Just getting into implementing a smart bulb solution for my living room. Some questions:
Seems the most popular ones are the hue and lifx. I'd love to use one of those except they aren't zwave. I am looking to stay with just zwave if possible to minimize network congestion on my 2.4 ghz network. Is that a reasonable thing to do? What are your experiences with hue and/or lifx on your home wifi network?
I mostly have either LIFX or Zigbee bulbs here. Currently LIFX isn't directly supported by Hubitat, although I'm working to change that - I'm hoping to have something by the end of the Christmas holidays, there is already a cloud based solution in the LIFX GoG driver, but my driver will be working with the local LAN protocol.
I don't think there's much of an impact with LIFX on network congestion to be honest, unless you're continuously changing the lighting settings.
I use quite a number of hue bulbs
I’ve got a very powerful wifi setup with multiple ubiquiti access points which has lots of traffic all the time.
I have never experienced any interference on either.
I have tried a couple of the cheaper wifi and z-wave bulbs but have npt been im[ressed with them
However, I’m in the UK so my choices are probably limited.
Hue is a great system and keeps the routing issue away from your hub. It's not a problem with WiFi. I'm not sure where people are getting this idea that Zigbee is such a problem with WiFi. Second post I've seen today in that regard. It's just not. Never had an issue of any kind related to WiFi and Zigbee interfering with each other, and if it did, I would just change either the Zigbee or WiFi channel or both if that's what was needed.
Z-Wave offering on bulbs is so limited, I'm not sure why you would want to do that to yourself. Almost all the cool bulbs and options are on Zigbee.
I have a mix of Hue, Sengled, LIFX, and Cree. Each have their quirks.
Hue has been great for quick automation and color, but they do have a Zigbee repeating issue if a device tries to use them as a repeater. I haven't had this issue yet though. *Edit: see @Cobra's reply below
Sengled are great as endpoint bulbs, so they won't mess up your Zigbee mesh if someone flips the switch. They behave differently than other bulbs in the way they turn on/off though. I use them in closets.
Cree bulbs are faithful ZLL repeaters until you have more than 10, at which point they start dropping messages. Just make sure nobody flips the switch, or risk potential mesh issues.
LIFX are WiFi bulbs with rich colors, but cloud-dependent, so they're slower than the rest. But it looks like @rob is working on a local solution, so they might turn out to be really great!
I've heard that any number of Cree can cause a problem. The only reason I have them on now is that I haven't replaced them. Also, the latest Cree bulbs have a firmware bug that causes them to randomly flash unexpectedly. So...that's been really annoying recently.
I have 22 hue bulbs connect to a Hue bridge, connect to Hubitat, controlled by Pico remotes connected to a Bridge Pro 2 connected Hubitat. Very fast response.
It's still in the early stages, I'm almost at the point of being able to create the relevant packets to send to the LIFX devices. This will be my first device driver though, so I'm not sure how long it will actually take me to have something ready for testing.
I only have a grand total of 3 bulbs. Two are Aeon, one older, one newer, and a Hank. All are RGBWW bulbs and they seem to work identically. The oldest Aeon is more than a year old and was originally running on ST. They mostly have the same function in my house... White for normal use, colors for "announcing something." They've worked for me every day. I'm currently using the native Hank RGBW driver for all of them.. consistency you know.
I used Hue, Cree, Go Control, Sengled and Yeelight.
Hue, zigbee, I suggest using the hub so no issues with any other devices on the mesh, a little pricey.
Cree I get rid of them, zigbee, worst repeaters ever....
Go Control are z wave, they been working fine, a little pricey for just white bulbs.
Sengled are color, zigbee, they work great, even for motion lighting, good price but I got them very cheap for black friday deal.
Yeelight are color, WIFI, I'm impressed with them, they work really well with HE, very cheap at Amazon ($15 when available), I have 5 of them in my Dining Room Lamp, with the app One to Many from Cobra and with a wall dimmer I control them, I have a rule to reset the color to daylight when I turn on them with the wall dimmer. I'm sure I can do this with the Sengled too, just price and connection difference.
Keep them on Hue. These try to repeat, and while some say they're having good success with them as repeaters, I'm skeptical about their long term stability in that role. I had a bad experience with a Trådfri bulb that unexpectedly tried to take on that role when I was experimenting with it connected to HE for another reason. but took half my Zigbee devices offline when it dropped the ball.
Well, I have seen some issues with them, until I moved my Hue hub closer to the bulbs, so you may be on to something. I am just starting with HE, migrating from Vera, and my majority of devices is on Z-Wave. I have only added a few Zigbee, among them 2 bulbs. So far so good.
But is there any way to see a diagram of the Zigbee routing in your environment ? Something like this would be nice
*Edit: see 
