For a while I have been looking to purchase a few Osram RGBW bulbs, and today I seen Home Depot had some. The package was the normal Osram RGBW info except it only listed info for Wink and nothing else. I tried to look up the bulb online to see if that would be an issue but could not find any info, so I decided to buy 2 bulbs to try out.
Well for a while now the ST app on my phone says ‘Identifying’ but will never go any further. People on here have said in the past that these bulbs work fine with Smart Things, but is that true, or could their be a difference in the Wink Branded versions at Home Depot? Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated.
(The app will then stay forever trying to Identify. However as you will find out the profile for this does not exist with Smartthings hence why the app fails here.)
Now go to your PC browser and log into Smartthings. Go to your devices and you will see a Thing / A19 RGBW bulb. Change your name. Then go to Type, Here you will see profiles for several Osram Lightify bulbs, but the A19 RGBW profile is missing. For now I am using the 'OSRAM LIGHTIFY Flexstrip. The Mini RGBW Garden works and has a simpler menu, but does not seem as bright as the Flexstrip options, nor does it offer the natural and soft white slider.
I also set this up with my home monitoring system, so if a door or window sensor is activated it changes color of the bulb. This worked perfectly first time, and since it is on the same Hub (as apposed to Hue (separate hub) and Lifx (Wifi) which can have some delay. The only down side is if you have the bulb on a circuit with a smart switch and that switch is set to off, the system will turn that switch on and set the color at the same time, but the color will not activate so it will look like everything is OK. Smartthings you need to have an option to allow a delay of some kind before setting the color. The other annoying thing is when the system is disarmed and incidents dismissed, it does not return the lights to the previous setting, so you will have to manually do this for each light. Are you reading this Smarthings? This is anything but smart.
So all in all it is a little awkward to setup, but does work. If anyone form Smartthings reads these posts, please add a profile type for A19 and BR30 RGBW bulbs asap. Also, please include the gradual dim like on the GE Range of Smart Switches. These lights currently suddenly dim to the selected level which makes them look like they are freaking out compared to the rest of the lights.
** As a quick update, these lights get hot, and for a 60 Watt equivalent bulb, do not seem as bright as a 60 watt GE Link Bulb.
My Osram bulbs just use the Zigbee hue bulb device type which works fine. There is no need IMHO to have them as anything else otherwise they cannot be used for local processing
The Osram RGBW bulbs (A19, BR30 and RT 5/6) were all added to the generic “zigbee RGBW bulb” device handler, so they should have been recognized and assigned to that. The Osram Flexstrip DTH is the best secondary option. For US versions, there really aren’t any good custom versions available.
Fun fact: US Osram Lightify uses the ZHA standard, but EU Osram Lightify uses the ZLL standard. Both are zigbee and both work with ST, but only the EU stuff has advanced features like color loops.
I tried manually choosing the Zigbee RGBW type at first and it would not work, so I just tried it again and it did.
The Zigbee type is less refined in selecting colors over the Lightify Flex RGBW type, The one thing I do prefer on the Zigbee RGBW over the Flex is the Flex will only fade when turning the light off, whereas the Zigbee type will fade Turning off, on or dimming to a new level. It is a trivial thing, but since all the rest of my lights do the smooth fading, this keeps it in line with them.
The Zigbee type has a disc to select what seems like a lot more colors whereas the Lightify app has a ring to select them. The Ligtify app allows you to do this on the fly which is handy. The Zigbee disk is small and you have to select a color one at a time unlike the Lightify app…
I must admit after trying numerous bulbs, the Hue is by far the brightest (seems that way) but the Lightify responds to alerts almost instantaneous.
