How can a light bulb be smart?
Is it silently working on some fiendishly complex problem when you go to bed.
Beware, one day the lightbulbs of the world will combine as one and take over the world.

Looks interesting that..
I looked at doing similar with my Pi before I got SmartThings.
If I was wanting a motion sensor in the hall for instance would that mean I would need a pi,board & sensor all hooked up in the hall?

Xiaomi has submitted a device handler to Samsung which is currently waiting for Samsung's approval. Some say that it has been declined by Samsung saying they only work with Companies in US and South Korea. Not sure where it is going.

correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the smartthing hub a zigbee light controller? The milight bulbs are WiFi so bypass the need for a zigbee hub. Do you know if Samsung are working on compatability with Milight?

I have a xiaomi yeelight that is rated at 600 lumens. At at it's brightest white or yellow colour temperate, it's still too dim on it's own, even for my small living room.

The Ikea bulbs DO start in last config. That was one of my concerns. I picked up a lot at the weekend and am impressed.
For reference I have 433Mhz wall switches in my home, and went back to a standard switch to try these out. Best bit is they are 2-way comms (unlike my 433Mhz stuff) and the ability to do colour temperature too is a nice touch. Sure they will be offline if someone switches them off at the wall, but I think these are easier for a visitor to use than my old wireless switches.
Another challenge you have with wall switches is that not all are compatible with LED, and dimming LEDs on 230v is more complex than doing it in the bulb!

I was against the hue / in bulb setup, but with these restoring last config at power on I am coming around to liking this setup better!

Not only that but they require a neutral in the light switch - something that isn't standard in the UK as our lighting wiring differs from the US.

why is this thread marked expired? these are still available.

How do these stack up to the MiLights (which also do colour bulbs and strips at a fraction of the cost of hue, and seem to perform better as they will power up in the last floor config, so you don't need to replace your mechanical switches if you don't want to)

Smart light switches are much better.....as you can simply control whatever it switches....and not have to bother with expensive bulbs....here is a link to everything you ever need to know....
https://www.cnet.com/news/which-smart-bulbs-should-you-use-with-alexa/

Bit awkward replying to myself; but Trajectio on Kickstarter have just announced support for the Ikea Tradfri bulbs. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1109816630/trajectio-motion-powered-hue-and-sonos-smart-home

Not sure they got any better with firmware updates. All three of mine didn't work. I tried then with both v1 and v2 hue bridges.

Mine work fine. Had some issues with one but moved it closer to the bridge and its okay now.

Thanks for that... really great description and it sounds like you have found a fun hobby - I'm impressed with what you learned! For me, if i'd have to buy a Pi etc, I'm going to stick with Trajectio (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1109816630/trajectio-motion-powered-hue-and-sonos-smart-home) since I just want it to work and it looks so simple to setup.

RM Pro integration can be a bit flaky at times. I use it with my projector screen, but some times I have to issue to command twice or thrice to actually work. I think there are some xiaomi zigbee switches as well. Not sure if they work with smartthings yet.

Also smartthings will not know if an RM Pro switch is not turned off through smarttthings.

The lightify colour bulbs are useless when connected to philips hue bridge. If you use them to set daylight after a little while they switch back to warm white. I have tried 3 colour bulbs and all had the same problem. I have 3 tunable white osram bulbs which don't do this.

I returned all the osram colour ones I had, but got another one for smartthings now. Yet to test it.

They work well with smartthings.

