I’m completely out of the smart lights loop and I’m looking for light bulbs that allow me to set brightness, color temperature and possibly the color in general using HA.
I see a lot of people recommending zigbee bulbs, which is fine, I just need to buy a dongle, but I already have an isolated wifi network with no internet access that I use to control smart stuff from my home server, so something with wifi would be ideal. I want something that I can just screw in and control from my server with no proprietary apps needed for the initial configuration.
Can you give me some recommendations?
Thanks
I just bought a few bulbs from Aliexpress which came preloaded with ESPHome and got set up in about 2 minutes per device. They cost about $15-20 per bulb (AUD) and I am very happy with them.
The reason people suggest avoiding wifi is more than just having the isolated network. Between the protocol requirements, the possibility of network congestion, and the high probability of overlapping wifi network signals, it can make them unreliable or just a bit slower than you’d expect a light to work.
Thread enabled devices can make this better, apparently; if I was in the market for bulbs outside of my current zigbee setup I would want Thread. Zigbee is excellent so far for me
Personally, I’m very happy with my Hue lights, but not super happy with the price; I only get them on sale. One aspect that is not discussed enough, in my opinion, is the quality of light (CRI, dimming depth, colour intensity), which hue is great at imho. The new hub does some nerdy stuff for motion detection if you have multiple bulbs in a room which is interesting, though I haven’t looked into it much.
I would highly recommend a zigbee switch over a zigbee bulb. in that way you can still use the switch instead of locking in in the on position.
Nope, OP wants a bulb with temperature and brightness controls. A smart switch won’t do it.

