HA Rediscovered LIFX Light As New Entity

It happened like this: my right LIFX bulb WIFI decided to go out as it thought it must have lost connection to the LIFX cloud server. Now the light decides to try and reconnect to my WiFi network and Home Assistant thought it is a new light bulb, so it creates a new entity. This is what is shown in the screenshot below:

In my “Bedroom” group, “Bedroom Lamp Right” is not working. But there’s a new entity in the “Light” section with the same name as what’s in my bedroom group. Take a closer look where I circled below and you will see that light.bedroom_lamp_right and light.bedroom_lamp_right_2 is the same bulb, yet the “2” works and the first one does not.

Once I restart Home Assistant, everything seems to be working–or maybe…? I tried my living room floor lamps to see if it’s working okay and the left LIFX light seems to go offline, so I’ve had to cut the circuit to the light and turn then back on again and now all lights are working okay.

Maybe I have too much WiFi interference? I don’t know… But since I am living temporarily with my family, Seems like I might write off my LIFX light bulbs (2 Color 1000s for my living room and 2 White 800s for my bedroom) as unreliable. Even though I have all my LIFX light bulbs in my same room, I designate them in different groups, along with my computer and home theater receiver, but I don’t want to go beyond the scope of my thread.

So is this some kind of bug in Home Assistant? That Home Assistant would treat the first entity as dead and decided to create a second entity and poll the light state?

Philips Hue is reliable, but I decided to see what LIFX is all about. I’m thinking I might go with Insteon PLM+OpenHAB setup and get OpenHAB to communicate with Home Assistant. But because my question is beyond the scope of my thread, could anyone recommend me a dimmable LED bulb that tries to mimic incandescent light bulb? Yes, incandescent is the worst when it comes to inefficiency and putting off lots of heat, but it’s still the best when it comes to dimmability and that is a very important feature for me. Again, this is beyond the scope of my thread, but I thought I might ask. In my opinion, smart light bulbs are just a gimmick and I’m planning to get rid of it.

I just had the same issue with one of my LIFX bulbs. I didn’t notice until homebridge wouldnt start due to the duplicate light name. I have been able to duplicate the problem yet.

Have you tested the LIFX bulb with the official app?
I have been using LIFX since they were A kickstarter back in 2013. Initially they had some connectivity issues but mine have been rock solid for years now.

As for openhab. It is a worthy project that I committed a couple of years too but HA is better in my opinion. I would recommend sticking with HA as I think it has a brighter future.
One of the reasons I went looking for another option was LIFX support. Openhab1 has no support and in openhab2 the LIFX binding didn’t work for me.
Since being part of the HA community I have developed my a few of my own components one of which has been merged. I never even came close to that in years of openhab commitment.
Openhab has its good points but from what your saying I would say stick with HA for a bit yet.

As for led bulb suggestions that does incandescent temperature, I would stick with the LIFX you have. They have one of the best colour ranges and brightness. I wouldn’t say smart (not really smart) bulbs are a gimmick. People have many good uses for them. I use them to be able to have lamps that are on all night in the house while being dim and low power. They ramp up brightness on motion detection and then back down when not.

LIFX bulbs all work fine with LIFX app, but sometimes the lights can go offline in the app.

And Home Assistant created two LIFX entities yesterday.

This is still with 0.28 before I upgrade to 0.29.5.

Update: Okay. I cut the circuit to all four of my light bulbs by physically turning them off and will wait about 10 to 15 minutes. I’ll let you know how this goes.

Well, I tried turning them all off and back on for 30 minutes or so, but Home Assistant seems to work as expected in 0.29.5, so I don’t know what gives.