Colored LED Bulbs

Save yourself some headache and just get some Lutron CasƩta dimmers and regular bulbs. Changing color is a nice gimmick but I never use it. There is nothing on the market that can touch Lutron.

While I donā€™t use color myself, except for one bulb for a splash, and one for dark orange late at night in the hallway, I think itā€™s a bit presumptuous to assume that no one else wants it.

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I have been tinkering a lot with different kinds of bulbs lately, and I have to say, that for really really good BUT cheap RGBW bulb, the Xiaomi Yeelight takes the price.

Their pricing is the same as IKEA bulbs (atleast in my country), but they are much brighter, faster, responsive and have better colors, they connect directly to hubitat via LAN driver, and you save yourself the hassle with hue hubs, repeater issues and what not. AND they remember their last-on state! I am yet to find something as good as this for such price. Only downside is their fixtures are somewhat limited (to say the least haha)

With wifi devices, you have to be careful to not run into the limit of the number of devices you can connect to your wireless router. Many consumer grade routers will be limited to 32 devices per wireless band. You can see how that will be reached very quickly if filling your house with wifi bulbs, filling up your 2.4 ghz band. Adding multiple additional clients to your wifi router will also decrease the speed for all other devices connected to your router. These are a couple of the main reasons why creating a zigbee mesh network for bulbs is preferable to using wifi ones for some people.

That is sure thing worth noting. But in my experience, one does not really need all that much RGBW bulbs, and there is quite a good selection of CT zigbee bulbs (even IKEA tradfri white bulbs are quite great compared to their RGBW). Its just those RGBW that are problem usually, not to mention that RGBW bulbs are the pricy ones, while white/CT bulbs are usually much cheeper.

So I would probably recommend using IKEA/Hue/Whatever zigbee bulbs in mesh, but if you are really looking for RGBW bulb worth its price, those Yeelights are really hard to pass by.

In my new house I have currently planned around 25 CT bulbs and 10 RGBW, and that is definitely quite price cut compared to RGBW Hues.

OR

Just buy some really really good router for spared money, which has many great uses in your everyday life, and you dont have to worry about number of wi-fi devices ever again :smiley:

I saw some tests with 200usd priced routers, which were easily capable of running over 50 smart appliances, and 10 more phones, TVs and PCs without breaking a sweat.

I have a brand new Netgear router and it still has the 32 device limit. ANd we're not just talking RGB and CT bulbs but dimmable bulbs too. Having all of them on the same zigbee mesh allows them to act as repeaters for each other.

And if you're going to spend more money for a commercial grade router, that kind eats up the $5 you saved on the bulbs, doesn't it?

You know, zigbee bulbs working as repeaters is exactly the thing I am trying to avoid, as single flip of wall switch can break your mesh easily in some cases.

And it really isn't 5 dollars, yeelight at standard price costs 30usd in my country, while same type of hue is 50usd. I have atleast 10 of those, so it's 200usd difference right there. Possibly more in the future.

Sengled Bulbs are designed to not be repeaters and cost much less than hue.

Not available in Europe sadly :expressionless: I am really struggling to find anything that's available for me and at reasonable price.

Soon I will try osram rgbw paired with hue hub to avoid repeater issues, they are quite bargain aswell, but their reviews are quite... Meh

Really? Where in Europe? Someone posted a link earlier to a sale on Sengleds in the UK at a very cheap price.

You have that option in Europe. They are ZLL in Europe. Over here they are ZHA. And from what I have read, they work quite well on the Hue bridge. ZLL bulbs usually make great repeaters for each other. That's why Phillips never had to develop a repeater device. All of the bulbs are repeaters.

Home automation at a reasonable price? HAHAHA that's a funny one. :stuck_out_tongue: jk. It's gotta be a conspiracy to keep us poor folks flipping light switches. :wink:

oh, thats great info, thanks :slight_smile:

Yeah, those prices are sometimes utterly ridiculous, but it is especially case with Phillips stuff, thats just terrible. LifX is also expensive for example, but their bulbs usually win any comparison test by far so it feels atleast a bit justified :slight_smile: Ikea is typical example of cheap stuff that is way too cheap for its own good :smiley:

I currently really like xiaomi, I have tons of their buttons, door sensors, motion sensor and yeelight bulbs, currently thinking of buying aqara wall switches. These products really seem revolutionary in a sense that they are very cheap, but still reliable and quite importantly good looking. When you have new modern house, you dont want to have some big, ugly ancient looking electronic stuff on your doors and hallways, and these things just look really nice :slight_smile: Not the best, by when looking for 10 dollars motion sensor or 35 dollars from Hue... Same with those bulbs. Not best, but very good for price.

And you are right, I managed to find some Sengled bulbs on Amazon.uk, so I will try those aswell, thanks for tip :slight_smile:

If you've gone down the Xiami rabbit hole and have all ikea repeaters and that's all you use, they're great! If you mix them with other ZHA and don't have ikea repeaters...then you are just setting yourself up for failure. I bought a bunch of repeaters that are known to not work with Xiaomi before i even knew of Xiaomi, so they're off my list of possibilities at the moment.

I luckily read topic around here about compatibility with xiaomi stuff, so I am well prepared :slight_smile: Currently all my bulbs are either wifi or Hue bridge based, so no bad interactions here, and I have lot of IKEA plugs around my house. And basically everything else is currently xiaomi stuff, so no bad interactions so far. Planning seems much more important in smart home than people realize it seems... there is always some catch. (for example I just found out that IKEA RGB bulbs are absolutely no-go, with or without hue bridge lol)

And spoke to soon, still canĀ“t find any sengled zigbee RGB bulb for europe :confused:

have a look at aurora AOne zigbee lamps there zigbee 3.0 and i have been informed that they make great repeaters. They are also slightly cheaper than osram

I've been tinkering with a Energizer Connect RGBW bulb, flashed with tasmota (need to use tuya-convert) that remembers its setting after power is cycled. Currently on sale at menards.com for $7.99 but also available at HomeDepot and Walmart

Only downside is white is only bright/cool white (somewhere around 3500-4000K) not adjustable unless you use RGB then not really true white

I have a couple Singled color bulbs. They look nice however seem a bit temperamental with integration. Mine are Zigbee, paired easy and well with HE, but controlling them is cumbersome. Routines can turn them on but then turning them off not as well. They seem to want another step? Within the dashboard it lets me change the color, Just want to turn it off... I expect it's something I don't have set right.
Does anyone notice quirkiness, or have some advice or trick ?