Hi all, I recently switched over to Hubitat from Home Assistant and have been really enjoying the increased reliability and ease of use. However, I'm struggling to find Zigbee bulbs that are compatible. I've checked the compatibility list multiple times, but most options other than Hue seem to be discontinued.
I had been using over a dozen Tuya Zigbee bulbs with Home Assistant that I can't get working with Hubitat. For now, I have two Wiz WiFi bulbs connected that are working well, but when I tried to add a third, I ran into issues.
I'm open to switching over to WiFi bulbs to improve compatibility, but I don't want to have to buy and test bulbs from multiple brands to figure out which ones reliably work with Hubitat.
Does anyone have recommendations for WiFi bulbs that you've had success with and that integrate smoothly with Hubitat? I'd prefer to standardize on one brand if possible. Let me know which bulbs have been most solid for you! I'm also open to suggestions on Zigbee bulbs that are still actively produced and play nicely with Hubitat. Thanks in advance for any advice!
I am glad to hear that you're enjoying elevating your environment with Hubitat If you are looking for Zigbee bulbs, Sengled bulbs are a popular option. Also, you might want to consider joining our beta program.
My research shows that Sengled is a good brand for zigbee smart bulbs. However, it seems they no longer make standard-size zigbee bulbs that are daylight or tunable. Most of their current zigbee bulb offerings are either warm color temperatures or non-standard bulb shapes.
I have signed up for the beta, Do you know of any matter bulbs that are reliable?
I believe this is possibly the reason Bobby suggested you signup for the beta program.
If you still have your Home Assistant installation running, you can use the best of both worlds by using the community built Home Assistant Device Bridge. This would allow you to keep your existing Zigbee bulbs paired with Home Assistant, and use them in Hubitat for automation and other applications. Many of us (myself included) run both Hubitat and Home Assistant. I prefer the ease of use and power of Basic Rules and Rule Machine on Hubitat Elevation, while being able to also enjoy the massive library of compatible Zigbee devices via Zigbee2MQTT running on Home Assistant.
Not sure what region you're in (I'm in the US), but Innr bulbs are readily available and work well -- either directly or via a Hue Bridge. (I have to say a Hue Bridge is my favorite option for lighting, but Hue bulbs work better than third-party bulbs, so some benefit of using one is negated if you aren't.) I'm honestly not a huge fan of the color/CT gamut from Sengleds I've used, plus other oddities I think they have, but your preferences my vary.
I think it's too early to say anything about reliability. But I've used the Linkind Matter RGBW bulbs (incredibly cheap but no-name, though the OEM is better known) and Nanoeaf Essentials RGBW bulbs (yay, a brand name!) with success so far. Some options, like transition time for set level, don't always work, but I'm still seeing if that's a device or driver thing...
There are others and likely to be even more in the future.
Sengled does make standard Matter bulbs and Zigbee bulbs. They are just RGBW bulbs. This is fine by me because I only buy RGBW bulbs. RGBW might be a bit of overkill but they still work as CCW bulbs, they just have some extra colors available if you want it.
I haven't had any issues with the Sengled bulbs but they are on a separate Zigbee mesh. The only reason I have a second mesh is because I have older Sylvainia bulbs that don't play well with other devices. As a result my Zigbee lighting lives on a dedicated C-5 hub. This shouldn't be needed for Sengled bulbs.
Sengle bulbs don't repeat, so you won't have the same sort of issues you'll get with other Zigbee bulbs on the same mesh. However becuase they don't repeat, it's nessecary to have several good repeaters for use with them (depending on how many and how far apart the bulbs are).
Spending 3 hours trying to upgrade my zigbee dongle finally broke me of Home assistant. But yes I really miss being able to connect to just about anything.
I found what you were talking about, I overlooked them because they were only 60 watts and I was unable to purchase a single bulb for testing before getting several of them.
Not sure what zigbee controller you went with. I bought a Conbee 2 from the start and it's been excellent for over 2 years. I did need to update the firmware of mine at one point. It was a fairly painful proceedure if I recall correctly, but didn't take that long. Fairly certain if one was to purchase them today, you wouldn't need to update the firmware.