To be honest i had no programming experience, then i bought a Pi and this kit, which has some guides pasted further down the page - https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/set-up-kits/project-kits/raspberry-pi-youtube-workshop-kit
After a couple of hours messing around, i learnt i could make the motion sensor trigger a http command which turned my hue lights on (https://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/getting-started) The rest then followed and i found a new obsession/hobby.
In terms of schedules, that's where Domoticz would come in. Smart Things is a nicer package and easier to setup, but the hardware its compatible with will possibly cost more; Using Domoticz and extra hardware (RFlink, ESP's, arduinos etc) you can make anything do anything. Like VBV, i have a similar setup. I have a light sensor upstairs when sends it's readings to domoticz. When the light levels are low enough and i go into my bedroom, the lights will turn on. When it gets later on..the lights will turn on but a bit dimmer. Then after 11pm i have them come on really dim.
If this wasn't a hobby of mine i'd buy a Smart Things setup, because god knows it'd stop me scratching my head and getting annoyed when a new project doesn't work like i want it to :P

can anybody confirm working with smartthings?

No, just an enthusiast. Also known as a geek in some circles!

Yeah, they're currently about £22 on Amazon so they're not too bad for the price considering you get colour for the price you only get Cool-Warm White for most other brands. I'm waiting for the Innr bulb to drop a little bit as I've heard a lot of good things about it.

I use smartthings and you can control lighting based on many parameters. In my setup, i have lights on in bedroom for motion only between 8am and midnight and only in home mode. So they don't turn on during the night. Also i have my landing area lights to turn on at 10% in night mode of the is motion. It's highly customisable. I think any other home automation hub provides similar options to configure. No programming experience is required, but you should be willing to play with the settings available and explore the community to create an ideal setup that works for you.

lifx is better than hue in terms of colour reproduction, but expensive. you don't need a hub with lifx though.

i have a mix of hue, lifx, lightify and IKEA bulbs working together at the moment.

Thanks for that, it seems Hue are the leaders at the moment in terms of quality and feature set.

There's a lot of talk about motion sensors...For people willing to put work a small amount of work in and have fun learning, you can effectively make your own motion sensors for cheap.. say £15 initially and then £5 for each PIR after that. Using an Esp8266-01, a cheap arduino, an LDR, 433mhz receiver and a cheap 433 pir (all from ebay) I made my own motion sensors to turn lights on, depending on the ambient light. Now I use Domoticz on a Pi, an RFLink transceiver and 433mhz PIR sensors instead.
The latter is more expensive, but allows customizations limited to your own imagination. Google is your friend... If you have time and little money then you can do this for cheap. If you have money and little time then just buy the smart things or hue sensors.

The Lightify are the RGBW bulbs and they are not great, switching between colours isn't very smooth and there's a slight buzzing when it's set at 100% brightness on blue end of the white. I paid £20 each though a d they live in my study and front room, so aren't used as much as the Hue.

No bayonet versions or am I going mad? Whole house is BC, what a bind that will be with silly adaptors!

The beauty of this setup is that I could use all the existing light fittings, like the kitchen lights with GU10 fittings. I can also control lights plugged into RF sockets, or anything else for that matter. The RM Pro does IR as well, so I can use it to turn the TV on too. Hue seems like a good solution, but I just can't justify the cost to do all the lights I'd want to.

I'm following Trajectio closely on Kickstarter and they are confident they will support the Ikea bulbs too. It seems everyone is keen to get onto these... I doubt Ikea will miss that opportunity.

If you are interested: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1109816630/trajectio-motion-powered-hue-and-sonos-smart-home

By the way, how do you find Osram lightify in comparison to hue?

These might end up being supported by Hue if Ikea get around to doing a firmware update for them.

I've got Hue mostly, with some Osram Lightify in the mix but was looking at something like this for my kitchen, bathroom and some outdoor lights that just won't be cost effective for Hue.

Only slightly cheaper than Hue really and they don't seem very good. When I looked at them in store of the 3 lights 1 would only turn on/off with no dimming, another the dimming worked but was very erratic and one worked fine.

A Hue starter kit with Hub, 2 Bulbs and Dimmer is currently on £10 more.
Plus you can always get cheaper bulbs from Innr (£19 compared to £15 for Ikea) considering the life of LED bulbs it's not a lot of money.

