Best alternative to HUE bulbs?

Hardware Home Automation
1

Hello Guys…
I was wondering if anyone knows an alternative to Philips Hue - since the bulbs are pretty pricy - maybe a good RGBW bulb compatible with Hue?

As i can read around people say that the much cheaper “Milight” is way to buggy and doesn’t respond pretty well to the commands send to the controller - but that the Hue bridge is awesome…

2

You can try the ‘Friends of Hue’, formerly named ‘Living Colors’. They’re the pre-Hue generation using proprietary tech, but you can control them from a Hue bridge, too.
There’s also the Osram Lightify series which is based on the same control tech as Hues are (zigbee lighting profile).
But in the end, there’s Milights where you get what you pay for, and the rest is almost as pricey as are Hues.

3

Yes okay - i’ll try and see what else i can find around…
Can anyone confirm the function of the MiLight bulbs / bridges? Does it work allmost like hue - or is terrible?

4

Well they work in principle, but they don’t work as well as Hues. You get what you pay for.
Messages get lost at times, and lighting quality isn’t quite the best. That’s why I don’t use them (any more).
“Terrible” is subjective. Some people don’t mind repeating keystrokes, some like the light, and some don’t. Sorry but you have to find out for yourself.

5

I have a couple of Milights and although they work and the lighting quality is OK, as Markus mentioned, sometimes the messages get lost and OH is then out of sync so I’m not always confident that OH is showing the true status of the lights.

6

Do the milights have a “status” command to read the current state, or are they just a receiver?

7

Hi,

I have one Mi-light, when I switch on my light with the OH app and turn it off with the regular switch the status is not reflected /changes in the openhab app.
So I don’t think the bulb is sending a singnal back to the controller/gateway

8

And what about Ikea smart lighting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMxyo2qnpo

I don’t know if they have color bulbs.

9

Rumour has it, that Trådfri will include color bulbs in October. But it may depend on where one is living, I guess.