Does anyone have a recommendation for z-wave bulbs other than inovelli? All 6 of them that i have slowly have become really expensive dumb bulbs.
Depends what you want: dimmable white or multicolor. In the first category I have some 20 Domitech bulbs working perfectly for more than three years now.
The one's I have are multi color, but honestly dimmable white would be just fine. These have only been in use since September and they started acting up within a couple months. At this point i can't reliably exclude them to get them off the network.
Just curious, are you looking for bulbs because they are in lamps, and not a light fixtures?
S.
Yes, exactly. A couple bedroom lamps, an office lamp and 2 garage lights. I have multi color now, but that is just because they were on sale. Dimmable white would be fine.
If you’d consider zigbee, there are several choices.
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Yeah. I only have 1 zwave bulb, and it came with some order for free. It's still in the box. I'm with @aaiyar, and would recommend Zigbee bulbs over Zwave. I like Hue, but I've got some Erias on my Hue hub now that seem pretty good too.
I use the Hues and Erias in both lamps/torchierres and a few pot lights to good effect.
I'm sorry, I can't recommend any Zwave bulbs. I just am not familiar with any.
S
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I had all zigbees previously, mostly Sengled but a few Sylvania. I was switching away from them because they will always come back on at 100% brightness after a power outage (we have a lot of power outages where we live, and a lot of thunderstorms in the middle of the night). I really don't understand why they can't make a ZigBee bulb that remembers its last state.
What was the issue? Did they stop responding? Are you keeping the power on at all times?
I have 2 Ilumin bulbs I use for our master bedroom sconces and they are working great. One big issue - you need to make sure your firmware is the latest beta version.. I think its now at 2.31.
I would also second @aaiyar's recommendation for checking out Zigbee bulbs.
edit: the 2.31 firmware allows you to connect the bulbs with NO security which is a very good thing. You want to keep devices that are paired as S0 to as few as possible - S0 tends to swamp the mesh with messages. I am still on 2.30 but was able to pair mine via a secondary controller.
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I previously had all ZigBee. Mostly Sengled and Sylvania. Couple issues, but the main on being zigbees coming back on at 100% brightness after a power outage, particularly in the middle of the night
I have six, two in the master bedroom, one in an office and tow on the garage. Starts out slowing to respond, then doesn't respond at all , or the response may come Hours (yes, HOURS) later. I tried removing them, excluding them then re adding them. That worked for a bit. A couple of them would not exclude (actually they wouldn't even turn on in the first place) until I waited a day and went back and tried again. Then I tried a z-wave repair and said it couldn't be repaired. I looked at the firmware, I cant remember what version they have. Tried to update it, but they wouldn't take it. In general, They just seem to be bad. I don't know if it is just these particular bulbs or if it is a general problem with the product over all. I want to think I just got ahold of some bad bulbs. I bought them Last May, unboxed . Didn't use them at all until September (Stayed sealed in the shipping box the whole time) . Either way I'm about at the end of my patience trying to make them work (not to mention seriously degrading WAF).
While the builbs have been their own issue for a while, seems like it has gotten markedly worse lately since I replaced my Spectrum Router with a Asus, and had to abandon Hub Connect and switch to Hub Mesh, but it really don't see how changing routers could be causing these issues, especially since some of it was already happening before the change. Its just weird. I've had more trouble in a smaller house in the last few months than I had ever had before.
I originally bought mine on sale and had a very similar experience with the bulbs on Smart Things. The issue was the firmware. After I updated the bulbs to 2.30 things just started working better..
Again - are you keeping the bulbs powered on all the time? This is very important to maintain your mesh. You have to control the bulbs via digital commands not physical. It says as much in the user manual. NOTE: zigbee bulbs/mesh are better at handling this.. but can still have issues.
On the C-7 the issue for me was pairing with no security - unfortunately this is a chipset issue NOT an HE one. Had to use a secondary controller to do this but once done it's been working great. Our sconces are above the bed and there are no other switches that control them other than the ones on the base. I leave them "on" and use a pico remote to turn on/off etc.
You might try unpairing all the bulbs and pairing one in a lamp near your hub then attempting a firmware update. If you can get it working then put that bulb where you want it, lather rinse repeat. Might be worth a shot - cheaper than replacing everything.
Have to say I like the ilumin bulbs but they are kind of limited in scope to what situations I can use them in.
As an aside I also have sengled recessed bulbs in our den and am using a newer smart switch to control things digitially - the manual switching function has been disabled in the preferences. They've been working great too...
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Yes I try to leave them powered on. The Garage bulbs were powered on all the time until this all started happening, but now they are basically the same as dumb bulbs. they will either stay on or stay off. they wont respond to command from the dashboard or from automations and rules. As for the bedrooms, that's where it gets into the WAF. I tell her to leave them on but if she cant get them to respond, then it starts to cause issues. She's even a called me at work in the middle of the night to turn them off because Alexa stopped working with them and they don't respond to the dashboards. So I end up telling her to just shut them off so she can sleep. I don't blame her if the things don't respond and she wants to go to sleep.
I hear you!!! I would be in some major trouble if our sconces didn't work as advertised.
Seriously try and get the firmware updated I think it will solve most of your issues. It really did make a world of difference on (my uncle's) SmartThings setup. On my C-7 it worked fine but the bulbs were already updated and as I mentioned I paired with no security using a secondary controller (Z-Stick+).
Take it step by step. Also consider getting switch guards to place on the switches that control the lights if things start working the way you want them to.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=switch+guards
edit: Check your firmware, if you do have at least 2.30 then the issue is probably the S0 pairing assuming your ZW mesh is decent.
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That is what I sorta attempted to do, but I will admit I probably was not as disciplined as I should have been. I think I will try it again all again when I get home, see if I can make any headroom. I really DONT want to go about replacing everything , just getting frustrated.
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Yeah lots of gotchas with home automation - in general, not just HE or SmartThings. Happy to help where I can. You might consider getting a usb stick to use as a secondary controller like this:
It will help not only with "no security" pairing but you can update firmware and remove ghosts as well.
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Again, I understand that Zigbee is promoted here on this forum but I came from Fibaro HC2 and HC3 and they have no Zigbee (no, not even the HC3 yet 1,5 years after it's release, no promised zigbee, no 433 mz, no bluetooth, only Z-wave) so, I had on ly Z-wave bulbs, aeotec for the colored ones and Domlitech for the whites. Working > 3 years now without a glitch.
I'd recommend a bulb with a logarithmic dimming curve. This is important if you like to have your lights
able to dim really low.
My Innr bulbs are fantastic and go from barely on to bright as heck. The dimming curve on Sengled bulbs sucks. They don't get "cozy" dim. But both of those are zigbee.
There are really more options with zigbee than with z wave. I'd consider getting zigbee bulbs.
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Yep.. That's exactly what I'm looking for . the Inovelli's seemed to do really well for getting really dim (when they worked). I could set them to 3%. just bright enough for me to see and not trip over the cat while getting ready for work, and not wake up my wife. I'm going to give what @erktrk suggested a try.. and see if I can get it all cleaned up that way.
