I have one of these Hue bulbs. It could be controlled by Alexa without the extra hub and things in this kit. Several weeks ago it stopped working through Alexa. I’ve tried to get the two talking again but no luck. It still works as a regular light bulb, just not what I bought it for. The Alexa feature lasted about 6 months.
That’s a different Hue bulb. They now make wifi bulbs in addition to those that work with the hub.
I’ve got eight on the ones that work with the hub and have not had any issues with them.
I had to replace my gen 1 hub with a gen 2 one (like this one) to maintain functionality with external services like ifttt.
I bought a refurb gen 1 hub and two gen 1 “lux” bulbs in February 2017 from Meh. They dropped support for the hub since then (the gen 2 was already out), but those two bulbs are still going strong, as are all the gen 2 bulbs I’ve bought since then.
So these bulbs JUST do white, right? Does this hub work with the other bulb types which do colors? I wonder if the control protocol of the hub matches anything in any of the various Echo-devices (there are several various types of built-in hubs, different enough to lose track easily).
These are white bulbs. They also make color bulbs and variable white bulbs. They are a bit pricey compared to other color bulbs.
The Echo Plus supposedly works directly with these bulb, but, if you’ve got the hub, you don’t need that.
The hub definitely supports all the types of bulbs (the kind that are made to work with the hub — note that there are others like WiFi also under the same name so you have to be careful to get ones of this dustem.
I use a mix of white, ambiance, and color Hue bulbs. also various Hue switches and controllers. The system works pretty well.
I really recommend the ambiance bulbs but they are considerably more expensive. I bought some of these regular white for another room that had a 3-bulb fixture and regular white was adequate. it is a nice warm (but not too yellowish) white and also looks nice dmmed.
As far as I know, there are no Hue WiFi bulbs. The original ones used the Zigbee protocol, and they have since changed their bulbs to support both Bluetooth and Zigbee, but not WiFi.
Other smart bulbs (Lifx, for example) do support WiFi.
See my comment to craigthom about Hue and WiFi.
Yeah, and if I have an Echo Plus I don’t need the hub. That’s the info I was looking for, thanks!
Does this work with hive bulbs ?
Yes, this gen 2 hub will work with all Hue color and white bulbs, Hue LED strips,Hue buttons,Hue dimmers, etc
You are 100% correct, there are no Hue WiFi bulbs, they most have ment bulbs that connect to the hub (via Zigbee) and newer ones, more expensive that use Zigbee and Bluetooth. The Zigbee connected bulbs can be controlled from anywhere in the world.
The new 4th gen Echo can also act as a Zigbee hub and connect to these bulbs without the included Hue Hub.
While certain Echo devices can control Hue bulbs, you might not get the full function of the bulbs without a Hue bridge. For example, I don’t think the Hue app will work without the Hue bridge, so updating your bulbs won’t be possible. Also, other Hue sensors and switches won’t work without the bridge.
If all you want to do is turn lights on and off or dim them, you won’t need the Hue bridge. If you want to do more than that, you probably will need the bridge. I have Hue switches for our bathroom lights and Hue motion detectors for the hallway lights. (I used to leave the hallway lights on all day, set to 50% or so; now they just turn on when somebody enters the hall, and off a few minutes later, with brightness and duration dependent of the time of day.)