Will Hubless Light Bulbs Work With A Smart Hub?
Let’s agree that no one wants to spend tons of money on hubless lightbulbs and then have them not work once you buy a smart home hub. If you are wondering if hubless light bulbs will work with a new hub thrown into the mix…
To put it simply yes hubless lightbulbs will work with a smart home hub. For example, Alexa or Samsung SmartThings will still connect to your WiFi bulbs regardless of whether you have a hub or not.
Here’s the deal:
If you have bulbs that require a hub then they won’t be able to talk to Alexa without it. This is why you constantly see me saying that you should get a hub before buying any additional smart home automation products. It’s just a common-sense way to start your home automation journey. In the end, the bulbs will cost you much less as well.
Alexa is great for connecting to multiple hubs. In fact, there are several different situations that I have personally seen where Phillips hue bulbs or TP-link bulbs are connected through a Samsung smartings hub. Add in a few generic WiFi bulbs and have them all connected and controlled by Alexa or Google Home. Just make sure you name them accordingly in each app and you’ll never have a problem with this setup.
I’ll bet you have more questions though….
Which Smart Home Hub Should I Get?
Obviously, you are considering purchasing a smart home hub or already have. But let us be clear, a smart home hub and a voice assistant are not the same things. Examples of smart assistants are Google Home and Amazon Echo. Whereas examples of smart home hubs would be Samsung SmartThings, Wink or Insteon. The big question is, which one is best? Personally, for a smart home hub, I recommend the Samsung SmartThings Hub V3 all day long and twice on Sunday! Why? There are a few reasons…
- They are the most secure hub you can buy on the market.
- They have the most frequent updates.
- They support more devices than any other smart hub on the market.
- They are fairly easy to set up.
Currently, Samsung SmartThings supports over 231 smart devices. Everything from Blink XT cameras to Schlage Door Locks. Not only that but they have their own entire line of home security sensors that are relatively inexpensive. I can’t recommend this hub enough!
Which Automation Assistant Should I Get?
If you are considering voice automation for your smart home, then you will want to consider which smart home assistant will do what you need it to. As far as automation assistants go, at this point, I strongly recommend using the Amazon Echo. Why? You ask? I’ll give you a list…
- Supports more devices than Google Home and Siri.
- Easiest set up ever!
- Fantastic support!
This is just the beginning really. I have several Amazon Echo products in my home and a few Google Home devices. I can’t even begin to tell you how much harder the set up is for me to set up things like my Logitech Harmony or Philips Hue Lights or even a TP-Link smart plug with Google Home! I easily spent two hours and then gave up.
With the Amazon Echo, I was able to set up everything in my home in under two hours with no problems at all.
I like easy! Don’t you?
Which Smart Lightbulbs Should I Get?
In a situation where you are considering buying smart light bulbs, you may want to look into smart light switches instead. The biggest reason is that if you have spent money previously on new LED bulbs for your home, then it will be more cost effective to just put in new smart light switches to control them.
Check out my article on how to choose smart home lighting and it will explain it in a lot more detail.
I can say that if you are thinking about replacing your existing bulbs with smart light bulbs, the least expensive way to do it would be to purchase some Element Classic bulbs made my Sengled. You can check out the current price on Amazon.
Conclusion
If you have further questions about something is compatible in the smart home realm please feel free to search on my site and see if I have the answer you are looking for. If not, it is always good to check the listing on Amazon to see what the manufacturer has to say about it.
