Milight (Limitlessled) experience and queries

A workable lighting system can be built on the milight FUT 068 downlight and V6 bridge but not without an undue amount of learning about quirks and limitations.
I have 15 downlights in three rooms. They are controlled by HA, AD and hadashboard. The objective is to provide an economical alternative to skylights during the day, warm colour temperature night lighting and reddish orange sleep time night lighting, all with minimal manual intervention. Colour temperature of the day time lights varies during the day under AD control and ceiling sensors endeavour to have lights on only when there is activity in the room.
I am very satisfied with the 6 watt down lights and seldom have to operate them beyond 4 watts. Colour temperature control is excellent and the option of nightlight colour also works very well. The i-Box2 bridges seem very reliable once one has mastered the intricate process of connecting them to the lights and WiFi.
However, the overall impression is that with the current clunky setup procedures and insecure proprietary comms protocol the milight will never achieve prime-time exposure in the market place. A tinkerer’s product.
This view was reinforced when I discovered that the lights will unlink themselves if switched off and on when there is an AD control sequence in progress.
So while I can live with this lighting system for the time being I will have to find a properly engineered solution at an acceptable price. My thoughts are that I would like to keep the $14 downlights but replace the attached controller with a controller which talks a tried and proven protocol. Maybe MQTT. The milight LED unit connects to its controller via an RGBCW cable. I am not enthusiastic about assembling a replacement controller myself from bits of hardware and software - but not impossible. The i-Box replacement with esp8266 (http://blog.christophermullins.com/2017/02/11/milight-wifi-gateway-emulator-on-an-esp8266/) is a step in the right direction but it still uses the proprietary reverse engineered milight protocol.
Maybe there is another way?? I would like to hear other peoples’ experiences and solutions.