I have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.
I bought two cheaper bulbs and won't buy any more of those because of this. So I guess if the reason is "money grab" i have to grudgingly admit it was successful.
In the end, it would have been cheaper and less time consuming had I just bought the Philips Hue strips.
I'm told there are cheaper equivalent solutions out there, but Sowilo's mostly turnkey solution was good enough for me. It helps keep S.A.D. at bay.
The key learning from my research was to buy commercial grade PSUs and LEDs from a proper retailer that supplies industry and over spec the PSUs - if you calculate your LEDs need 40w, get something like a 60w PSU. I don’t think it cost significantly more than if I purchased cheap no name Chinese stuff off Amazon.
As a side note, I didn’t go for the Hue strips because the LEDs would have been a lot less bright, the cut points were far more restrictive and it also would have worked out more expensive.
However, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd probably just install dimmer switches in the wall and skip the IoT aspect entirely.
The only downside (apart from the idiosyncratic physical knob design) is that it's a tuya platform device, but the manufacturer also markets a DIY version which is trivially flashable to open source tasmota or ES32Home, severing the connection to the mothership entirely while retaining all functionality.
I started home automation with a Philips Hue starter kit but built my own zigbee network with Home Assistant later on. I'd say IKEA light bulbs, being around half the price of Philips, are pretty much on par with them.
The worst lights I had were OSRAM, they kept losing the zigbee connection and were PITA all the time.
The IKEA bulbs aren’t as bright, get overwhelmed if you send a lot of commands quickly (so you can’t implement a dimmer for example, without the light jittering as it dims), and don’t have the “turn power on-and-off quickly to reset to full brightness” feature (though this is nice if that’s what you specifically want).
It would be sort of nice if the hub would provide a convenient website. Visitors don’t want to use an app to turn on my lightbulbs.
There are button peripherals, which work fine of course, but then it is not much more convenient than a light switch or a remote.
For the most part I use motion sensors and timers and rarely need a switch
In theory you could get a Pi to host a website that talks to the Hue hub's REST API. Actually, I'd be surprised if such a thing doesn't exist on GitHub, but it could be a hunt to find one with has a more than decent UI.
Source: recently rebound all my Zigbee lights away from my Hue hub to being directly controlled by Home Assistant.
Just let me flick the switch, and then turn the lights on as and when you manage to successfully connect, don't make me wait.
I have a hue bridge with a static ip in my house that controls my lights. Management through a third party app is instant.
Are you individually connecting to each light through Bluetooth?
It's nice that the BT function is there, as a failover, but day to day I would not rely on it.