I’m planning to pick up a couple of the new Cree Connected bulbs soon, but I’m wondering how these types of smart bulbs will interact with my dumb wall switches. I’d like my physical wall switch to be able to override the hub setting to turn them on. e.g. “bedtime” arrives and the bulbs turn off. I come out for a drink of water and grope for the switch. Will turning the power off and back on override the bulb to turn it back on, or will I have to go find my phone in the dark to do it?
Thanks!
I don’t have the Crees yet, but other smart bulbs I have used behave just like regular bulbs if they lose power. So, if the Crees work the same way, then, yes, if you turn the switch off and then on, it should light.
In fact, I bought some smart bulbs that I didn’t like the interface to, and ended up just using the bulbs as regular LED’s.
-Todd
I can’t specifically speak to the Cree bulbs’ behavior, but that’s exactly how my GE Links behave.
I can’t speak for the Cree specifically, but I have Philips Hue and GE Link bulbs (all are ZigBee Light Link standard)…
Yes: Turning a wall power switch off and then on will turn on the bulbs; usually to their brightest setting (i.e., their default setting after power outage does not remember the dimmer level or color setting for Hues … Hue’s turn “warm white”; as opposed to when turned off and on using SmartThings or Hue App, then they retain the color and brightness last used).
Just occurred to me that this default behavior is not ideal for situations of whole home power outages… when the power is restored to your home, this is like the lightswitch having gone off and then back on, and all the lights will be on at full brightness. If these bulbs are in your bedroom and you are blissfully sleeping away the blackout, you will be rudely awoken with bright lights!
Now let’s see if we can write a SmartApp that would handle that rare situation. 
Home automation is great except for edge cases. Look at how you have things programmed. In almost all cases, I can think of a way where something that I have programmed shouldn’t run the way it is programmed.
Welcome to the bleeding edge… 
-Todd
Thanks for the info - it makes sense for them to behave this way. I’m going to assume the Cree bulbs will be similar. I don’t think a 60W equivalent will be too bright even at 100%. This way my family will be happily using them as normal, but it will give me a dimmer where I don’t have one now, plus I can dim or turn off the lights from the couch 
Both the Cree and the GE bulbs act the same when transitioning from power off to power on state - they both go to full brightness. So light switches continue to work like normal.
The only problem with this is that if you give yourself extra headroom for brightness, it could be a problem. So if you want to run the bulbs at 80% brightness normally, and have that extra 20% for when you’re vacuuming or something, the rooms gets too bright when using the wall switches.
There’s also some logic to having more bulbs, but run each bulb at lower output. I’ve read it significantly extends the life of the bulbs. The power electronics (capacitors usually) in the bulbs will fail before the LEDs themselves. By running at 80%, you’ll extend the bulb life much more than by 20% of expected life.
@thingsur That makes sense, but unfortunately I do not have fixtures for a lot of bulbs, so I will be using them at 100% most of the time anyway. BTW, I got the bulbs last night and the indeed work as the GE Link and others do. Someone has even created a new custom device type for them and I have on/off and dimming now working. I will pick up a couple more.
Now I could be wrong here but it you have a smart bulb on a dumb switch it will turn on and off by the switch but if the switch is off then you can’t control the light remotely. So to use it the switch would have to stay in the “ON” position all the time.
Yep I just bought a dozen Cree Connected bulbs from HD and got them on my new ST hub last night. I was worried (as was my wife) how they would react to physical dumb switch toggles. Here are my findings:
If my physical (dumb) switch was OFF: ST hub cannot activate them (turn them on or dim them) at all, period - they have no power except to run the radios for ST to detect their state
If my physical (dumb) switch was ON: ST hub can activate them (turn them “Off” / “On” or “dim” them)
If my physical (dumb) switch was ON and I have them ST state of “Off” or “On” or “dim” and I toggle the physical switch to OFF, they all go off. when I turn the physical switch on again they all go on full power.
I agree with everything TheNate1 said except for the part about the bulb radio working with the physical power switch off. The bulb radio won’t operate without power to it…unless I’m missing something (like dimmer switch that still lets a trickle of power through).
Yes this is the problem with smart bulbs, you need to keep power going to them. However the advantages to using them versus a zwave wall switch are:
I can see someone designing a zwave or zigbee switch specially for smart bulbs as they are getting popular. It would keep power constantly on for the smart bulb(s) and the switch itself would not interrupt this. Instead the switch would become a virtual switch that would trigger Smartthings actions.
Centralite recently announced a battery operated zigbee switch you stick overtop of your existing wall switch that looks interesting. I would love to see Smartthings support this when available, but ideally someone comes out with a hard wired switch like I describe in my previous paragraph.
http://www.centralite.com/index.php/products/new-products-for-2015
Hi Paul,
This is exactly what I have been looking for, it seems like an obvious thing. So, I also hope we start seeing more of these come to market.
I’m new to Smartthings and home automation so please excuse my ignorance or if this has been answered elsewhere, but I have a related question to smart lights with normal or “dumb” switches.
