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My recent experience with trying to get a working led dimmer combination has almost pushed me to switching to a phillips hue. So not all dials are user friendly

by rocqua 3y ago

My recent experience with trying to get a working led dimmer combination has almost pushed me to switching to a phillips hue. So not all dials are user friendly. I did notice though, that almost all high-end light bulbs are smart bulbs. Getting name-brand good quality dimmable leds is difficult (except for phillips warm-glow, but the compatibility horror of those bulbs is what started me on this journey)

microtonal 3y ago
Philips Hue has so far been an exception to mediocre smart home products. We had Hue at home for ages now, it always works, no lights got deprecated or any of that nonsense, and even though they have a cloud component, it works fine without. The only downside for me is that I don’t use the smart part. So for me they are just good lights. My wife does use the app/widgets, etc.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  All the Hue stuff is actually zigbee under the hood and is totally compatible with any zigbee Hub not just the Phillips one. If you want to do a deep dive one weekend and go completely local control go check out home assistant
- drdaeman 3y ago
  > it always works It mostly works. I’ve had it hiccuping on me, when the switches and lights got unresponsive for a few minutes, for no obvious reason. And a number of times software got out of sync and told me the lights are off when they are actually on, etc. But it’s definitely better than all the competitors I’ve seen.
mleo 3y ago
I have some 11 year old Philips LED bulbs that were early on the LED development and crazy expensive; maybe $60 each. These aren’t Hue, but plain recessed type screw-in bulbs. These have worked consistently great with dimmer switches with no strobing, humming or low voltage issues. I can’t find good bulbs like that anymore. Quality and reliability went down as cost went down and competition went up. I have Hue bulbs in one room, but lag in control of wall switch communicating to adjust lights is terrible compared to direct dimmer control.
alias_neo 3y ago
I've been using Hue for a decade or so now, I can't fault it. I don't use any of the connected stuff and just manage it with the app and local API. I decided to take the hub out of my network a couple of weeks ago and use the Home Assistant SkyConnect to manage by bulbs, switches, light strips etc, it's been a less than stellar experience. The hue hub works very well, it's signal strength is excellent, I had it sitting inside a closed rack and never had an issue, the SkyConnect loses signal to a bulb 2 feet away if you breath on it. Would highly, highly recommend hue to anyone. That said, prices have gone up and bulb quality dropped since Signify took over (many of my bulbs are metal and glass) the newer ones are plastic and plastic for more money, and though none of the original bulbs have failed to date, one of the newer ones randomly cuts out.
- rocqua 3y ago
  The reason I want to avoid Hue is not so much because of network security, but because of simplicity. I've seen a whole lot of packet parsing and RF stuff. I want none of that to be required for my lamp to turn on when I flip a switch. However, it seems like dimmable leds might almost be doing packet parsing over very weird PWM-modulated AC signals in order for the dimmer and LED to cooperate. I like the simplicity of using the power-line from switch to LED, but I hate the ad-hoc nature of the accidental communication, so perhaps it makes sense to upgrade to ZigBee, accepting the complication of RF and network addressing in return for having well specified protocols.
  - alias_neo 3y ago
    Hue is pretty straight forward in that respect. One thing I'd say is that, I've switched to using ZigBee binding so I don't rely on the hub, and even if my automation is down, the buttons bound to the lights in each room can still be used to control them. I lose access to extra features like colour changing etc in that scenario but honestly, after about a decade of experience, I'd suggest not bothering with colour bulbs except for novelty or exceptional cases where you want to add colour accents; 99% of the time in 99% of my home, my family and I use the bulbs in a shade of white. Additionally, Hue added a feature some time ago to configure the "state" the bulbs comes back on when power is cut, so it's quite feasible to continue to use a physical wall switch for normal use and ZigBee other times, with the caveat that by cutting the power to the bulbs you're messing with your ZigBee mesh, so YMMV. Ultimately, aside from my children who enjoy the option to colour the lights in their rooms, I could get away with smart switches instead of smart bulbs, and I've just bought some Hue-compatible ones for the living room, landing and similar where the chandeliers have large numbers (5+) of bulbs that would be expensive to replace with Hue and where very little advantage would be taken of the features other than dimming.
bombcar 3y ago
Dimmable LEDs is basically impossible to do well without a smart bulb because of how they work. Hue is among the best, but even that is making me tempted to replace everything with ancient incandescents and oil lamps. Smart devices are the closest thing to driving me to be a Luddite because nothing is remotely as annoying as having to reboot and update your lightbulb.
- tguvot 3y ago
  I just went though it. As long as dimmer has neutral or alternatively you connect bypass they work. Tried with 4 different dimmers

by rocqua 3y ago

microtonal 3y ago

Philips Hue has so far been an exception to mediocre smart home products. We had Hue at home for ages now, it always works, no lights got deprecated or any of that nonsense, and even though they have a cloud component, it works fine without. The only downside for me is that I don’t use the smart part. So for me they are just good lights. My wife does use the app/widgets, etc.

