation network they fail and drop rooting traffic.

ZigBee 3.0 is a amalgamation multiple standards and is designed for much more so their buffers seem to handle much more. Then as a bonus they have loads of extra features.

Due to the fact they are ZigBee 3.0 it also means they will fall back to what ever profile "correctly" so means they work on any hub (or at least should).

This is not the case; the third generation addressed the gamut weaknesses of earlier versions (mostly green and blue). Newer generations also provide higher-lumen options than before. Further, it is also not true that they are ZLL. Their newer products are Zigbee 3.0, which you can see with the certification docs or read about (then-future plans) in their own marketing materials. So, at least three notable improvements. :smiley: Though unless you pair them directly to Hubitat, I wouldn't really be concerned with the last bit (ZLL vs. Zigbee 3.0), as the Bridge works great with either.

I do like the Innr bulbs you mentioned. I bought a couple to test out a while back. I didn't end up using them because I had enough Hue bulbs and despite having good color/CT output, and they don't support all Hue features on a Hue Bridge (default power-on state, native HomeBridge, etc.), so it's not quite as good of an experience. If that doesn't matter, you'll definitely pay less for the same amount of bulbs! (At least in the US. This might be one case where the same thing in Europe isn't dramatically more expensive given that these are both European companies...)

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Ok their newer stuff then but they seemed to drag their heals for a long time. I had "new" ones around that time and they were LL and I paid a fortune for them. Never again.

Yeah they are much cheaper here, at least half the price.

Like I said the main advantage for me is the quality and the extra features of 3.0. The ability to directly control a lamp bypassing the hub as well as being able to control via the hub is amazing, proper redundancy.

They created a really strong backbone network for me. It does include osram 3.0 and aurora 3.0 and even some Lidl 3.0 lamps.

Do you know if these ones repeat? I think I'll get some right now to try out if they do. Not seeing any cool white or proper daylight so I guess I'll go with full color and hopefully they can do proper white.

yes they repeat like most lamps.

they do loads, maybe they havent got over there yet?

https://www.innr.com/en/product-category/retrofit-bulbs/?&filter_light-color=colour,warm-to-cool&query_type_light-color=or

but all the RGBW lamps they have do daylight well. I use the RGB and the CT part of them.

+1 on this. I just got my first order of two different kinds of Sengleds today, and was completely disappointed to learn they aren't repeaters, as my understanding was that pretty much all non-battery Zigbee and Z-Wave devices are repeaters. I wanted to extend my Zigbee network outdoors, and so I'd bought two supposedly-100w-equivalent Sengled 2700k lights for our outdoor lamps... now I realized that was an exercise in futility. :roll_eyes:

The one good thing I will say about them so far is that the color/color temp changing bulbs I bought for indoors seem to have a much more accurate color temperature (CRI?) than the Cree bulbs I swapped them out for... but they're also much dimmer than the Crees, despite both products supposedly being 60w-equivalent 800lm. I actually bought a light meter tonight because I got so sick of all of these bulbs' lumens claims being so inaccurate, I want a more objective way to measure the real brightness, so I can call them out in the review section. :slight_smile:

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Again, +1. I might add:

I did the smart switches at my previous place. Problems with those over smart bulbs are:

  • With the smart switches, you have to worry about the dimmer type being compatible with the bulb... some LEDs play well with the cheaper TRIAC switches, but they generally work best with the more expensive trailing-edge dimmers. Either way, you also almost always have to have a neutral wire, which many of us (those with home wired before 1990 or so) don't have.
  • Smart switches don't work for color-changing bulbs, unless they're the wireless kind, in which case, they won't be a Zigbee/Z-Wave repeater, either. :slight_smile: So if you want anything other than a single-color bulb, it doesn't really make sense to invest in the hardwired smart switches that can do the repeating.
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