I know enough to be dangerous, so consider me a novice. Explanation below. I’m looking for no hassle light bulbs for home assistant.
Are there any smart light bulbs that do not require the use of an application to start some sort of setup for home assistant specifically with a Zigbee controller? I’m getting increasingly frustrated by not only the confusion generally in the spacedue to the high number of options and increasing centralization, but also just trying to find something that works without an additional hassle. Any recommendations appreciated by US based if that helps.
I’m using a conbee 2 controller for Zigbee with a Raspberry Pi 3B running home assistant.
Most frequently I’m annoyed because I got something that uses hubspace, which in theory I thought should work, but the application is required to set up the bulb and it will not run on my phone at all, and I’d prefer not to use it in the first place.
Ikea Tradfri have been borderline flawless for me. My older Hue bulbs were good, too, but can’t be reset without unpairing from the hub (and no idea what they’ll do today with the new registration requirements).
Home Depot used to carry some ecosmart zigbee bulbs that were cheap and great, but they don’t seem to exist anymore.
But with everything left… Ikea is my gold standard.
To follow up here, the Ikea TRÅDFRI line worked very well once I’d worked out setting up “Mosquitto Broker” and “Zigbee2MQTT” as addons in Home Assistant (and, crucially, removing the “zigbee home assistant” ZHA addon). This worked for bulbs, buttons, and outlets.
Thank’s to everyone for your comments and leading me to something that worked.
Awesome! Glad it’s working for you :)
I went from deCONZ to ZHA to Zigbee2mqtt and… There’s no comparison, imo. Z2M has been effectively flawless for me. The only problems I’ve had are more “me problems” like weird system hiccups that a reboot fixed.
I just bought a few more Tradfri bulbs today too, bc they can get down to a solid 2200K for that cozy late night warm color.
I’ve got a bunch of Innr bulbs. They work nicely
I have been able to just pair any zigbee device to my conbee zigbee stick. All work with the default home assistant zigbee automation. I avoid extra Hubs like it’s the plague.
But I’m still looking for EU/NL lights that go above 800lm and are not super expensive and with an E27 connection
Philip Hue bulbs. The inclusion of the ability to have them retain their state after power interruption is worth the premium (i.e. you can sleep through thunderstorms without waking up due to lights).