Once in a blue moon I have to reboot the Mi-Light hub - but otherwise it works fine. I did have an issue with sometimes one of 3 lights in a group won’t turn on or off - very annoying - but I overcame that by setting an automation to turn the light on/off 2 more times after a short delay. That never fails for me.
This is what I’m considering. It only breaks like, once a month. So it’s not a huge deal. Sending the commands multiple times would resolve it though, I’m pretty sure.
At one time here it was doing it every day - hence the automation. Damn annoying. I had been thinking of the DIY hub but playing with a nodemcu I find the wifi is pretty weak anyway so not sure that would help.
I was initially resending each payload twice with 100 milliseconds delays but didn’t found this sufficiently reliable (sometimes HA would loop and bulbs start flickering).
I’ve since set another gateway to same command topic (however this one with update and state topics disabled in order not to stress on MQTT broker) to increase range and ensure payloads reach the bulbs. This ends up with a success rate very close to 100%.
It also depends on the fixtures: I generally found FUT103 bulbs (GU10) unreliable; FUT105 don’t lose packets too often and they’re quite bright at 1,100 lm (there aren’t too many other smart lights with such brightness); I never had any issue with FUT045 led controllers, however it is a little more difficult to mount them in an old house which was fitted for bulbs.
I think my resend interval is 3 and 9 seconds and I am using the ibox2 so not MQTT. Like I said it hasn’t failed in over a year now - 100% success.
Oh I use GU10 RGBWW and also 2 other normal RGBWW.
If referring to Wifi controllers (mostly with ESP8266 chipsets) then I don’t see it as an improvement (current Wifi was simply not meant for a plethora of connected devices for which instant feedback is more important than bandwidth; having to share spectrum with neighbors’s router and all sorts of other technologies that cause interference is not ideal) so this mostly leaves Zigbee, Z-wave, Bluetooth or IR controlled lights but each of these require its own hub (or phone, case of Bluetooth; but it is kind of dumb keeping a flashlight at hand all the time to help find the phone in order to turn the lights on 
).
MiLight also has the advantage of not needing a hub to control lights if using physical remotes (either handheld or wall mounted) so it works without any software whatsoever case a power failure knocked out the home automation controller. As it has native use of up to four different group IDs, it can be used with both individual rooms remotes (B0/FUT088) and multiple groups (B4/B8/FUT089/FUT092) which would allow for centralized control of lights without going to each room.
Fortunately, home automation software such as HA allow for “democratization” of smart homes as they can allow for much cheaper devices to be used in similar ways as high end ones. Most Hue products are ~ 100 EUR where I live, with prices falling to 60-80 EUR only during sales periods so this makes for a rather difficult decision to invest in; MiLight FUT105 are around 16 EUR (FUT014 is half of this price but also half of brightness) and FUT045 led controller around 9 EUR all year long.
Another example would be smart thermostats: Nest gets to roughly 400 EUR while a simple wireless relay (made of a ESP8266 and a relay) is around 5 EUR and HA has all the necessary logic to control it in a similar fashion (or even better, as it can use the input from devices for which Nest doesn’t have native support).
I haven’t mentioned copper for lights (which would be one of the most reliable options) as it is a little more difficult to retrofit an entire house in order to place the necessary UTP cables; however, from cost and reliability points of view, it is unbeatable. I setup an Ambilight clone for a non-Philips TV with APA102 led strip on Rpi2 and an USB video grabber and response time is very good (can be controlled by the content on the HDMI input without any DRM imposed limitations or from HA as a regular light source). As, for general purpose Rpi is overkill for a led controller, Arduinos with ethernet shields could be used instead (and boot time is much lower).
2 Likes
An arduino with an Ethernet board is almost the same price, if not more, than a low end rip. Better suggestion would be a esp8266 module.
Where are y’all located? Looking up mi bulbs on amazon, all I’m seeing is 220V bulbs. Do they come in 110?
All MiLight bulbs I have are 88-265V (and I don’t see any efficiency reason to do separate 110 V and 230 V versions).
1 Like
Just to add to the debate:
A small review of milight/limitlessled lights.
Got 14, for about 3 years, as mains in the living-, movie-, and bedroom
(12 milight gu10 rgb+cct , 2 led strips, 1 old and 1 new controller, controlled by sidoh’s esp8266 milight hub)
The good:
- Dirt cheap
- Color is reasonably correct.
- Brightness is really good.
- Sidoh’s esp8266 milight hub is a godsend, much more reliable then the ibox.
The Bad:
- Since some time, they have started ‘squeeling’ (high frequency condensator noise) between ~30-85% power. Every gu10 is doing it by now. Its maddening.
- 2 gu 10’s, since some time, refuse to go off depending on brightness or color(they are each in a different group of 4 lights, and the rest never fail to listen)
- The 2 above issues seem related to aging of the lights.
I’ll be switching to zigbee, I think, as for me these issues are becoming unacceptable. Might test with one of the mueller lights and one of the hue’s to see what looks nicest
I think GU10 has a design flaw and it heats upp (haven’t been able to consistently send commands to these bulbs). FUT105 (E27) are in a whole different league 
For the goodies part (at least when combined with ESPMH) you forgot to mention that MiLight is among the few lighting systems that is immune to power outages as it can be used without any network gear (just pair the wall mounted or the handheld remote with the bulb and then ESPMH is able to sniff on their communication). If there’s an electricity failure for more than several hours it is likely that any UPS battery powering the home automation would be drawn so there would be no smart control for the lights. Although Philips remotes can be directly paired with the bulbs, then there no home automation control. I can only think of IR or 433 Mhz controllers that don’t require a hub to operate but still can be integrated in HA.
You could try Gledopto gear (E27, GU10, MR16, led controllers) as they are similar in color reproduction but way cheaper than Philips bulbs and still able to use the Hue hub (or Zigbee DYI systems such as Zigbee2MQTT).
A dutch article compares 5 different brands (scroll down for pics of saturation/brightness)
https://www.50five.nl/blog/slimme-led-lampen-test.html
Found some other nice zigbee lights:
Osram Smart+ (youtube comparisons vs philips hue look really good, about half the price)
Innr (previously reviewed same price as osram)
Still looking for a good comparison of those Muller lights.
Osram or Innr might be the way to go for me
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)