Smart lighy Bulb recommendations for 2020

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#1

Hi,

I am looking for recommendations for smart light bulbs. I am looking for light bulbs that are bright, color, 240V,controlled locally and not too expensive. When I search online there are a lot of brand and lot’s of TUYA products,which I am not sure if I can use or not. Just to give some background I am comfortable with wifi but bought a Sonoff Zigbee Bridge, planning to integrate it with HA once I receive it. I am also ok with a bit of hacking, soldering flashing new FW etc.

There are a few topics but no new information, the links for the products are mostly dead or software got updated.

I have read the following topics:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/cheap-and-cheerful-smart-light-bulbs/176151/2

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-inexpensive-10-us-wifi-rgb-bulb-that-works-with-home-assistant/14735/382

And I am aware of the following options:

Sonoff, cheap, wifi but local mode not available and can not be flashed.
Yeelight/Aqara : has some limitations, also troublesome due to some SW limitations, I might be wrong…
Philips Hue: Needs it’s own ecosystem and too expensive
TRÅDFRI: needs Ikea hub, not sure if I can use these light bulbs with another Zigbee hub.
TUYA: Reading that devices with new FW can not be flashed and if using local mode response time is slow software clunky etc.

ESPHOME support for Mirabella Genio Bulbs and TECKIN SB50 LED Bulb are not available unless I managed to find the products with old FW.

It will be great someone can share the links for the shopping website like Alibaba, Bangood, Shoppe etc. and the tutorials they used to get a smart bulb working in a local network. I hoped it will be easy and fast to find options but feels like I am missing something, any suggestions will be appreciated.

#2

I am interested in this topic as well.

About a month ago I picked up a package of the FEIT bulbs at Costco but they were the new firmware and could not be flashed.

Hoping something comes available soon at a decent price point.

#3

I’m looking for the same thing. I just spent some time trying to flash Novostella 13W bulbs that clearly have the new firmware and are going back to Amazon. I moved on to an Aoycocr X5P plug that never even tried to connect to the vtrust-flash. The developer says this is also a symptom of the new firmware. I tried looking on eBay, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to determine if the bulbs will be flashable. For future reference, here is the link to tasmota-friendly devices, many of which now have a caveat that they might not work. And here is the github issue that lists devices known or suspected to be un-flashable due to new firmware.

#4

6 month ago I would recommend Yeelights but not anymore, recently got many issues with them becoming unavailable, one plus for them is they are reliable and good colors, have them about two years

Also looked for Tasmota bulbs and replaced all my lights with Athom brand from Aliexpress, they come preflashed with tasmota and working without issues for a month now, they get hot to touch so don’t know how long they last but they worth it for easy of use

1 Like
#5

@potat0 is this the same one you got ?? The idea is nice but wonder why there is such a heat issue.

@tanderson1992 thanks to your link saw this list list of all compatible bulbs sorted wrt to the socket size. Still not sure which ones are still able to work.

I just got a yeelight, to play, this link says the esp module is pin-to-pin compatible with esp12X models.

#6

@xepost 15W is new version they recently released, I got 9W version

Yellights also gets hot maybe it’s normal

#7

No direct experience with the lights from shelly (this one is compliant to your spec: https://shop.shelly.cloud/shelly-bulb-rgbw-wifi-smart-home-automation#432.
However, all the shelly products I have used so far are really good.
No cloud (if you want to), good api, reliable…
So, I would think the light should be fine too.

#8

Hi,

since you are mention zigbee lights.

With the correct coordinator, lights and software you do not need the ecosystem of the manufacturer.
Also lights are working in general very good with zigbee and are easy to integrate hence a lot of lights can be used.

Just have a look at the supported devices of zigbee2mqttt.
Note there is also zha and deconz and maybe even more i dont know of.

Spanning a good zigbee net with lights also helps with all the other stuff zigbee offers. Like window sensor, temperature sensor, motion sensors and so on. Most of that stuff is really cheap for zigbee. (But at some time add up, because you just want all the sensors :smiley: )

I use mainly innr lights with some hue stuff in addition.

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#9

Looking at the 15W Athom lights you referenced.

One question, are you in the US, Europe, or somewhere else? Most of the 8 reviews on AliExpress seem to be from Europe. I wanted to see if they would work in the states before I pulled the trigger and placed an order.

