ZigBee or Z-Wave smart bulbs?

Devices & Integrations
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

1 Like