Some things are cheaper like motion sensor but the lack of colour bulbs, LED strips and things like IFTTT and 3rd party app support (along with my poor experience with it) means I'd go with Hue anytime over this.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M1S0BYI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They were £11.91 when I bought them, so have gone up slightly. I've replaced all my switches with these now.

something tells me your a programmer...

Where do you get the switches so cheap?

So if I were to replace all the lights in my flat with smart bulbs then control them through google assistant (not got Google Home, so just assistant on a phone) I'd need... a smart things hub for ~£100 and then bulbs for each light fitting (13 GU10s, 4 B22s or whatever the standard bayonet is called) for ~£200, then if I wanted PIR in the bathrooms and hallway there's no way of doing that right now? That sound right to everybody? Any better/cheaper solutions out there?

Light bulb - heavy bulb .....

Perhaps 'awful' is a tad harsh, but things like 'seems to be' 'we haven't seen' 'we assumed' really? Granted it was written prior to being publicly released here, but some of what is written there is simply not true *now* and shouldn't be used to influence a decision, it's clearly written towards promoting hue at the expense of ikea. I'm not bashing hue I use it myself, but you said and they are.

Ok cheers

A person having a bright idea is always represented as a lightbulb moment. Don't underestimate the intelligence of these bulbs. The end is nigh.

Does these work with HomeKit ? Thanks

Me too... take note everyone! haha

Oh wow - that looks great, thanks!

I have just swiped the last early bird kit - I hope it takes off...

I agree, although from experience it was the most common scenario and I begrudge using the light switch when I've invested in smart bulbs. The Hue app is so slow to connect that it is really frustrating to keep getting the phone out and open the app. The motion sensors look good but would cost £204 to kit out my home... I've pledged for this which seems a smarter way of doing it, since I have Sonos too: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1109816630/trajectio-motion-powered-hue-and-sonos-smart-home

It's really not awful, it depends on what you value: time, money, feature set, or maybe a combination of all. I prioritise my time, the features, then price. Like I said though - do your research - if you just want a fairly basic solution then yes these will work fine but I was flagging that these are not a straight up swap, Hue bulbs have loads of additional features that you just won't get with these bulbs. Can you price me a comparison for colour bulbs? No? Because they don't exist.

Guaranteed to be smarter than a Brexit voter.

Be interested to see it these do work with the echo dot...got a yeelight but these are now comparable in cost.

Someone did a review of these compared to hue and they really aren’t any cheaper when you start factoring everything in - do your research before committing to any solution

well that's a different scenario altogether - I'd suggest using light switches or motion sensors for the different zones or rooms. Hue make a decent dimmer and excellent motion sensor (although a little pricey). whatever you choose will be more efficient than walking around flicking all the light switches.

How can a light bulb be smart?
Is it silently working on some fiendishly complex problem when you go to bed.
Beware, one day the lightbulbs of the world will combine as one and take over the world.

Everything works with the echo or dot or whatever voice control your using. And you can set up the bulbs to work as one if you bought more than one. They respond very fast.

Yeelights are cheap, they work well and now have an official Alexa skill.

Could you not make lots of groups? E.g. "Lounge only" which turns everything off except the lounge.

But what if I want to turn the office and bathroom off, but leave the lounge on?

Just create a grouup called “everything” in alexa and it will turn it all off

I am hoping they open up to Google Home soon, this is a real Hue killer when it comes to price. £189 for 60% of my house lighting to be "Smart" is a bargain. Just the kitchen and bathrooms with GU10's to complete the house, which can wait a few months for further funds.

Do you know if the sensor also works with ST?

I saw on a YouTube review you have to buy the £15 remote control even if you only want to use the app!

Quick question guys. Is it possible to have smart bulbs from different companies work in conjunction with each other if you have their hubs?

For example can i set a particular scene if i have hue bulbs and this in one room with both the hue hub and smartthings hub? Thanks.

Do they work with Amazon Alexa??