Hi all, looking for recommendations for RGBW (the W is important to me) bulbs that work really well with zwave and hubitat. I want to give the kids a little fun in their rooms, controllable by Alexa, and in the TV room primarily for the light to blink red once or twice when motion is detected outside. I've looked at the Hue bulbs of course but they're not directly compatible... would prefer a bulb that is long lasting and zwave... will be controlled with Alexa as mentioned and a wall dimmer. Or - if you have some excellent and perfectly working way to integrate with Hue... that's good too.
You may not want to put a smart bulb on a wall dimmer circuit. Dimming control is embedded within the bulb and the dimmer may interfere with the smart operation of the bulb.
You could put a smart dimmer in and then enable "smart bulb" mode.. of course now you've added an additional device and the complexities that brings. I am doing this for my den - I have 8 Sengled Color+ BR30s and they are controlled by a smart switch which keeps the power on but registers switching events as needed for the rule to control on/off. For a dimmer you would probably use something like the MirrorSync app.
good point - I was thinking of the "smart bulb" mode I've seen in the device settings when I asked but of course ... you didn't read my mind... !! Mostly I want to do this with an in-wall device because I want operation to be totally transparent to the user like me and my wife... I really don't want to have to dig out my phone, open the app, and set the dimmer when I can just push a button on the wall.
^ This. ... I "assume" it leaves the bulb powered all the time but then communicates the bulb dimmer status back to the bulbs - is there a z-wave bulb that natively interacts with the hubitat without having to go through another app (and another layer of something to break) ?
Both the bulb AND the switch communicate with the HE Hub directly. You use the dimmer to detect dimming events, and the bulb to control the lighting. NOTE: as @djgutheinz says you DONT want mess with the power going to the bulbs.
The alternative is to use a switch cover to prevent people from turning off the power or "dimming" the smart bulbs inadvertently and using a remote to dim things.
I have had great experience with both Sengled’s and Inovelli’s smart bulbs.
Inovelli is z-wave and can be directly linked from their dimmer to the switch so that the dimmer value will show on the switch. It is a bit of effort to setup, but there is good information available to do it.
Yup. And it will do both local control (no hub required) and also accept commands from the hub (and share status).
(Note that I didn’t actually try shutting down the hub to confirm it actually worked direct… I needed the switch in another room while they weren’t available for order, so no longer have the association setup - otherwise, I would have tested it right now!)
