I am having a great deal of sucess with the new Smart+ bulbs from Sylvania.
Not the format you're looking for, but for 9-10$ each I got th BR30 & A19.
WOW- now 8 bucks each for BR30's and the a19's are 7.50 each. I recieved all the newer FCC ID=DZO-LDV-AETHER(the previous FCC ID was "IQ-HOME" and were trouble. Some people say these newer bulbs sometimes fail, but with a 2 year warranty, I have no worries. Sylvania is great with returns.
Change the device type from "Device" to Generic Zigbee Dimmer or Generic Zigbee CT Bulb (dev).
However, if they aren't being recognized by default, you might have bulbs that have older firmware on them and you should update it. The way to do that is to get the Ikea Gateway (you need the packaged one with the dimmer, I think), pair the bulbs to it, let them update and then repair them back to HE.
I've had to do that on about half of mine. It's a pain, but it works.
They work fine with the generic CT driver mentioned above.
My issue now is that I want to have them come on at different brightness depending on the time of day but I don’t have a smart switch - just an ordinary one. I can’t find a trigger event that can do it so may have to look for a rule that continually thinks it’s triggered.
Do you mean you are power cycling them at the switch? If so, that will always make them turn on at full brightness. You need yo leave the regular switch always on and purchase at least a smart button.
There's a couple of triggers that will accomplish that. You could use Certain Time or Periodic Schedule. You don't need a smart switch or a button if you want them to be controlled simply by time schedules.
I did try a few things like that but I think because they were switched off at the wall at the time the time triggered it didn’t get the instruction as there was no power to the bulbs.
AFAIK, nope. Some of them that have been sitting on the shelf for awhile will have older firmware. That's why I keep the $35 Gateway on hand so that I can update them as needed.