I’m planning to put HA on a pi, with a usb antenna
I can’t decide which bulbs to use, Philips hue looks great but it’s pricey and I’m pretty sure it’s got too much “phone home” crap. I don’t want anything to leave my network. If I can use Hue bulbs without the hub, or block the hub from phoning home I would consider it?
I found some Sengled bulbs that look fine, but I don’t know if they are any good.
Can someone recommend some decent bulbs? Colour ones preferably, but white is OK too.
Any other advice? Got a home server, so can host just about anything to get this working together.
fwiw the hue hub is reliable and has some nice features. it’s also not too chatty online and you can block it from the internet and everything still works great.
i use a zigbee dongle and a hue hub
You could migrate the hue hubs to the Zigbee USB. I managed to get some of the oldest to connect after a struggle. But it works like a charm.
yeah i have some bulbs through the hubs and some on the zigbee stick. for awhile actually had all of them on the zigbee stick but things were slowing down, so moved back. Been using HA for a long time now and IMO there’s no bad option from a setup perspective with hue.
You could migrate the hue hubs to the Zigbee USB. I managed to get some of the oldest to connect after a struggle. But it works like a charm.