I do some basic automations on HA, but that's very particular to my setup. Hubitat is my automation hub, no question. I think of HA as a bridge for my zigbee devices (mostly Xiaomi Aqara). Similar to how I separate my lighting, which for me is the Hue Bridge for smartbulbs, and Insteon for dimmers. All my other lighting control is via Lutron Pico remotes and that's connected to everything via the Lutron Smart Bridge Pro through Hubitat. Sounds like you're in Europe, so Lutron isn't particularly relevant for you, just a point of interest.
I consider Hubitat to be the brains of my smart home. Home Assistant, Hue, Lutron, Homebridge and Insteon are simply the bridges that bring together the particular devices I want to use with Hubitat for automation.
Yes, that makes sense. I've bought a few multi-packs when they are on sale. The brightness has worked well for me but I'm using them mostly in smaller rooms. My light levels are automated and typically range between 40% and 75%. The exception being bedtime when they are at 1%.
For the most part I spend most of the time in the living room and there I don't use any of the mentioned bulbs. I have track lights that use GU10 lamps. At the time I installed them there were two options - Hue or MiLight. The Hue bulbs are $50 each and I have 30 lights in the living room. Instead I went with the MiLights which I got for $10 shipped.
At the time I had a piece of bridge software that ran on a PC and emulated the MiLight controller. It was messy but it worked. This was working with the Wink platform. After I moved to Hubitat I switched to some custom software on an ESP8266 board. The board and Hubitat drivers may be found on this site.
So that's really a long winded way to say that I have 30 lights in the living room so my idea of acceptable brightness is likely skewed. But I have some background in theater lighting so I tend to add more lights instead of trying to get one big light source.
Bottom line is the Sengled lights have been working well. Some people may not like the color temperature they produce or the amount of light they put out. That comes down to personal preference so I can't help you there. Performance wise they have been solid. I did have one fail but that is going to happen with any product.
I am not sure if they were out of stock before but they look like a good pick for me, I would prefer they have more lumens but at six bucks a piece that not bad.
@user1306 They won't work with Hubitat. I don't think anyone has an integration for those. Also just note that the sengled's don't have repeaters so you should make sure you have several mains based devices to repeat.
If you want wifi go with
Lifx superior color and brightness. And be adjusted to daylight colors as well
Linkind
Innr is good for zigbee 3.0
Or if you have a C8, you can join the beta and use any Matter based bulb.
I Have some Sengled Zigbee and Shelly and Lifx Wifi bulbs I will let go of. Send me a message and we can work something out.
If you are interested in going the Matter route, I started playing with the Nanoleaf essentials bulbs, So far I am impressed, but it just included them yesterday, so I haven't had much time to play with them yet.
They are more expensive than I like but I am willing to give them a try. I like the Idea of having a self healing mesh with the new Matter standard, I hope the range is good, I wonder if all the matter devices are repeaters?
"Matter" per se doesn't make a mesh; one native "phyiscal" layer underpinning some Matter devices, including these, is Thread. This does create a mesh network, but it bears substantial similarity to Zigbee -- from the frequency (and channels) used to the use of routers, end devices, etc. There are some differences, notably the addition of border routers and I think smarter management of routers (not all eligible routers necessarily act as one; I'm not sure if Zigbee does this or I never bothered to read into it enough to know). If you have multiple Thread border routers, they are also smart enough to form effectively independent Thread networks if needed that still effectively act as one (and re-join as actually one if/when it becomes possible) as long as the border routers are on the LAN, probably a neat effect of using IPv6 for Thread, which Zigbee does not do.
But, in general, if Zigbee performs poorly in your environment, I wouldn't expect Thread to magically be better -- unless maybe you have a large range to cover due to that last thing. (The fact that Nanoleaf claims 20 bulbs is a "large" network, as I mentioned above, is also concerning to me, but I don't think I'll ever have that many...) Otherwise, Zigbee bulbs are still widely available, at least in the US, and most work well (wacky routers, seemingly mostly older bulbs, aside).
If it uses thread for transport it's mesh, if it uses wifi for transport then it's spoke and hub. You ill also need a TBR such as google, or alexa, or homepods to onboard.
If you are looking for Zigbee bulbs, Sengled bulbs are a popular option. Also, you might want to consider joining our 
But I've used the Linkind Matter RGBW bulbs (incredibly cheap but no-name, though the OEM is better known) and Nanoeaf Essentials RGBW bulbs (yay, a brand name!) with success so far. Some options, like transition time for set level, don't always work, but I'm still seeing if that's a device or driver thing...
