I realized I have some old hue bulbs laying around, and they’re working well enough with my Zigbee controller (no bridge), but if I decide to scale up I definitely don’t want to pay the Hue premium.
Anyone have a Zigbee bulb brand they recommend? I hear Third Reality is nice?
Great points. I have white a few smart switches through the house to control things both physically and via Home Assistant. Most of the other lights are wifi based and work mostly as expected with occasional drops (which can get annoying). Was wanting to experiment with ZigBee to see if it was more reliable, but it sounds like that might not be the case
I wanted to chime in and say I have had no issues with my ZigBee or Z-Wave networks (I run both) not being reliable in my house. I made sure I built out the mesh by installing devices close to my server closet where my ZigBee/Z-Wave receiver is and then out from there starting with powered devices that work as repeaters.
Some smart switches can also be configured to run in Smart Bulb mode, where they can be used to control a smart bulb without actually shutting off the power. You can also set up device groups to be able to control the device directly even if Home Assistant is down. I find that this gives me the best of both worlds, as I can do cool things like changing light color and intensity with automations while still having the ability to turn the light on/off if my server or WiFi network goes down.