this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Hey all, hoping I can gain some insight into an issue I'm having with my sengled lightbulbs. Basically I have two scenes set up in HAS, one "default" scene that has all the lights at 100% brightness with soft white and another that is for movies that turns off all the light except two and modifies the color value to be a more orange, and lower brightness.

My issue is when trying to set the default scene, the color values of my pair of lights don't seem to keep the color temperature. The color picker will immediately clear any value I set after 2 seconds, and go back to the previous scene's brightness and color. I can usually go into the sengled app to reset the color to what I want but this is far from ideal.

It's important to note that I'm using the unofficial sengled api addon from HACS and I am not using the zigbee versions of the lightbulbs (I don't have a zigbee-compatible usb stick yet).

Is this an api limitation or something else I'm missing? Would the zigbee versions work better than the WiFi ones? My router is practically right next to the light bulbs so I doubt that's the issue.

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[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Edit: OP isn't using Zigbee but I'm leaving this here

Don't buy SengLED bulbs. I don't know if it's cost cutting or if them believe their own bullshit, but their bulbs don't act as repeaters in a mesh network. Their excuse for the last 10 years is that most people still shut off their smart bulbs at the switch. I don't believe that.

When you populate your network with these you're losing the best repeater placements your setup can have and weakening your mesh network.

[–] kryllic@programming.dev 3 points 8 months ago

This is still good to know, I didn't know the bulbs were just endpoints, gonna avoid them going forward and find repeater zigbee bulbs instead. Thanks!

[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Interesting point. The two I have are in exterior fixtures that are on the other side of the wall from the switch (which is a repeater), so for me this is a non-issue, but I can see if you're using them indoor, it could be a big difference.

If someone can live with this limitation, they have worked fine for me.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the ones I have left work fine at the very edge of my network. But I had serious network issues using them throughout the house until I switched to better bulbs that work how Zigbee devices are supposed to.

[–] limelight79@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

After I posted the above comment, I saw other people claiming they've had issues getting them to display traditional incandescent color values. I have not had that issue with them, either. There was something I had to set in HomeAssistant for the bulbs, I think, perhaps in the color picker UI, to allow the selection of those colors, but once I found that, no issue. I don't think I even had to manually re-pair them when I switched Zigbee channel to avoid my Wifi.

Now that I've said this, one will probably start showing blue instead of white or something, of course.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

The problems I had were more network related because I didn't have enough repeaters, because I didn't realize SengLED had ignore the Zigbee spec and made their bulbs only endpoints. Once I put other bulbs in that worked properly, the network issues disappeared.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I can't speak to the versions of the bulbs, but I have always had problems with Sengled bulbs and color temp with HA. Never seen the switching back after 2s thing., but once I change a bulbs color, it's nearly impossible to get it back to soft white without resetting it.

[–] kryllic@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

This is sounding similar enough to my issue that I'm leaning towards it being a sengled thing lol. Appreciate the info!

[–] alphapuggle@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

Avoid Sengled. I switched to Innr Zigbee bulbs for repeater functionality & they're better than the Sengleds in every way (except price, like $25/bulb but it's worth it)

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I was having similar issues with the zigbee ones, and I believe it was a known issue with the way transitions were implemented. The solution ended up being to set short transition times across the board. Not sure if that's applicable here, but it may be worth a try.

[–] kryllic@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

I will definitely try this, thanks!