Smart bulbs revisited.

In The right / best way to control a light I discussed how switches vs smart bulbs depends on install. Here I'd like to update with some of the experiences I've have with smart bulbs since then. To summarize here are my note in my compare sheet.

Note you can get some crazy cheap deals on SYLVANIA / Lightify / Osram stuff right now.
Like this $9 bulb and gateway bundle still on sale. I got a bunch to sample to eval on sale. For less than $75 I got 5 bulbs, a gateway, a motion sensor and 2 dimmers. Awesome deal except only the bulbs worked OK for me. I even bought the Sylvania Smart Home 74099 Sylvania LIGHTIFY Smart Switch 8 Functions/ 4 Buttons, White, still only $10, which did at least seem to work controlling the bulbs but is not seen by Homeseer and so can't be use as a general remote. Homeseer did see the bulbs and motion detector did turn the lights on most of the time it should though seldom off. The dimmers worked for a bit then died. They were not seen by Homeseer. So all in all pretty much a waste of money and time. Too bad give a 4 pack of white Lightify bulbs is going for as low as $16 onsale versus a 4 pack of Hues which go for around $40.  Though I did stumble a 6 pack once $50 a couple years back. Which brings us to price.

I see a lot of posts saying Hue bulbs are too expensive. I think that is mainly because people seem to compare the Hue color bulbs to white version by others. If you compare a 4-pack of white bulbs they cost about the same as Sengled Smart LED Soft White A19 Bulb 4-pack.  Or Cree 60W Equivalent Daylight (5000K) A19 Dimmable LED Light Bulb in the (6 Pack) compared at a per bulb price.  You even here people going on about the new Wyze bulbs but they are about the same price and do not work with anything other than the Wyze app.

I had planned on using then instead of upgrading the Hue gateways after Hue basically cut V1 one users off.

Other than the price I'm liking the Hue motion sensors more and more. Homeseer does not always seem to get non motion event updates from them but otherwise it is nice to have them automatically turn the lights full on and off without need of setting up events. Especially after having to redo all my lighting related events after the v1 to v2 upgrade.

The Lifx bulbs seem like a good alternative if you want to avoid getting a hub though the white bulbs cost more.  And like I've said above, the one I got for eval had a lot of issues. Still the outdoor BR bulbs with IR look interesting but if you do the math, unless you want to light your yard in color, even at the $50 sale price you can get a Z-Wave switch, 2 LED bulbs and a 2 serious IR floods for about the same price.  And the IR floods turn themselves on and off as needed automatically. If you want smart flood light bulbs, Hue has new outdoor bulbs. 2 for $50.  Still cheaper to go with 2 LED floods and a switch though.

Tp-link (kasa) bulbs cost even more and they require cloud access. I have a couple of their outlets I got on Prime sales for $5. The cloud link fails way too often.

Even the TRÅDFRI bulbs are more now.

Etekcity, while I like their smart plugs for non critical stuff. Very cheap and so they have been more reliable the the TP-link ones despite being cloud based as long as you call their API directly. Going through IFTTT stopped working awhile back. I don't know if they ever fixed it because talking directly was so easy to do. But their bulbs are more than the Hues so why?

Z-wave bulbs like Aeotec LED Bulb Gen6 Multi-White are even more.

There are more of course many others, some even cheaper than Hue but one of the main things to remember is what do they works with? So in the long run you will probably end up tossing them unless remote control via your is all you ever want.

Linking TP-Link HS100 Kasa WiFi Smart Plugs to your hub

TP-Link HS100 Kasa WiFi Smart Plug, No Hub Required, Works with Alexa Echo & Google Assistant

I got some of these last year as $5 addons and linked them via IFTTT similar to how I did the Sonoff switches. They have been working fine that way but I came across the article Reverse Engineering the TP-Link HS110 today which shows how to control them locally without a bridge or reflashing the firmware. I definitely sounds easily doable from a program if not a script. Someone already did a Domoticz plugin for tp-link HS100/HS110 smartplug in Python. So I'm putting creating a Homeseer version on my todo list. Assuming someone else does not do it first of course.