How long was the delivery time? Build quality?

#10

Thanks a lot for the comments, @mchiass message the athom from aliexpress they answer quite fast.
I gonna try one of their product also going for testing. It is a bit on the expensive side but looks like hassle-free.

@networkingcat thanks a lot for the links. I have my zigbee hub device but do not think I will have time to set up next few weeks. Probably gonna get some bulbs later once I am more used to this.

@potat0 I will message here about the heat once I get mine.

#11

@xepost I went ahead and ordered a 4 pack of the Athom 15W bulbs from AliExpress. We will see how they work in about two months when they finally get delivered to me. :smile:

Have my fingers crossed for good experience.

#12

IKEA, Philips Hue and Innr are very good, and work fine with Zigbee2MQTT.
Philip Hue are little bit pricer than IKEA and Innr.

Avoid IKEA E14 bulbs. A lot of them do a very nasty noise when the bulb is switched off.

#13

@potat0 @xepost

So the bulbs came in. They are noticeably bigger than your standard light bulb. Where the normal bulb would be the size of a lemon, per se, these bulbs are like a large apple or orange. I don’t know if that is because I got the 15W bulbs or not. The bulb on the left is the new Athom bulb. The one on the right is a standard LED I got at Walmart. The SD card is just for sizing.

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I went ahead and flashed Tasmota 9.2 on them before I did much to them. The out of the box Tasmota is labelled by Athom.

As far as the functionality goes, they are wicked fast in terms of response time. I have a NR flow that uses the Tasmota palette. When the door is opened the MQTT message tells the light to turn on. I am not even sure that the door is opened an 1/2 inch before the light is already on.

So far I am impressed. It cost me $55 with shipping for the four lights.

#14

Mine came in yesterday, and today I tried them out. The first one setup fine, but when I tried to upgrade Tasmota to 9.2 it bricked the light. It said it was restarting to finish the upgrade, then took me to a Tasmota page that said it was on minimal. I hit the upgrade button again, and the device went offline. The web page wouldn’t load, and it disappeared off the network. No amount of power cycling brought it back again.

The second bulb worked just fine. After upgrading to Tasmota minimal 9.2, I flashed it with ESPHome using this link. The bulb was immediately detected by HA. I think it’s brighter than the other cheap bulb I bought last year from Amazon. I’m still planning to try to tuya-convert that one eventually.

Anyway, these bulbs in HA work great, but by default the White level is set to 100, which prevents colors. If you want a colored bulb, turn the whiteness down, and the color will appear. Overall, not a bad delay coming from Shanghai. I hope my other two work well, because I don’t have the equipment to pop them open to serial flash.

#15

@mchiass I also ordered on and it is quite a nice experience so far. The reaction time is quite fast as well I am not sure what is the trick. Faster than the ESP01s I am using at home for a long while.

@tanderson1992 I was planning to move to ESPhome too. I will use the link you sent thanks a lot!!.

@Shaad thanks for the heads up, I will try in the future.

#16

Here’s an update on my Athom bulbs: As I reported before, the first one died immediately when I tried to update tasmota. The second updated fine and worked for about a week before it just died. No response to turning off and on again, no fallback wifi, just dead. The third bulb lasted almost 2 months before it, too, just stopped. I don’t know if there was an event that caused the bulb to stop working, but I can’t get it back. Sometimes family members forget to turn it off with HA, and I have to manually turn the switch back on again. This doesn’t appear to be the case this time.

The fourth bulb has been in a different lamp since Jan 28th or so, and it has worked just fine, never dropping offline as far as I know.

In summary, 2 months after purchase, 3/4 of the bulbs are dead, with little support from Athom. (“Yep, it’s dead.” was their first response.) Not only was it a waste of about $45, it’s lowered my family’s confidence in this whole home automation thing. I will probably switch to some proprietary bulbs that can’t be flashed but will hopefully last more than 2 months.

#17

I had a problem with some wifi bulbs I ordered from Amazon and flashed with Tasmota too. This time I am just going to get a six pack of innr and call it a day. I used to have oodles of hue bulbs, white and color, that always just worked. That was three moves ago and I am not sure where anything is anymore (plus divorce… yay).