Here’s my scenario. I have a hall way that I want to use smart lights in. This hallway has 2 switches (3 way) and I want to control the lights in this hallway independently (hue, brightness, etc). If I turn on the lights via switch, I can use my Smartthings to control the light. if I toggle one of the 2 hallway switches the lights go off and Smartthings will not be able to control the lights until I toggle one of the 2 3-way switches.
My dilemma is this. If I leave the hallway switches in the “ON” position so I’m able to turn the lights on/off via app, my wife (who is arguably not as tech savvy and will not always use an app to turn on lights) will have to toggle the light switch twice in order to get the lights to come on, and will again, use the switch to turn them off, and again, I lose control. 
Is this solved by getting both smart switch AND smart lights in this case? or will I still run into the same issue?
Thanks,
Since getting into ST I have toyed with the idea of losing my light switches entirely, and running smart bulbs from a tablet control center. Why buy an expensive smart dimmer when a cheap tablet does the same thing - plus a whole lot more? Why buy a battery operated Zigbee switch when a tablet can perform that function?
Imagine building a new home, and what you install near the entrance to each room is not a series of switches but a USB power outlet. You hang a $50 tablet on the wall, and that tablet controls all lights, fans, TV, audio etc. You can take it off the wall and put it on your bed stand at night so all the controls are right there for you. It also takes voice commands of course, and tells you in spoken language if there’s a water leak developing or a refrigerator was left open…
Despite the current difficulties with the ST platform, we are at the bleeding edge of this movement. And it is (difficulties aside) mostly working!!
I would say to the developers who have gotten frustrated, I understand your pain. But please, return to development if/when the issues get resolved.
I would also say to ST management: GET IT TOGETHER. Right now, in the wake of the Wink failure, it would be very bad to see ST become unworkable. You have a big opportunity here. Get the platform fixed, and let’s all move forward together. Freeze development for a time if you need to do that to get it fixed, say “we will accept no new programs or devices for the next three months while we track down and correct the current issues”.
But I’ve drifted… Back to lighting. IMO the big issue is lamps. Rather than screw-in smart modules, I would like to see replacements for the entire lamp switch/socket. They should have at minimum two items: one touch control for on/off, and one slide control for dimming. Obviously you would then only need dimmable LEDs, which are far cheaper than smart bulbs.
The following FAQ thread discusses the issues and options and should give you a number of ideas for ways to solve this very common problem.
( this is a clickable link.)
I might have missed this reading through this thread, but can someone explain to me why the lights can’t just use a quick on/off toggle of the hard switch as a toggle of the on/off state of the bulbs??
I used X10 switches for lamps for years (since about 1998) and if the bulb was ON, I could quickly toggle the lamp switch off/on and the bulb would go out but the switch would still react to remote control (since it still had power). If the bulb was OFF, I could do the same action (toggle hard switch off/on) and the bulb would turn ON.
This seems like such a simple firmware feature for any bulb. Is it this way so that I’m forced to buy additional hardware (tap switches, etc)?? If the toggle had a half second window on it for it to function this way, it seems like it would stay good in all situation but a quick power interrupt to the house (which is rare).
I’m looking into the API to see if I can “hack” my Phillips bulbs to make them function this way.
Or did I miss something? And by-the-way Phillips…this is the ONLY reason I haven’t bought another 40+ bulbs for my house… Physical control is such a basic activity requirement for ANY smart home product…
Mike
interestingly, Domitech has just added this exact feature for their new Z wave plus light bulbs. I think right now they’re only available for sale in Europe, though, but they have gone through certification on the US zwave frequency so we can hope they’ll be available in the US as well in the future.
We’ll have to see what happens if this takes off, i’m pretty sure that for some technical reasons this is easier to do with a Z wave bulb than a zigbee bulb, because I’m guessing Phillips specifically would’ve already added it to the Hue line if they could. I don’t think you’ll be able to hack a Philips bulb to do it, but you can try.
Thanks. The “conspiracy theorist” in me says that some business decision overruled the tech folks because the technical person in me can’t see a sensible technical reason why this isn’t possible except for poor technical design which I find unlikely. In the mean time, I’m seriously considering ditching all my Phillips bulbs for this singular reason. Integrating new technology into our lives is supposed to make it EASIER which means existing Activities (i.e. using a hard switch for lights; lamps specifically) must be supported as they are not likely to disappear anytime soon. Would also be great if the bulbs enabled a touch action to toggle the bulb on/off. I know I can buy plug adapters that enable that functionality. I fully suspect the original thought to enable a hard switch on/off toggle is a simple firmware update but would love someone from Phillips to set me straight otherwise. (and btw…if its not possible, I’m most definitely ditching for a product that does support)
I’m totally FOR the addition of tap switches, etc to support scene lighting because that is an added capability. However, adding a soft switch for every lamp that uses a Phillips bulb borders on ridiculous and seems to be a clear lack of insight.
Would love to hear from Phillips on this… should I stay or should I go. Love the bulbs, hate the loss of simple capability.
Cheers
Mike
If you want to hear from Phillips, you should ask them, they’re pretty responsive on their own forums:
https://developers.meethue.com/forum
Now that the Domitech zwave bulb exists, it’s easy to frame the question as “When will you add this feature?” 