What is the smallest zigbee bulb available?

I have an automation running related to the main entry of my house for which I want to provide a simple red/green status indicator that can be seen as someone approaches the door from inside or outside the house. What would be ideal is something maybe even as small as an single LED that I could stick in the corner of the window, I don't want or need a large or bright bulb but the smallest I've found so far are candelabra bulbs and those are still fairly large.

If I can't find a small enough zigbee bulb I may look at cutting an LED light strip down to it's shortest length. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Tom G.

The only thing I can think of would be if you can find a really small lightstrip (I normally buy much longer, but you can probably find them in 1-ft or 6-in sections) and connect that to a Zigbee RGB (or even just a 2-channel controller of some kind with an RGB strip where you ignore the B wire, or a red-only and green-only strip each connected to their own 1-channel controller, or whatever else you can think of here). Gledopto, RGBGenie, and probably others make Zigbee controllers, and if you're not protocol-picky, there are also lots of Z-Wave options. With any of these, you could set that to a specific color based on whatever you're looking to use this for. Still might be a bit bigger than you want, but the fact that they're strips and not bulbs might give you more flexibility as to where you place them.

And again if you're not stuck on Zigbee, there are a few Z-Wave options that might work. The HomeSeer HSM200 mutlisensor has a controllable LED (you can just ignore the motion-sensing capabilities and whatnot). The Fibaro Wall plug (with or without USB port) has an LED ring that is also color-controllable (Hubitat's driver doesn't provide a way to change this with commands, just preferences, but I wrote a custom driver that does, and hub firmware 2.2.5, whenever that comes, will apparently also provide some device preference automations that may work instead). But both of these plug into outlets rather than screwing into light sockets if that matters.

There is also the entire current generation of Inovelli switches and dimmers (LZW30, LZW30-SN, LZW31, LZW31-SN, and LZW36). The switches have a small LED in the bottom right (or top left if you want to mount it opposite), and the dimmers have a large LED bar down the entire right side. With all of these, you can control the LED color via hub commands if you have a driver (like Inovelli's, or again a custom one I wrote) that lets you. The Red Series lets you do a bit more with the LED bar (and buttons), but you don't need that just to change color. But obviously these are wall switches, so neither a plug-in device nor a light bulb substitute. Just mentioning them because I use them, in part, for what I suspect you might be using them for, too: mode or HSM status. :slight_smile:

Finally, if you don't care that it looks good (and again aren't stuck on Zigbee), I'm sure you could DIY something with a multirelay or even something like HubDuino or another LAN solution and an LED or two on a prototyping board, but if it's visible, that might not be the look you're going for.

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If you're into hacking, I have built a number of simple relay controllers using these Arduino relay boards. They're cheap and reliable. I used these Zigbee modules from Sengled BR30 bulbs which are very easy to extract. The bulbs were super cheap for me, so I bought all I could get.

You might be able to power an LED directly from the module output, but it's PWM, so I'm not 100% sure it won't visibly flicker. The Arduino relay has no problem with it. You could also wire the relay so that the voltage to the LED is reversed when opened and closed. There are LEDs that will changed color when polarity is reversed.

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Zigbee is not a must have, z-wave is fine. Was thinking Zigbee only because I've had fewer issues with adding Zigbee devices. I like that HomeSeer sensor. I'll be taking a closer look. And, DIY not out of the question if I can't find a commercially made solution. As for looks on the DIY end, there I am a stickler so I'd ether buy a small enclosure or 3D print one.

Thanks!

Nice Work! I may have to put my maker hat back on and DIY this. I have done a fair amount of work with Arduino's and a some with R' Pi's. The only pitfall I've ever found is that sometimes the DIY solution costs as much in time and money as a commercially made solution. But, you do get the satisfaction of the accomplishment!

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Must not forget about Iman's boards too. They provide 3.3v output and they're multi function. Also serve as a good Zigbee repeater that is Xiaomi compatible if you have any of those devices.

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The time to figure it out was my biggest cost, but you are absolutely right that it typically doesn't work out that way. For me, the bulbs were $3.50 CAD and so were the Arduino relay boards. So $7 isn't bad, but that doesn't include a box to put it in. I've built a few for outdoor use and the weatherproof box with the biggest cost.

Imans board is probably the most cost effect and flexible of these solutions.

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