Wow I had no idea Hue dropped that much! I’ve been out of the loop for over a year after getting discouraged with this whole thing; everything would work and then not work. Do I need the Hue hub or will the Hue bulbs pair to ST’s?
Thanks guys!
@antman2 you can do both. I am fond of the Hue Hub+Bulbs. My neighbor has Hue Bulbs tied to SmartThings. I think a year later, he would now prefer the Hue Hub route, but, he feels that his automations work better since they are directly paired – based on nothing but banter.
Really, it’s up to you, I guess. I have the Hue Hub in case I bail on SmartThings.
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@johnessey thank you. So basically it’s just like the TCP except Hue actually works? I use my TCP App for the outside lights, but I have the TCP lights set up with hello home and it sucks when it doesn’t work!
yep, pretty much that. I have less failure with Hue than TCP. But lately, re-authorization has made them fairly solid in state and function (like actually turning on). A bit more latency in successfully issuing commands to TCP, but they work better now.
Hue has been rock solid, just that weird authorization thing from a week ago, but by far great experience. I dont have TCP on any primary lights, and have since taken to buying Hue bulbs when I can. I’m done with the GE bulbs (which work well, but dimming isnt that great).
Good luck!
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Awesome! I have close to 40 TCP bulbs so their my primary as you can imagine. I went into IDE and assigned all my lights to my hub and re authorized the TCP App in ST’s and since then I haven’t had an issue. Actually this might be the longest run I’ve had with them working without re-authorizing. I guess I’m just waiting for them to stop working.
Thanks again!
I haven’t had to reauthorize for awhile. Then I saw this thread had some activity. And sure enough, TCP failed tonight. Had to reauthorize. 
Edit - never mind, re authorizing didn’t even fix it.
I’ve been having to power cycle the TCP hub and then reauthorizing in ST to get things going again. When even the TCP remote won’t work ,you know it is just time to move on.
It magically started working this morning. I keep buying GE dimmer switches to replace my TCP but every time a dimmer arrives the TCP is working so I install the dimmer elsewhere.
TCP will be kicked out of my home soon.
Just tossing this out for chat, since there’s some renewed interested in TCP.
I sometimes believe that TCP is doing updates on their end, and, in turn some local TCP things (like the app) do not work until a power cycle of the hub. When I encountered my most recent issue, I had no luck using TCP lights on any other platform (not just SmartThings).
TCP bulbs would work in the TCP app, but not in Muzzley, Wink or Yonomi, and obviously SmartThings. I dont use any of the 3 other platforms nearly as much, but I’m considering moving a lot of my ‘automations’ to their applications and / or using Alexa/Echo for control. This whole ‘automation’ thing just seems wonky at times, and I’m tired of spending cycles dealing with support when I’m home.
Anyways, things are working in TCP now, I noticed my hub had a firmware update, and I wonder if it needs rebooted to take effect. While we’re all rabid fans of SmartThings, and I often blame the integration of ST>TCP as the issue, lately I’ve noticed isolated issues with TCP.
Just a thought.
I really really really like the dimming levels of TCP, and it’s hard to get rid of them since I can buy them for cheap (sub $10 a bulb at times). But my primary application I’m using them with often gives me weird results, that’s all.
Glad to see this thread with new life!
Cheers!
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Good morning!
My TCP bulbs stopped working last night. I’ve rebooted ST and the TCP Hub. No luck. I can’t even control the bulbs using the TCP app. I wonder if TCP pushed a bad firmware update recently?
-Rob
Recently got TCP hub and bulb really cheap at Home depot clearance section and added them to ST using the official (i assume) smartapp. But it loses connection to the hub way too often and never recovers it by itself. I think it happens when connection is lost by physical switch turned off and back on. TCP hub seems to always regain connection without reboot or resync. Wink app, which is also controlling TCP, also reports lost connection and recommends pressing the sync button on TCP hub but regardlessly lights still can be controlled by Wink.
Smarthings, however, never regains connection by itself, nor it can control the lights. Log is flooded with error code 400 (or 500), yet it doesn’t recommend any course of action how to fix it. I don’t know where this smartapp came from but it feels like a amateur authored hack rather than a solid official support. Anybody using TCP bulbs successfully with ST?
No. You are better off returning and getting something else if you can. The frustrating part is that ST points the finger at TCP. The interesting part is my friend has their TCP bulbs hooked up to a Wink hub and never has a problem…
I replaced my TCP bulbs with the GE Link bulbs. So far no problems.
I’d take it back. I’d grab the Hue white lights instead. TCP bulbs are decent, and I’ve had mostly good luck but given some support issues I would (if I could go back in time) just grab a bunch of Hue lights (or GE lights).
Thing is, the TCP lights dim really well, low light… the GE lights are bright. Hue lights dim super low as well. In some rooms I put in GE lights, but in others where I use more low-light, TCP or Hue.
Hope that helps!
Thank you for the advice. It was clearance, too cheap to pass (hub+2bulbs for $15) so no harm done. Probably will use it with wink. And yes I do like TCP’s dimming much better than GE link. (still too bright at the dimmest)
I’m just disappointed that ST’s official TCP support is so flaky. Not sure if ‘plays well with others’ is true for other 3rd party products.
It gets worse. TCP has announced support will end for connected lamps by the end of the month.
I believe that what they are dropping support for is the cloud service. You’ll still be able to run them locally, at least for now. ( this should break the wink integration as well as the smartthings integration, and anything else that used a cloud to cloud method.)
Yeah… the app is dead as well. Love the rather matter of fact comment…
“appreciate your understanding as the Internet of Things (IoT) market continues to evolve.”
Maybe that should have been “revolv”.
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Well crap. 
I was going to post this, but it may not work starting in June…
Hi everyone,
I got so sick of TCP bulbs not working correctly I dove into the source and fixed some things. I’m submitting to official SmartThings repo but if you don’t want to wait you can use my code today. Just go to https://github.com/mmacaula/tcp-bulbs and follow the instructions there. It’s basically just a couple of changes from the original. I’ve been using it for the past several days and not once have I had to re-install my bulbs!
Mike
Makes me wonder who’s gonna get “revolved” next. 
Nest seemed unstoppable but not so much anymore. Founder Tony Fadell is out and there is arstechnica article about how Google poured money and resources into the team yet nothing came off of it.
By the way if TCP folds their cloud side service and abandon the IoT products I hope they would open source it so that people can run their own cloud service and plug it into Wink or ST.
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