My Sengled Zigbee bulbs are dying and I need three BR30 style RGBW bulbs.
I know Hue is well regarded by I am really hoping to find something that "just works" without extra hardware and another integration.
I guess I am open to wifi devices too ... but I know Zigbee/Zwave better. And again, I would like to avoid another integration if possible, it's just more to go wrong. (That said I have been happy so far with the few LIFX lights I have.)
Hmm, these LIFX bulbs are on sale for $21, tempting though it's not exactly what I was hoping for.
The Singled bulbs are dying? That is unfortunate. That would be my go to today if I needed more. My exterior bulbs are Sylvania's but I don't believe they are still available and they also need to be on a separate mesh. So they have their own problems but I haver some that have been running for years.
Yeah, I have 3 that are on almost constantly, either for white room lighting or dim red night mode... And over the last year, all have started to die. They flicker when set to bright white mode. If I make that mode dimmer, that buys you some time ... Then, you have to dim them again... They are all dying.
They may be able to live on as RGB only, I think it is the W mode that's failing.
The bulbs started showing problems at about 2.5 years and at ~3.5 years they are pretty hosed.
That's too bad. I live in the desert and temperatures over 110 aren't unheard of. The Sylvania's have been running nightly for more than six years. They have their issues but they have been reliable.
The only other lights I have with that life are some MiLight GU10 bulbs. Those are a different thing altogether. They have their own protocol and I had to setup an ESP-8266 controller to integrate with HE. They have been running even longer and I've not lost a single one out of 30.
So hard to find the perfect device. Sengled's seem to have reliability issues, Sylvania's have mesh issues, MiLight doesn't use Zigbee or Z-Wave.
While typing I had another thought. Have you ever checked the power coming into the house? I might be worth it to monitor the voltage over time. If you are getting a lot of fluctuations it could be hard on electronics.
That's how I ended up with the MiLight bulbs. I paid $8 each shipped. 30 Hue lights would have hurt.
I had a bridge and ran an emulation app on my PC to control them from Wink. Later with HE I downloaded an ESP-8266 app and now have full local control from HE. The only issue I had was the ESP would go to sleep and it would take a few seconds to wake up. I added a dummy light and ping it every two minutes. Keeps the controller awake and the lights respond quickly.
That's super interesting. I have a few of these that are on all night long and have been solid for 5 years + now. Wonder if it's your outside temp (it's colder in the PNW)
@rlithgow1 I may end up with LIFX. I have some other LIFX bulbs in another room and they have been good. It's just hard to know how they will hold up to almost constant use. Plus, they are expensive. I did not think they were 100% local, though. Well, perhaps after you integrate them they are?
you can find the BR30 sylvanias at ebay. I have 14 on my C7 zigbee mesh with about 75 other devices, no major issues. I'd say about every 2 -3 months I have to pull the air gap on my Inovelli switches to "jumpstart" the bulbs. These newer sylvania bulbs are much better on the mesh, compared to the earlier generations with ZLL.
I've seen the BR30 RGBW on ebay, letgo, facebook, etc.
I also picked up a Sylvania hub to update the firmware on all my bulbs. The newer firmware helped stabilize the bulbs. Unfortunately I don't think the hubs work any longer.
I was also having bulbs drop every few months until I moved them to a dedicated mesh. Ever since they have been rock solid.
Initially Sylvania allowed the hubs to work locally, don't know if that's still the case. Whenever I got Sylvania bulbs I paired to ST to update the firmware, but I think HE can do it now ?
I had originally updated the Sylvania's a long time ago. The first light I tried was already on the most recent version. I found another one that had a slightly older firmware and it turns out that Hubitat does have the latest firmware available.
Same mfg at a much lower price. They work very well. Home Depot is less expensive than Amazon. Built-in Wiz integration. WiFi but local. I have two clusters of three on either side of the patio. Control them with an Inovelli blue VZM-31SN.
