Okay, so I decided to test switching and dimming with 4 white E27 CT bulbs.
- A Hue Ambience using latest driver from bradsjm
- An IKEA using 'Generic Zigbee CT Bulb (dev)',
- An Eria Adurolight using 'Advanced Zigbee CT bulb'
- A Ledvance using 'Advanced Zigbee CT bulb'.
And I did remember to press configure after choosing the driver!
I'm controlling them with an Ikea Styrbar, 4 button controller. The Styrbar seems to work ok most of the time, but would occaionally just stops responding to anything for a minute or two.
To be sure the controller wasn't causing issues, I replicated the test on an LK Wiser 4 button controller.
For both controllers, I set them to use 1 button to toggle/dim each lamp using a button controller i HE.
For toggling, the Hue has a long reaction time, and delay between button presses is typically 2-5 seconds before it works again. I believe it's because I toggle… The Hue bulb is very slow to feedback status, despite having toggled… So it simply sends off-commands again, despite being off - Until it reports back that status says off.
I fixed this with a virtual switch. If I set the Hue bulb to follow this, and then toggle the virtual switch with the Styrbar button, I can toggle the bulb 3 times/s. From awful to great!
When starting level change (up), Hue bulb starts at last on-level, and so I start with a command to set dimmer to 0. Otherwise no issues.
The IKEA bulb will not start raising from off, so I must start with a command to set dimmer to 1. (Also means Room Lighting app will not work, as it simply sets a level).
But before the IKEA bulb actually reacts, it will be somewhat high in level, so i tried putting in a 1-second delay before 'start raising' is sent.
With this, the Ikea bulb will also change direction automatically.
When holding again, despite getting a command to dim to level 1, wait and then raise - If the bulb is already on at any level, it will keep current level and start lowering! … Okay, fine - Except once I stop dimming down, it always starts raising up to max afterwards.
Seems maybe bulb and driver fight each other here? If I remove the 1-second delay, it stops the whole lowering thing. I'm stumped.
The Eria Adurolight works worse than the IKEA… Needs to be set to level 1 before start raise, and must have a 1 second delay or the raise wont start until next time it's held. The 1-second delay cause it to change direction when trying to raise when on, but lowering ends up raising to 100%. Also, If you hold and release as soon as it turns on, the release doesn't register and it runs to 100%
Ledvance is slightly better than Aduro, but exhibit all the same behaviors…
Both Adurolight and Ledvance sometimes turn on autonomously up to 30s after being turned off - I'll likely fix it with a virtual switch for toggling.
Now I could use a virtual dimmer, which I somehow suspect would work great - But it doesn't support start/stop Level change…
Does anyone have a better virtual dimmer or suggestion on how to do this?
Conclusion so far: Stay away from Adurolight. Pay up for the Hue bulbs, they have the better driver… Or should I try to run it all from HE via a Hue bridge instead?
My setup:
One of the odd behaviours - Going to 100% after stopping at 5%.
