Hi all,
I just initiated my foray into the entirely local smart home, being careful to avoid products that need a third-party app of any kind outside of Home Assistant - that’s a hard requirement for me. As such, I went with Z-Wave for two reasons: firstly, because my first smart device was a thermostat and I found the few Zigbee options on the market to be ugly-looking and unreliable based on reviews; secondly, I’m trying to avoid 2.4 GHz congestion due to frequently using latency-sensitive sound equipment in my home studio. Thus, I’ve got a Z-Wave 800 stick plugged in to my existing home server.
With that preamble out of the way - I’ve been looking to pair smart switches with RGBW/dimmable smart bulbs to liven up the place a little. However, it seems like I’ll either have to go with a different protocol for those (namely Zigbee/Matter) and thus buy a second stick to poke out of the server, even though I’m really not wanting to if I can avoid it.
My question is, why have all of the Z-Wave bulbs dried up? I can’t even find any Inovelli Reds on eBay, and the last new ones I could find (Jasco Z-Wave Plus bulbs) were difficult to track down, don’t do RGB, and are more expensive than what Inovelli Reds retail for.
That and no one is making upgraded models. I’m fine paying a marginally higher price per unit, because the Inovellis look to be higher quality than anything else in the segment save for Philips Hue, which are about $10-20 more each compared to Inovelli, as well as the fact that Z-Wave frees up the local 2.4 GHz band. If someone is willing to sell me some Reds, even second-hand, or can tell me where to buy any Z-Wave bulbs that fit the requirements, let me know!
If the worst has to come, I’d also appreciate some recommendations for bulbs that do not use Wi-Fi and don’t require a third-party app other than HA to set up and use. I’ll tolerate Zigbee if I absolutely must, though I will not like it.
Z-Wave tends to be a little pricier than Zigbee, and lots more than your bottom-of-the-barrel WiFi bulb. Not everyone wants RGB lights, either, and many switches are connected to multiple bulbs, so it makes more sense to use regular dimmable bulbs with a smart switch than smart bulbs. Finally, smart bulbs are a huge pain. Either they have some long, complicated routine to put them in pairing mode (30 seconds off, 10 seconds on, 5 seconds off, 5 seconds on, 3 seconds off, then on), or it’s too simple (factory reset by turning off and on the times within 10 seconds - your power flickered? Sucks to be you!).
The one place I wanted RGB, I got strip lights with the Zooz Z-Wave light strip controller; everywhere else I just use dimmer switches.
There’s a Hue bridge that I believe works entirely locally that may work for you, to connect Hue bulbs. They do use Zigbee, though.
TLDR: Yes there are new Z-Wave bulbs coming soon and they use the new Z-Wave 800 chips.
Whenever I want to stay up to date on Z-Wave Product Offerings there are (2) places I look. The first place is the FCCID website and the second place is Z-Wave Alliance Product Page.
On the FCC website I get pictures of the device, access to manual, and a list of the frequency a device uses. On the Z-Wave Alliance Product Page I get access to more specific Z-Wave information like wether or not the device uses an 800 series chip, it’s association capabilities, it’s supported command classes, and weather or not the device can act as a repeater.
After months of tracking products there is a pattern. Devices usually get FCC certified, then get Z-Wave certified then go on sale.
Inovelli has some listed on their site but they’re out of stock.
have you checked out the Zooz Z-Wave bulbs? They have decent RGBW options and are often recommended for Home Assistant setups. They might fit your requirements and be worth considering. Good luck with your search!