I suppose I’m a bit soured on Wifi lights and such due to the terrible experience I had with them connected to a Nighthawk router (that I’ve since replaced). Right now, with all the kids sleeping, I still have 50 devices currently connected to my router, mostly wireless, which is probably close to the max most consumer routers can handle. If I’m thinking about cost (which obviously I’m not really since I have 50 Hue lights), I could buy 2-3 HE hubs for the price of adding another router. It just doesn’t make sense to me why anyone would want to add the extra strain to their home network.
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Yeah I'm wary of Wifi bulbs for that reason too. I am using a Kasa one on local lan, cos that is already installed in a hard to reach ceiling fitting, but I am invested in the Hue system now.
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An Edgerouter Lite is the same price as or less than a HE hub and handles all my connected devices just fine (well in excess of 50). I could never go back to using a consumer router with so much flexibility this class of device gives. (Vlans/rules etc). Paired with the appropriate unifi AP this set up is so much better than the netgear type stuff I used to have.
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I have a Ubiquiti Unifi system.. Router, gigabit backbone with switches and access points everywhere including outside..
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Why am I not surprised? 
You must have a very understanding wife too.
Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for what you do here.
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The 50 isn't really a hard limit. If you had devices constantly producing traffic all at once, that certainly can be an issue. The fact that bulbs are simply waiting for instruction occasionally pumping a blip out to the network isn't likely to overload the average home Wi-Fi network (lets assume average by saying the average home has a single Wi-Fi router (usually Comcast or Fios rental) not people like myself who have multiple unifi ap's scattered throughout with a cisco backbone and watchguard firewall). Most people are running only a handful of bulbs, even the enthusiests. I really can't see passive Wi-Fi devices creating much of a bandwidth concern...
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I have Unifi AP's for my wifi, but I never thought of using wifi bulbs because of API's and going through the cloud. With this Lifx local support it opens a new avenue for my HA.
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Too bad the LIFX wasnt cheaper than Hue, then I might try some. Hue goes on sale VERY often
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I think this is an easy answer... $$$
I'm sure the plan is this will lead to more sales.
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There is a reason for that.
Don't waist Monday on old technology.
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I think they why? point of this thread has been satisfied..
They are 100% local and fast, and a popular smart home accessory.
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These bulbs must be doing something differently. Whenever I had added multiple wifi devices(sonoff, kasa, tasmota,wemo,ecobee) to my C4 it seemed to put s strain on the hub (C4). Maybe the C7 handles TCP/IP more efficiently?
I'm just sharing my experience, once I got rid of the wifi devices things worked smoother. I've refrained from adding IP based devices to my C7, and when I tried a sonoff mni wifi to my C7 it was always at the top for total ms and % busy.
Curious if these bulbs are also at the top of total ms?
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That was what I saw with my C-5. I haven’t seen this since I replaced my router, but there have also been quite a few improvements with the HE firmware since.
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And a number of Hue updates. Patching lightbulbs... never though I would see that. Right up there with IPLing the car.
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They are UDP and as such only needs 1 server socket open to communicate with unlimited endpoints.
Very low usage for the above reason
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Not really. Here are some device stats since my last reboot. Each of the devices in red is a group of two LIFX bulbs.
and here's the App stats for the groups and the LIFX parent app ....
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So are we saying these bulbs talk back to the hub to let it know its state, or does the Hubitat have a refresh interval to get updates made outside if it.
I am thinking about the Wiz connect bulbs. They actually have local control from the hub, but still require regular polling to get updates if made from lets say the Wiz app to the bulb from through the local network.
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This. And it is a configurable refresh interval (from Disabled to 1 hour).
Since I now control the bulbs entirely from their Hubitat devices, I have set it to Disabled (like @bcopeland), but I had it at 5 minutes earlier.
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So then this has me begging the question if we are enabeling control of wifi bulbs that can be locally controlled, could we be seeing official support for Wiz in the future.
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There is a polling option if you control them outside of the hub.. If you don’t control them outside of the hub then polling is not needed.
