Help me find a RGB LED light bulb upgrade
January 16, 2022 1:27 PM Subscribe
I'm trying to replace my existing physical-remote color LED light bulb setup with something higher quality. Help?
We have a bunch of cheapo RGBW color LED light bulbs in lamps and fixtures in our house. We got them at various times and ended up with two slightly different types that we keep in different rooms. Both types have remotes that are similar to or exactly this one: a small flat rectangular remote with colorful buttons. In both sets the bulbs have been getting less and less responsive to the remotes in the 3ish years we've had them. Changing the remote battery helped for a couple clicks, and re-pairing (turning the fixture with the bulb off, holding the remote "on" button, and then turning the fixture on) only helps for a couple clicks and only for a few of the bulbs. Now you mostly have to walk right up to the bulb and get the remote under the lampshade to change it or turn it off.
I would love to replace these with something similar but ideally slightly higher quality, although a hard requirement is that we do NOT under any circumstances want to use any kind of smartphone app or voice command home assistant (alexa or siri or etc) to control these. It's got to be a separate physical remote, and I’d love it to be a nice solid one if it's out there. This has been very hard to find and everything I've found that's close doesn't have enough information to convince me that the quality-to-cost ratio is good enough, or that they won't just give you a crappy remote and then rope you into buying their hubs and proprietary phone apps.
I'm looking for something that includes a warm white light option, a variety of colors, and dimming or adjustable brightness (our current ones have 3 brightness levels). This is for standard bulbs for lamps and a ceiling fan fixture, I think they're "A19" size. Not really looking to mess around with strip lights or any kind of connectors or hubs since we have existing floor lamps we like.
The dream would be to get bulbs that can be used with a higher quality remote to control multiple bulbs in a room reliably from across the room.
Relatedly, I've noticed that the frequencies overlap slightly across the two sets I have now, e.g. pressing the red button on remote A turns bulb B green. I'd be open to buying a totally separate programmable remote if there's one I could manually set up for these types of bulbs in some way - but I have no idea if that's possible since these bulbs are typically so cheap. I saw some DIY reverse engineering type tutorials for these things, and I'm intrigued, but I'd like to avoid buying an Arduino for this.
Does anyone have any suggestions, or can you help me find something nice? Ideal budget is under $150 for a set of 3 or 4 bulbs and remote, but I'm willing to spend more if there's something out there that's worth it.
Thanks!
We have a bunch of cheapo RGBW color LED light bulbs in lamps and fixtures in our house. We got them at various times and ended up with two slightly different types that we keep in different rooms. Both types have remotes that are similar to or exactly this one: a small flat rectangular remote with colorful buttons. In both sets the bulbs have been getting less and less responsive to the remotes in the 3ish years we've had them. Changing the remote battery helped for a couple clicks, and re-pairing (turning the fixture with the bulb off, holding the remote "on" button, and then turning the fixture on) only helps for a couple clicks and only for a few of the bulbs. Now you mostly have to walk right up to the bulb and get the remote under the lampshade to change it or turn it off.
I would love to replace these with something similar but ideally slightly higher quality, although a hard requirement is that we do NOT under any circumstances want to use any kind of smartphone app or voice command home assistant (alexa or siri or etc) to control these. It's got to be a separate physical remote, and I’d love it to be a nice solid one if it's out there. This has been very hard to find and everything I've found that's close doesn't have enough information to convince me that the quality-to-cost ratio is good enough, or that they won't just give you a crappy remote and then rope you into buying their hubs and proprietary phone apps.
I'm looking for something that includes a warm white light option, a variety of colors, and dimming or adjustable brightness (our current ones have 3 brightness levels). This is for standard bulbs for lamps and a ceiling fan fixture, I think they're "A19" size. Not really looking to mess around with strip lights or any kind of connectors or hubs since we have existing floor lamps we like.
The dream would be to get bulbs that can be used with a higher quality remote to control multiple bulbs in a room reliably from across the room.
Relatedly, I've noticed that the frequencies overlap slightly across the two sets I have now, e.g. pressing the red button on remote A turns bulb B green. I'd be open to buying a totally separate programmable remote if there's one I could manually set up for these types of bulbs in some way - but I have no idea if that's possible since these bulbs are typically so cheap. I saw some DIY reverse engineering type tutorials for these things, and I'm intrigued, but I'd like to avoid buying an Arduino for this.
Does anyone have any suggestions, or can you help me find something nice? Ideal budget is under $150 for a set of 3 or 4 bulbs and remote, but I'm willing to spend more if there's something out there that's worth it.
Thanks!
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posted by mumkin at 1:46 PM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]