I have been holding off on color bulbs for a long time, $40-50 per bulb still seems crazy to me. Hue still seems to be the clear leader in this technology though. Amazon has Sengled Element Color Plus on deal of the day for $22.49
So will I regret it i I buy anything else… and eventually spend the $$$ for Hue? Honestly I haven’t really seen what any of these can do other than the bulbs on display at stores. So what do you all do with them, can any of these do…
-sync to movie like “ambilight” (requires PC to play movie along with software? or xbox?)
-sync to music (requires mic somewhere?)
-continuous slow fade for “ambiance”
-synchronized scene changes (all bulbs going to desired colors at same time
I have a couple Leeo plugin alerts setup through IFTTT to change colors when SHM arms or alarm triggers, wanting more than that.
I think Hue is the only one with the fancy movie, music, rotating colors, etc. functions that can also be synce to smartthings. Sylvania, Sengled, monoprice, etc. is fully dependent on SmartThings for color coontrol.
The zwave bulbs will be good Z wave repeaters. The sengled bulbs are not repeaters at all. So some people will select the zwave bulbs for areas where they need another zwave repeater.
As far as I know, the only easy way to get things like sync to music is to have bulbs which join to the hue bridge. Then you will use an app that can process the synchronization. That’s all based on music streaming through the device that the app is running on, though. So that may not be what you were looking for. While there are some apps which would just use the microphone, they are generally less successful in sound synchronization.
Synchronized color changes are also much easier with the hue bridge because it will do “groupcasting” ( sending the same command to multiple devices at once.) Last time I looked, smartthings did not do that, so you do you sometimes get a “popcorn effect“ where one bulb changes before another windows.
Thanks for the tip on these bulbs. I just ordered 2 more.
I have a couple and really like them for their simplicity and reliability. I am not doing anything fancy with them, but they do work well. Yesterday, I had a water sensor detect moisture in my HVAC drip pan. The lights turned RED immediately which was a nice indicator that something was wrong in the house. Of course, my phone also had a push notification of the event.
There are a few community apps and DT to sync, flash, rotate the color of Sylvania and other color bulbs. Of course using these eliminates local execution. It completely depends on how you want to use the lights. Using different colors for different alerts will work with any color bulbs.
I have no personal opinion/experience with the Sengled.
As for syncing with music or TV, I’m pretty sure that is a Hue only app.
