Lifx, Smarthings, and Harmony Experiences

I spent many hours rewiring, and connecting my Lifx bulbs only to finally remove them and go back to “standard” dimmable LEDs.

The problems with Lifx were many. I had 4 bulbs and they seemed to come from two differing firmware levels. They would not all complete connection to my Netgear router and some became hung in “rescue mode”. The recovery instructions from Lifx indicate that you turn off your router and then power on the Lifx bulb and connect to the Rescue SSID and then the bulbs will recover … that approach is unreasonable in any really connected home.

I finally got the bulbs to a level I could connect them, but they would hang halfway through the process despite following all of the silly limitations required by Lifx. I finally determined that the bulbs would not install on Wifi channel 10 despite Lifx saying they would. I changed to channel 1 and the install completed.

I then linked the bulbs to my Harmony Elite and to my Smartthings via Zwave dimmer switch (which was not wired to the light circuit (no load wire) - I made the light circuit always on. I linked Harmony, Smartthings, and Lifx accounts. The Lifx bulbs would operate in a second from the Harmony remote and appear to operate in unison, but the Zwave switch could take upwards of 10 seconds for the bulbs to respond, and they would respond inconsistently and not in unison.

The LifX bulbs are very nice bulbs functionally and when operated from their app, but the ability to control the bulbs, in a “lightswitch expected timeframe” and the ability to control color selection, etc are still very limited and make the bulbs ineffective as a “room lighting”.

I also tried IFTTT integration to drive a bulb color change when my favorite team scored – the delay in any color change made this more annoyance than fun.

The Lifx support team appears to be non-existent … the bulbs aren’t cheap, but could be fun once they become better integrated.

I have 10 lifx bulbs. I have them linked to my Harmony hub, and my smart things hub. I can turn them off with my harmony remote, or my mini mote. no issues or delays.

Maybe it depends on your router? I’m using an Apple time capsule.