Anyone know if there are other types of smart bulbs out on the market. Like GU10’s or candelabra or anything. I’m in canada so the new Hue bulbs aren’t here yet
I just got some LimitlessLED WiFi bulbs. Their White bulbs are decently bright and you can control the color temp from warm to cool. They also have RGBW bulbs that do colors and have a warm white mode. The price is half of what the Hue lights sell for but they don’t work with ST hub currently.
Interesting. What about bulbs that have speakers built in?
I have some LimitlessLED bulbs. In my opinion they are junk. The white ones have horrible light output. It feels like you are looking through a distorted haze. They are very directional, which is fine for over head lighting, but for a lamp all your light just hits the ceiling.
The WiFi bridge required to get them on the network is incredibly painful to setup, and I’m a network engineer. It has a lot of limitations on what characters can work with on your SSID and password that aren’t documented. There is also no ST support.
Furthermore, it looks like the entire system is rebranded out to dozens of other small companies. I don’t think Limitless actually designs, engineers, or manufactures any of it.
In the end they are just a cheap imitation of the Hue.
There’s lifx.co. It’s 802.15.4 mesh network based, but one of the bulbs gets elected to function as a wifi hub, so no need for extra parts. They haven’t yet released their API, but expect that to happen rather soon. I have one bulb and it’s seems pretty decent. ~900 lumens. Good whites, and full RGB control. They are, however, not cheap.
@ Cory S… They are a bit directional but they are bright and I find them better than the compact fluorescents I replaced them with. I’m using the white ones for my front porch lights and they seem to be just fine in terms of brightness and color temp. My biggest complaint with LimitlessLED is their huge design flaw… they don’t transmit status… they only receive, which means you have no idea if they are on or off if you access them remotely. I’ve also had lots of trouble getting the bridge to connect to the app in my smartphone even at home on my WiFi. Outside of my home WiFi I have to refresh it about 15 or 20 times before it connects and even then I’m not sure it turned on the lights or not until I get home visually see them lit. Also note that each bulb type requires its own remote. I bought the RGBW starter kit and purchased 2 additional white bulbs thinking they would all work off the same remote… nope… you need the white remote for the white bulbs and the color remote for the color bulbs (the app controls both types if you can get it to connect). I would not recommend these or any Wi-Fi bulb solution if all you want is to control white lights. Go with in wall switches. That way you’ll always be able to control them remotely regardless if someone manually turns off at the switch.
I have some Lifx bulbs too and I’m generally pretty happy with the Bulb itself. They seem well made, and quite bright. Colors look good to me, but them I’m not any sort of connoisseur of light, so take that for what it’s worth.
The down sides right now are:
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There is not integration with SmartThings. @eran is doing some work with them and has achieved a very hacked way to get some basic control. (See his thread here: http://build.smartthings.com/forums/topic/basic-control-of-lifx-bulbs/), but I would expect ST support anytime too soon. I think Lifx will be scrambling for a while to get things tightened up because…
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The Android app sucks. You’ve got very basic control, and that’s all. You can turn on or off, and mess with colors or whites, but that’s it. There are no advanced functions like grouping, modes, timers, etc. Furthermore the app doesn’t work for everyone. I’ve got it working on my tablet, but not on my phone. Support hasn’t been able to figure out why my phone doesn’t work yet. And the bulbs seem to “come and go.” One the app and I might see 2 of my 4 bulbs. Then I wait 5 minutes, check and again and now I see the 2 that didn’t show up before, but now one of the first 2 disappeared.
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No remote access. You HAVE to be on the same WiFi network that the bulbs are on in order to use the app to control them. This isn’t necessarily terrible, but it does pose a limitation with SmartThings as commands to the bulbs would be coming from the SmartThings server, NOT the Hub. Lifx is supposed to be working on the Lifx Cloud that would allow for remote control, but again this goes back how much they have going on and need to get ironed out.
Sorry… this post is started to get REALLY long. Didn’t intend that.
Here’s the tl;dr version:
Lifx: Good hardware, nice bright, colorful bulbs. No SmartThings integration yet. Many software issues that need to ironed out.