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Comment by burgerquizz | Hacker News Reader

Hijacking the comments. I have a project that would involve about 15+ smart Lightbulbs. Anyone would know any decent/cheaper alternative to the Phillips Hue bulbs?

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Think outside the box (outside the bulb?)

z-wave "behind the switch" modules are super easy to install (you pull out the switch on the wall, and you put a small box in between the switch and the mains wiring), and you can control a whole circuit with one ~$40 switch. Depending on which one you get, they also support 3 and 4 way circuits (although with some caveats).

And it comes with the additional benefits that it will always work with the manual switch (turning it off or on), and it will work with any lightbulbs you may want to use in the future, but the downside is that you can't really get full RGB colors in the bulbs if that's something you are going for.

This is more or less my preferred solution. I use z-wave switches, not modules, though. I don't get RGB control, but I do get home automation that fails gracefully back to "works just like a light switch always did" if something goes wrong.

Can't speak about the quality of the "smart" parts in particular, but the Ikea LED bulbs have proven to be of generally high quality for a good price. I have a bunch of them in operation, and had some in permanent use (powered 24/7) for years now. Only a single bulb has failed on me after 4.5 years of continuous use, and even that bulb failed gracefully (it became darker and darker over time, while getting hotter and hotter, obviously converting more energy to heat than light).

Hence I would not hesitate to give their smart bulbs a try as well, assuming they use the same circuitry and LEDs for the "non-smarts" of the bulbs as for all the others.

One thing to consider with the Tradfri bulbs is that some people (myself included) have experienced them turning on randomly. Internet says it might have something to do with automatic software update, but that is hearsay.

Also, for a smart bulb I find their control requirements to be weird. Pair with this device first, but only up to X devices, then pair that with the hub. Everything else I have is Z-wave so maybe this is par for the course for smart bulbs and I'm just not used to it.

I think there's a way to pair them directly with the hub. I did it recently when I only bought a hub and outlet (no remote)[1], and it worked fine. One rumour I've seen a few times is that the Hub was an afterthought[2], which is why it is designed around pairing with the remote, but it's definitely a weird setup (they're ZigBee, so should work without the remote - they do when using the Hue hub).

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/tradfri/comments/bddyjt/connect_tr%...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/tradfri/comments/aq0161/pairing_wit...

If you don't mind a bit of custom work, FastLED and WS2812 LEDs is where it's at.

Evilgenius has a level shifting board for the ESP32 or ESP8266 that takes a lot of the hassle out if you need many separate patterns.

These videos compare a few on offer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osauwVoP4a8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZPo7C3PDT4

I also highly recommend the Smart Home Solver YouTube channel if you're interested in home automation

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwOBG77Tm8cE24FPxHb_abw

Ikea Trådfri is slightly less polished but much cheaper than Hue.

If you need discrete bulbs (vs a strip) the Merkury brand sold at Walmart have been working great for me. $20 for 2 full color lightbulbs vs $50 for 1 Philips Hue.

They operate on 2.4ghz wifi and after inspecting the traffic do not appear to be funneling my data to China.

Check Ikea

Do you have to control the bulbs individually? Do you need to address (talk to) the bulbs individually? Are the bulbs far apart or close one to another?

If you want to go with LED strips there are a lot of options that are cheaper and better. Actual bulbs are a bit trickier.

Try searching for slamper. It's a "smart" E27 socket. You can flash its ESP8266 to do whatever you want.

Depends how much you care about brightness, light frequency (aka how “pleasing”) and flicker.

Get a power strip, WiFi plugs, and normal lamps.

Xiaomi Yeelight

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