WiFi bulbs slow? Philips Hue alternatives?

#1

Hello,

I’m moving soon into a new home (new construction, Europe, Belgium) in which I will have around ~60 light bulbs (~40xGU10, ~10xE27, ~10xE14).

Ideally, I would like 60 Philips Hue with colors (all added via Zigbee2MQTT, no Philips Hub), but that’s a budget!

… so I ordered a Wiz color lightbulb for testing as they are really cheaper, and… well, the bulb is OK, but two defaults:

  • First, the fade-in/fade-out is really not as good as Hue’s ones. Not a deal-breaker though.

  • … but more importantly, it takes half a second to wake up the lightbulb, whereas the Hue feel instantaneous.

Is it because the bulb is WiFi vs Zigbee? Is there no way around it?

… and can anyone recommend some Hue alternatives without these defaults that would be cheaper than the Hues?

#2

Hi @stephandupont, I have around 50 MiBoxer (formerly MiLights) bulbs and am very happy with them. Having found a German shop which sells an E27 for around €11 makes them very affordable and they have all been running nicely for 8 years now.

I use 2 ESP8266s with NRF24L01+ attached and esp8266_milight_hub to control them over MQTT.

Might be interesting for you as well.

#3

Thank you very much for your answer @DigiH, much appreciated!

The ESP things are needed? Can’t I just add them via my Sonoff Zigbee Dongle like the Hue bulbs?

EDIT: it seems that they are not supported by Zigbee2MQTT unfortunately… | Zigbee2MQTT

#4

Correct, they have their own 2.4 Ghz RF protocol, so for these the ESP32 gateways are required. MiBoxer also makes some bulbs with Zigbee though, if you look around on their site, but I haven’t got any experience with these.