I realized I have some old hue bulbs laying around, and they’re working well enough with my Zigbee controller (no bridge), but if I decide to scale up I definitely don’t want to pay the Hue premium.
Anyone have a Zigbee bulb brand they recommend? I hear Third Reality is nice?
Many devices fail to pair with Home Assistant. However, smart bulbs all work very well when they have Zigbee.
If you just want some lights that work, I would recommend picking some random Zigbee bulbs up from AliExpress. Far cheaper than the name brand stuff. Else IKEA also works.
Ikea’s smart bulbs are compatible without much effort (Home Assistant running Zigbee2MQTT). Much cheaper and widely available year round, only downside I’ve seen is the temperature range isn’t nearly as impressive as the white ambiance Hue bulbs.
I just want to add that the Hue bulbs are also compatible to Home Assistant. (I’m currently using it with the ‘default’ ZHA which doesn’t work with some China sensors and actors. AfaIk, Zigbe2MQTT would do.)
OP said they don’t want to pay for Hue.
I assume they mean they won’t pay for a Hue Zigbee bridge, a relatively closed eco system, (and some cloud subscription or whatever they mean with Hue Premium) and new (expensive) Hue bulbs, but they already have Hue bulbs in use in an ad-hoc mode with a Zigbee controller.
I’ve got several Hue bulbs running through Zigbee2MQTT on HA.
No issues, easy setup, and annoyingly expensive but they have the temperature range my wife prefers.
I also consider switching to Zigbe2MQTT one day.
Just bought some Third Reality bulbs to replace TP-Link wifi bulbs a couple of weeks ago. (The TP-Link bulbs require continual communication with TP-Link’s Chinese servers or they reset every few seconds.)
Zigbee2MQTT detects the Third Reality bulbs immediately and they have been working perfectly. The same goes for TR power monitoring smart plugs.
Oh that’s good to know. I have a handful of Kasa bulbs and I don’t give them WAN access. They seem to be mostly fine without WAN, but I do get communication issues with them from time to time (which is why I’m exploring zigbee as an alternative). Thank you for the reply!
The bulb resets are known to TP-Link and they created a firmware version that fixed it. The company didn’t release the update and now TP-Link support reps deny that the new firmware exists, so obviously the communication failures and resets are design intent.
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/666612 - post #7
I just want to kindly share experience: You might want to consider not making the bulbs smart but rather the wall switches. So you can still use the switch and also Automate it. If you should consider this, there are sonoff zigbee switches, but my experience with zigbee is not the best to be honest. I would rather recomment shelly wifi switches (IMO scaling and maintaining a smarthome wifi is much less pain and more reliable than zigbee.
Great points. I have white a few smart switches through the house to control things both physically and via Home Assistant. Most of the other lights are wifi based and work mostly as expected with occasional drops (which can get annoying). Was wanting to experiment with ZigBee to see if it was more reliable, but it sounds like that might not be the case
I second the smart switch strategy, especially when using a fixture with several bulbs.
As for ZigBee however, I’ve been using Home Assistant Yellow with its built-in ZigBee radio and ZHA, and it’s been flawless. Any issues I’ve have been a matter of reinforcing the network by adding a few smart plugs. I got over 60 devices hooked to it at the moment. Z-Wave has been just as problem-free. The really nice thing about having a Z-something network is the ability to use low power devices like battery powered sensors and switches/controls. Want a smart doorbell that plays a chime on all speakers and sends you a phone notification? Stick any ZigBee button to the outside of your door and program the automation. Its battery lasts two years.
Altough you are right about this and I do also still have a zigbee network for these purposes, I did observe range, repeater, and stability issues. For light bulbs, which are not battery powered, there are more options to consider :)
I don’t have any bulbs from them, but I did just recently get a smart plug from third reality. And so far I like it, although I’ve only had it a couple of days.
I went with innr bulbs per the recommendation from the hookup and have had good experiences. I think I’ve switched most of my bulbs now and currently have 10.
I’d recommend the sengled ZigBee bulbs. They’re cheap, reliable, and have good colors. Ive been using many for years without issue.
The IKEA bulbs will also work. I’ve tried them in the past, but didn’t like them. I found they were too dim at full brightness. Also, their colors are much much worse then the sengled bulbs, especially the “greens” (I say this in quotes because the best the IKEA bulbs can do is a pitiful color that’s 85% yellow and 15% green).
The high CRI Philips Ultra Definition bulbs with a smart dimmer. I use them with a Z-Wave Leviton but there’s ZigBee options too if you don’t have a Z-Wave radio. Those bulbs make the most beautiful light… I use the warm ones 2700K or so because they’re the best for the eyes. It seems Cree and Feit also have high CRI bulbs but I haven’t tried them.