Also… yes. 
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THE LATEST UPDATE TO THIS SAGA.
We last left off where I needed to pull down both contact sensors off the doors I installed them on so that I could set them up properly. All I really needed to do was find a closer spot on my door for activating, I did that after I freed the devices and doors from sticky. Sometime in the future, I am going to purchase a set of stronger magnets to replace the ones that came with the sensors.
Late Tuesday afternoon I get my Wiz bulbs, install 2 of them in my mud room, and get them set up in the Wiz app quickly (after trying to remember my 2.4Ghz network password up without looking it up…). I like the options they give you to set things up, the presets are pretty cool! But all I need is a medium cool light in this room. I pop into my HA instance and OH LOOK the Matter integration is like “hey, we noticed you got new devices on your network that support this.” 
I click to install the installation and… it fails. 
I’m on mobile setting this up, so I chalk it up to that.
Later in the evening, I decided to try again on mobile. I don’t remember why, I think I was talking to someone about it failing and it being in Beta still. This time it was successful! It wanted me to add the share code from the app for the bulbs and I blinked at my phone for a second. what? Then I remembered I watched something during one of our streams in the past that explained how to get the share code for Matter connections. I open the Wiz app and…uh, where are these share codes? My assumption was that it would be easily available in the device page since the box advertises Matter support, it really wasn’t. I had to look up online where that would be in the Wiz app, grabbed them to share in HA, then I named the added bulbs the same thing as in the Wiz app (for easier identification). COOL, that was easy!
I am now hyperfocused on the mud room light automation, so I start digging into setting that up by triggering the lights to turn on and off based on the device itself (I know, keep reading). I couldn’t figure out how to get an OR condition working for me, so I initially set things up with individual automations per door sensor. We saw our first problem almost immediately. 
While the automations did exactly what I told them to do, it wasn’t what I wanted them to do. I needed the light to stay on even if 1 door was open, but the way I set up the automations had the light turn off when one door closed even while the other door was open - basically overriding the automation. Okay, that was a problem to solve in the morning - for that point in time, it “worked” and I didn’t have to do much.
Yesterday morning I wake up determined to fix this automation before my work day. I hop onto my laptop 45 minutes before I regularly start work, after my sister had already left for work, and start breaking the automations to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted it to do. I know how to use conditions while coding but I could not figure out this UI at all. It didn’t seem to check the OR when I set up devices. 
15 minutes after I start this, my sister comes home to a mud room with no working lights. 
She ended up staying home sick and I didn’t know that when she took her daughter to daycare. The family can deal with this inconvenience for the day. It was release day!
I could not find the answers I need and finally ask Bill wtf I need to do to get things going, because this is really bothering me. First, I find out that setting automation triggers via devices is a poor idea and you should use entities. This was not intuitive to me. After explaining my exact goal, what was actually happening, and the solutions I dug up that could work, Bill was then like, “Groups will fix that for you.” I don’t think I ever would have got there on my own, but I had a suspicion that Helpers would need to be involved somehow.
It takes me 10 minutes to fix the automations after I create a sensor group for my door sensors in the mud room. TEN. MINUTES. 
Grouping the sensors made it so that the triggering entity can be either or and both, making the automation itself really simple. Kind of annoying that the information needs to be pulled from the depths of Mordor or something.
Now the problem is getting the Other Residents from turning off that light switch.
I am going to set up a local ollama instance this weekend after setting up the bluetooth adapter I have. Jumping into the deep end, with the sharks, I’m sure it will be fine… 
You’ll probably have more from me in a few days.
Therein lies the problem with smart bulbs. I (almost) NEVER use smart bulbs and if I do use them it’s in places that a) someone will never need to use the switch and b) it’s used in a very predictable way that makes automating sensible.
I fell into the smart bulb trap early on (it was the first things I added to HA after my garage door) and realized fairly soon that my thinking was incorrect.
Lighting is one of those very organic things that doesn’t lend itself to easily automate. There are typically just too many variables to consider.
the only places I use bulbs:
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my deck - if it’s dark (sun below horizon), the door to the deck is open then the light is on, if the door closes the light turns of after 3 minutes.
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my front porch lights - pretty much the same as the deck. if it’s dark and the door is open or it detects motion then the light is on.
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my stove hood light - the light is always on no matter the time of day. the only thing that’s automated is that if there is no motion for several minutes the bulb dims.
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& 5. & 6. I have three bulbs (bathroom & 2 floor lamps) that only ever get operated by remote smart buttons.
so, again everything there is very predictable and they are either hard wired or it’s very unlikely that someone would ever feel the need to flip the switch.
Everything else is a smart switch.
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OOH thanks for the inspiration! I was planning on having front lights triggered by motion but did not consider a door sensor triggering it when we opening, too! The location I am planning to place the motion sensor likely won’t see the front door.
I owe y’all another update, but I did almost nothing since my last update. Instead of doing HA stuff I did a ton of cleaning in my house.
The extent of changes I made since my last update was setting up a delay for the lights turning off in the mud room per requested by my husband. That was a process to figure out! I tried to go the timer route because I a) assumed that would be the best and b) didn’t notice the delay option in the Trigger section.
I decided instead of trying to battle bluetooth to set up voice/genAI stuff next, I will attempt to fold in my Alexa devices now that I have a few things that can be exposed to it. 
Please tell us you also cleaned the garage
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ROFL. No, that was not part of the cleaning this go but I definitely eyeballed it. Since I am still recovering from the broken toe (hey, I am out of the boot now and walking normal!) I opted to not overwork myself on my 3 day weekend. 
Part of the cleaning does have the end goal of getting the vacuums set up on each floor finally, though. Then I can continue my cat litter on the floor solution - which will include a counter and I am sure that will be fun to set up. 
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All of those could uses smart dimmers/switches instead of smart bulbs too.
The only place I use smart bulbs now is in lamps that I use for colour accents that I have hidden the on/off switch for. These are not critical for room lighting.
And my bedside lamps as reaching for the switch on these when falling asleep is a pain. So I have a button on the bedhead I can mash after the third time my book falls on my face as I doze off.
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I agree some of them could. but since I started out with only smart bulbs I had to find a use for them.
but there are a few of those places (the lamps, stove hood and the bathroom specifically) that don’t have the capability to add switches without a bunch of extra unnecessary work so it was easier to just use a bulb.
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