ZigBee or Z-Wave smart bulbs?

Devices & Integrations
1

I’m looking for Zigbee or Z-Wave smart bulbs that already have available the right drivers for the post-Groovy world. Whenever I search I find Wi-Fi bulbs which I don’t want.

I need to be able to control the brightness and ideally color temperature. I do not need color. I need both E26/A19 and E26/BR30 bulbs.

Can someone suggest a reliable brand?

Thank you.

2

Philips Hue Zigbee bulbs will connect to the ST hub. I use 2 in my family room and I do not have a Hue Hub. Not sure you will get all the control you are looking for though without the Hue Hub.

3

I thought Hue were Wi-Fi, or do I have that wrong?

4

A lot of manufacturers are about to release new products supporting the matter standard, so if you have an aeotec or V3 hub you might want to wait for those.

5

Hue is Zigbee

6

And Bluetooth, just to be complete. Latest generation are anyway. But of course BT is irrelevant when it comes to SmartThings.

7
  1. Although most hue bulbs are Zigbee and technically can be connected directly to a smartthings hub, neither company recommends that because there is a buffering issue which can cause messages from other Zigbee devices that try to use them as repeaters to get lost. This makes it look like the other device is bad when the problem is really that the hue doesn’t repeat well except on their own network.

There are definitely some people who have it working, but it’s just a matter of the exact details of how their network is laid out.

The following information is old, but still valid.

FAQ: Are Smart Bulbs Repeaters? (Updated 2019: the new answer is yes, but may be inconsistent)

  1. the hue bridge uses Zigbee or Bluetooth to communicate with its own devices. (it forms its own mini network) it uses Wi-Fi to communicate with other systems, either cloud to cloud or over the local LAN.

  2. there are very few Z wave smartbulbs anymore, Zigbee pretty much owns that space. And I don’t know any with controllable color temperature.

  3. the bulbs that work with the hue bridge should work well with the smartthings integration through the hue bridge, so that’s one option.

Otherwise I would expect Innr, sylvania, or sengled to work fine with a generic Zigbee driver, but then I would’ve expected IKEA to as well, and some people have been reporting problems with those. :thinking:

(Osram and Sylvania are the same manufacturer.)

So maybe look for a custom driver where people can verify that the specific model is working. Check on the quick browse list for lighting:

https://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Quick_Browse_Lists_for_Edge_Drivers

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Hue bulbs are Zigbee, at least the ones I have are. I have been using them with ST (I don’t have a Hue Hub) since 2019 and have not had any issues at all. I have always just used the generic ST driver. The driver was auto migrated some time ago. Here is a link to the specific Hue bulbs I’m using - Hue bulb

9

I neglected to mention I have a V2 hub, so Matter doesn’t matter :smiley: .

I’ll check out some of the suggestions, thanks (although maybe I’ll just expand my collection of Wyze gear and forget about SmartThings for this particular need, except it would be nice to have some of the lights turn on with motion).

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10

If you use Amazon routines, you should be able to have a ST-controlled motion sensor trigger a wyze bulb using an Alexa routine (not a SmartThings routine).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G2PYLKJN3XVZ55EQ

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My understanding is the V2 hub supports matter over wifi.

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12

Correct. And your smartthings account can also work with thread devices that use matter provided you have a separate thread border router. That could be an echo or Google smart speaker that is a thread border router, for example. Or a smartthings station. Or an aqara or Tuya or ikea Dirigera hub that is a thread border router. There will be a lot of choices once matter is widely deployed. :sunglasses:

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13

I think my head is about to explode :grin:

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