Replacing Weatherbridge hardware

Ambient Weather WEATHERBRIDGE Universal WIFI IP Ethernet Server for Weather Stations, Compatible with Alexa is pretty sweet for a simple standalone box to upload your weather data to multiple locations. The price ranging as low as  $200 with shipping is pretty reasonable too though if your unit dies after a few years you would probably prefer to just replace just the hub and not a whole new setup including license. Fortunately replacement hardware is pretty cheap look for a TP-Link N150 Wireless 3G/4G Portable Router with Access Point/WISP/Router Modes (TL-MR3020) I found one on Amazon for $28.69

Note you probably have the older v1 version. The one I found was a v3 hub which uses a the smaller USB connector than the V1 and only needs to plug into one USB port on a hub for power.

You just need to follow these instructions after reading the rest of this..
One vital bit is missing. Make sure switch, next to Ethernet jack  is set to AP mode. In other modes the MR3020 is hard coded to come up as 192.168.0.2 and wants to be your router which might cause issues with your network.

If you need to get TFTP running you should be able to google plenty of quick how-tos like this one for CentOS 7.

Be sure and test TFTP is working from another PC like
tftp 192.168.0.225
tftp> binary
tftp> verbose
Verbose mode on.
tftp> get tp_recovery.bin
getting from 192.168.0.225:tp_recovery.bin to tp_recovery.bin [netascii]
Received 8126464 bytes in -5.9 seconds [-11040379 bit/s]
tftp> quit

Note if you do not have a Linux PC to try it from get Cygwin

Now what you might not have caught above is the IP address have to be 192.168.0.225. If you have only a network with addresses in of 192.168.0.X then you should be good. If your network is a more common address like 192.168.1.X then you should still be OK with the ip addr add dev eth0 192.168.0.225/24 instruction to fake the address. Problems arise if you have multiple networks, like you should be doing, and one of them has addresses of 192.168.0.X. In that case both the TFTP server and the hub being flashed need to be on that network.

Now holding the button 15 seconds seems like it might be too long or too short. You want to hold it till the second LED starts blinking to trigger the download of the software. I discovered this by trial and error while watching traffic to the TFTP server port.

All that said when I tried this my network seemed to get royally screwed up. Many of the things on the 192.168.0.X network needed repowered, not just rebooted, to get them back online. Might have been coincidence but happened just as the hub came back up. The flash did seem to work though.

That just left the problem of the MAC having changed. Even though you can spoof the MAC in the underlying OpenWrt code (which might fool your router) the Meteobridge software pulls the MAC directly from the Ethernet card so the Meteobridge license and Ambient Weather Network uploader sees it as a new station. Meteobridge says to email them at info(at)meteobridge.com with the old and new MACs to transfer your license in the 14 day trial period. I'll have to update whether that works. Ambient Weather Network on the other hand I seem to have to add as a new station. That seems to work on their end but when I tell the Meteobridge to upload to it I get
Meteobridge settings successfully reloaded
Error: Ambient Weather Network: EXPIRED
Still trying to sort that.

Update a week later:

Found my email to info(at)meteobridge.com bounced. Seems they use Spamhaus lists and Spamhaus has decided to blacklist Spectrum's network. So I guess if you email them use a Gmail account. Resent email. Still no solution to to the Ambient Weather Network issue but do having it uploading elsewhere

After another week

After sending email to meteobridge from Gmail the license shows good for Meteobridge but not the Ambient Weather Network. Seems the only way to get it working again is to give them $150.  Broke down and paid for a new license but it does not seem to take affect immediately despite having received a confirmation email and rebooted. Will check again tomorrow. If you can get a new WeatherBridge for $200 and need to upload to Ambient Weather Network it might be worth it to get the new bridge instead of saving $20 but having to deal with flashing and getting licenses sorted. As I'm writing this the price diff is only $19.51.

One more day

Finally back uploading to Ambient Weather Network. Which gets me back to where I was before the hub crashed.