I am renovating my basement and was confused by the various smartlighting options. Hoping I can get some suggestions, so I can narrow down (or discover new options) on the products.
Here are some options I considered.
Osram tunable recessed lighting fixture. I love the tunability factor, but am not sure if I need to buy specific bulls for it to work, or, if the bulbs are part of the product.
Use regular fixtures with hue bulbs. Will this work or do I need special fixtures for the hue bulbs.
I want to be able to do the following, any suggestions is much appreciated-
Use 8 lights in the media room. Be able to create scenes so I can group the 8 differently to create different lighting options for different uses.
I want to be able to create a dance floor in my kids playroom(aka different colors). It would be nice if the are options to synchronize to music like the hue.
@JDRoberts. Thank you so much for the response. I have seen so many posts where you have given precise, thorough and helpful advice. You are simply great.
Having said that, a little follow up question - if I buy these fixtures and use one regular(non zwave) light switch for all 8 fixtures, would I be group them differently, so I. Can setup scenes to operate different groups for different usecases?
Yes, you will be able to individually control each light if you use the Osram lightify (or hue bulbs). And you can put them into whatever groupings you want. The question then is how will you initiate that control?
Will you add an echo Dot or a Google Home and just trigger different combinations by voice?
Will you want to get a multi button switch that can trigger different scenes?
It’s not a good idea to cut power to smart bulbs frequently, as you can shorten the life of the bulbs because of the inrush current to the radio each time the power is restored. So it’s fine if you have just one light switch, but I would recommend putting a smart switch cover on top of that so that you can still turn off all the lights or turn on all the lights without actually cutting the current to them.
The real question is how do you want to control the individual scenes? You could do it just with your phone. You could also do it with voice. If you want to have a wall mount controller that can trigger different scenes, there are several different options.
There is an 8 button battery-operated remotec device were each button allows for tap, double tap, or long hold, giving you 24 different control options on one device which is about the size of a regular light switch. It’s very popular.
Another popular alternative is just to use a wall mount wifi phone and put the scene management app on that. Or use smarttiles with a virtual switch to represent different scenes.
There are a number of other possible devices as well.
So having one non-networked switch just for backup power control is fine. You’ll want a different device that doesn’t actually cut power to the bulbs for everyday use. And then you may or may not want a wall-mounted device that lets you select different color scenes.
