Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I want to try Alexa's smart home features. I'd like to start small, with a couple of dimmable light bulbs--I figure buying smart dimmable bulbs will be easier than having a dimmer installed.
These would be for a ceiling light, two 60w equivalent LEDs; color changing would be fun, but mostly I would simply like to be able to tell Alexa to turn the light on and off and dim it sometimes, or change to a certain color. Do two bulbs in one light fixture work independently of each other?
Any recommendations? I suppose at some point I might be looking at smart plugs, so do I need to choose a brand and pretty much stick to it for the sake of convenience? I know nothing, so advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
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Smart bulbs will work independently but can also be grouped like any devices, so you could have "bulb 1" and "bulb 2" in a group called "ceiling light."
I'm not exactly sure how dimming works in a group because you can group any devices, not all of which might be applicable to dimming. I could try it at home later if you like.
The "official" way to dim sets of bulbs would be through shortcuts or scenes and have Alexa execute that.
So on my Wink software, IIUC, I would create a shortcut that dims each of the bulbs to a certain level and name it something like "dim ceiling." Then Alexa will discover that short cut, and I could say "Alexa, turn on dim ceiling" to dim the fixture.
I use a mix of brands...a Wink hub to control the GE smart bulbs, and TP-Link outlet that doesn't use the hub, and once everything is installed and configured, Alexa is pretty agnostic about that. Just means you need more setup apps and enabled skills.
I started with the Wink hub and GE Link for no reason other than a starter set was dirt cheap when i got it. I don't know enough about the field to recommend to others except to say my system does work and I'm happy with what I have, but several of the GE Link bulbs I tried were unreliable, and I would not recommend that brand of smart bulb.