I am new to all of the “smart” things. I want to get started setting things up over winter break.
I got a deal black Friday on the phillips Hue A19 (white)4 pack with the bridge. I got some google home minis, and chrome cast, and now I just bought the SmartThings Hub to control everything. I have not set any of this up yet, my question is: I would like to get some color changing bulbs next. I’m looking at the TP-Link multicolor or the Sylvania Smart A-19 (if you have better suggestions that are not very expensive let me know). I also want to get some Sengled $10 A19’s for some rooms that don’t need color.
So my big question, with all of these lights should I
a). hook ALL the lights up to the phillips bridge and then connect that to the smartthings hub?
b.) hook just the phillips hue lights to the bridge then to the Smartthings, and hook the other lights directly to the smartthings hub?
c.) skip phillips bridge and hook everything to the Smartthings hub?
or
d). different option all together
Hope the question makes sense, and thanks for any help you can give. I look forward to hooking all this up!
I’ve found the hue app to be easier and faster. It also add’s an additional zigbee broadcast device for the hue bulbs around the house. So I have the hue bridge setup with all my hue lights, then I add the hue bridge to smartthings, and all your hue devices will show up on smartthings. There are periodic firmware updates for the bulbs that the hue hub manages nicely.
Anything that can be hooked to the hue bridge should be hooked to the hue bridge and then integrated with SmartThings that way. While it is technically possible to connect some of those bulbs directly to SmartThings, you can also mess up your zigbee network that way.
All of that said, the Sylvania bulbs, the Sengled bulbs, and the TP link bulbs are not compatible with the hue bridge. The Sylvania bulbs and the Sengled bulbs would get connected directly to the smartthings hub. They both have official integrations.
There’s no official integration for the TP link bulbs – – I think there’s a cloud to cloud unofficial integration, but to be honest I don’t remember right now. Hopefully someone else will comment on those.
Also, if you can wait for a couple of months, Ikea should have a color changing bulb out that will work with the hue bridge and cost significantly less than the hue bulbs themselves. There’s no guarantee on this, but they have at least one color changing bulb (which doesn’t work with hue bridge), and it looks like more are in development.
As far as white only bulbs, the Hue white at around $15 each or $12.50 in a 4 pack are a good price and a well engineered bulb. They are definitely worth considering if you want more since you already have the bridge.
Wow!! Honsetly when I was trying to figure out if I should get a smartThings hub, one of the main reasons why I bought one was because I heard the community and great and very supportive, and within a few minutes of my first question I quickly get responses! thanks to all that responded, I’m getting excited to think of the possibilities with the smartThings!
So I think the gist of what I am getting from the responses is, that I probably need to use the Hue bridge and stay with the phillips lights. The A19 4 pack deal is pretty good for the white. It seems that the color ones I mentioned were not compatible with the bridge, are there any good ones besides the phillips color that would work with the Hue bridge, I would really like to avoid paying so much for the phillips color bulbs.