ChainOfFools 3y ago
All the Hue stuff is actually zigbee under the hood and is totally compatible with any zigbee Hub not just the Phillips one. If you want to do a deep dive one weekend and go completely local control go check out home assistant
drdaeman 3y ago
> it always works It mostly works. I’ve had it hiccuping on me, when the switches and lights got unresponsive for a few minutes, for no obvious reason. And a number of times software got out of sync and told me the lights are off when they are actually on, etc. But it’s definitely better than all the competitors I’ve seen.

mleo 3y ago

I have some 11 year old Philips LED bulbs that were early on the LED development and crazy expensive; maybe $60 each. These aren’t Hue, but plain recessed type screw-in bulbs. These have worked consistently great with dimmer switches with no strobing, humming or low voltage issues. I can’t find good bulbs like that anymore. Quality and reliability went down as cost went down and competition went up. I have Hue bulbs in one room, but lag in control of wall switch communicating to adjust lights is terrible compared to direct dimmer control.

alias_neo 3y ago

I've been using Hue for a decade or so now, I can't fault it. I don't use any of the connected stuff and just manage it with the app and local API. I decided to take the hub out of my network a couple of weeks ago and use the Home Assistant SkyConnect to manage by bulbs, switches, light strips etc, it's been a less than stellar experience. The hue hub works very well, it's signal strength is excellent, I had it sitting inside a closed rack and never had an issue, the SkyConnect loses signal to a bulb 2 feet away if you breath on it. Would highly, highly recommend hue to anyone. That said, prices have gone up and bulb quality dropped since Signify took over (many of my bulbs are metal and glass) the newer ones are plastic and plastic for more money, and though none of the original bulbs have failed to date, one of the newer ones randomly cuts out.

rocqua 3y ago
The reason I want to avoid Hue is not so much because of network security, but because of simplicity. I've seen a whole lot of packet parsing and RF stuff. I want none of that to be required for my lamp to turn on when I flip a switch. However, it seems like dimmable leds might almost be doing packet parsing over very weird PWM-modulated AC signals in order for the dimmer and LED to cooperate. I like the simplicity of using the power-line from switch to LED, but I hate the ad-hoc nature of the accidental communication, so perhaps it makes sense to upgrade to ZigBee, accepting the complication of RF and network addressing in return for having well specified protocols.
- alias_neo 3y ago
  Hue is pretty straight forward in that respect. One thing I'd say is that, I've switched to using ZigBee binding so I don't rely on the hub, and even if my automation is down, the buttons bound to the lights in each room can still be used to control them. I lose access to extra features like colour changing etc in that scenario but honestly, after about a decade of experience, I'd suggest not bothering with colour bulbs except for novelty or exceptional cases where you want to add colour accents; 99% of the time in 99% of my home, my family and I use the bulbs in a shade of white. Additionally, Hue added a feature some time ago to configure the "state" the bulbs comes back on when power is cut, so it's quite feasible to continue to use a physical wall switch for normal use and ZigBee other times, with the caveat that by cutting the power to the bulbs you're messing with your ZigBee mesh, so YMMV. Ultimately, aside from my children who enjoy the option to colour the lights in their rooms, I could get away with smart switches instead of smart bulbs, and I've just bought some Hue-compatible ones for the living room, landing and similar where the chandeliers have large numbers (5+) of bulbs that would be expensive to replace with Hue and where very little advantage would be taken of the features other than dimming.

bombcar 3y ago

Dimmable LEDs is basically impossible to do well without a smart bulb because of how they work. Hue is among the best, but even that is making me tempted to replace everything with ancient incandescents and oil lamps. Smart devices are the closest thing to driving me to be a Luddite because nothing is remotely as annoying as having to reboot and update your lightbulb.

tguvot 3y ago
I just went though it. As long as dimmer has neutral or alternatively you connect bypass they work. Tried with 4 different dimmers