Philips hue lamps. Seem to be not very good.

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richms

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#198375 6-Jul-2016 16:55

Got the set of 3 colours and the base to have a play with.

Firstly the base says wifi on it, but seems to have no ability to connect to wifi, just wired. Weird that they would use the wifi logo without having wifi but ok.

But they dont remember what they were set to when you cut power to them, just coming back on set to very warm white at bright.

And the colours on them suck. I cant get it to do green at all, and the best blue they do is quite washed out and pathetic.

On the plus side, no sign of doing cheap PWM dimming like the limitless lights do, if they are, then it is at a frequancy high enough not to bother me at all.

And they are quite a bit smaller than the limitless.

But for what they cost not having a memory on them means I think I will be returning them.

Richard rich.ms

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#1587280 6-Jul-2016 20:45

Yes, noticed that they always reset when powered down.

I used IFTTT to connect Alexa (on Amazon Fire TV) to Hue - we can turn lights on/off, change colours and brightness with voice commands now.

richms

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#1587306 6-Jul-2016 20:58

Also they do seem to have PWM, I didnt notice it before because I was in a well lit room, but when dimmed quite some way, there is some shimmer visible as seen on that photo I took to show its horrid lame green.

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richms

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#1587314 6-Jul-2016 21:28

Ok, did some more reading which I probably should have done before running out and buying them and it's a known thing, they dont use RGB they use high powered very warm white, blue and red, which means they cant reach a huge portion of the colour gamut.

Think I will stick with the much cheaper limitless LEDs even tho they are also far from ideal, I would rather put up with the limitations (get it?) on a LED that is around a third the price of the hue ones.

Richard rich.ms

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#1587348 6-Jul-2016 22:12

Very happy with my Hue lights. Having good white light and mood light, as well as the mesh network that the Hue provide is what's important to me

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richms

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#1587354 6-Jul-2016 22:19

The white I can get from them is good, but power cycle it and it goes back to a grotty warm white at full brightness. The limitless save whatever you use so that when they are powered on they come back to it, so are ideal in the hallway where they are on a motion sensor so I can put them on a nice white or colours depending on the need and that is retained.

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mdf

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#1587355 6-Jul-2016 22:21

FWIW, we've got the LIFX bulbs and have been very happy. Colour range is excellent at half to two-third brightness (to bright and the colours get very washed out). Haven't noticed a flicker when dimmed using the app. They definitely remember their last setting when switched on at the wall.

The onboarding process (adding bulbs to the app) was a nightmare on my Android (CM13) phone. Eventually gave up and used Mrs MDF's iPhone and went much smoother. The Android App effects are better though.

richms

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#1587359 6-Jul-2016 22:23

Try taking a photo of the lamp really close up like that one in my tweet, flicker will show as lines because of the rolling shutter that cmos cameras have.

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mdf

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#1587368 6-Jul-2016 22:35

richms:

Try taking a photo of the lamp really close up like that one in my tweet, flicker will show as lines because of the rolling shutter that cmos cameras have.

Don't know what I did here - seem to have vertical pinstripe lines of colour?

richms

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#1587372 6-Jul-2016 22:40

Yup, that is a sign of PWM, without knowing the exposure used cant really find the frequancy but I find that dimmed lights with PWM make everything look unstable in a room and give me a headache, which is why I prefer to not have it.

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#1587382 6-Jul-2016 23:04

richms: The white I can get from them is good, but power cycle it and it goes back to a grotty warm white at full brightness.

No idea but the Hue dimmer switch could be a fix for that. USD$25 at bestbuy to find out.

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#1587386 6-Jul-2016 23:08

I switch the Hues off via Alexa or one of the many apps. Have bought a switch but not gotten around to installing it.

The Hues do remember the settings if you switch them on/off from the app, never switch off the power on the lamps they are in - so never really have that problem.