I am trying to make some choices around the best, best bang for buck, future-proofiest, lighting system for my house, but it seems like there are a lot of pros and cons with each direction, so hoping to get some input from the community that has experience with this.
Currently this will involve filling 6" can lights in the kitchen and living areas, installing LED strips in channel under the kitchen cabinets, some outside lights, and probably some lamp bulbs.
The basics:
- Have SmartThings
- Switches: Looking at Leviton Vizio RF+ LVVRS151LZ and two way companion where needed.
- The lights need to turn on via switches for everyday use, and not crap out because they don’t like it. As mentioned by pretty much everyone, WAF of using a phone to turn the lights on is zero
. Automations would need to know to turn the switch on first, then adjust the light.
- Nice if the lights turned on via switch to a preset color temp (eg. not “blind everyone with white light setting”)
- Would be nice if the lights faded on/off when you threw the switch, because that sounds pretty fancy and we’re living in the future, right?
Then again, I still get BSODs so maybe we aren’t there yet…
Not sure I can have all the wants with any setup with current state of technology…
Fleshing out the choices
The first choice is Hue, with their hub, Hue BR30 for the cans, Hue or 3rd party strips, etc. The major downside is Hue is the most expensive, and I have a lot of bulbs to buy (20+), not sure of other cons. Might be able to save money buying the V1 bulbs, but is it worth it?
The second choice is Osram, with the Osram BR30 bulbs, or they also sell can trim kits. I’m a bit nervous about the can trim kits, because what happens when one goes out years from now, and they are no longer sold. Osram strips or 3rd party(?) for kitchen. With this direction, from what I can tell, you can connect them to:
- SmartThings directly - I don’t know all the pros and cons of this approach. Need to use Osram gateway to update firmware.
- Hue bridge - Can take advantage of the Hue ecosystem and maturity? Con, need to update bulb firmware thru Osram hub periodically? They locked out other bulbs in the past, and still do for HomeKit use. Other?
- Osram hub - Needed to update the bulb firmware, might not have the best features/stability since they are newer to the game, doesn’t talk to ST due to no API? Other pro/con?
Thanks for reading this far! Appreciate any guidance and things that I have not thought of to help make the decision on what all this should involve since starting from scratch.