To my surprise, FedEx showed-up at the door this morning with my OSRAM Lightify starter kit from Germany. This is (yet another) "smart lighting" system, similar to Philips Hue. I've been testing the systems to use as effects lighting for the GC&W.
Executive summary? Don't bother. It doesn't do anything Philips Hue doesn't already do, and even ignoring the overseas shipping there's no price advantage.
Everything seemed to work fine at 110VAC/60Hz. The network hub was rated for universal voltage, but the bulb and package said "200-240V". I was prepared to wire a 220V circuit, but tried it on 110V anyway. It lit immediately, so no evident problem, at least electrically.
I had already downloaded the app from the European iTunes store since it was blocked from the U.S. store; not straightforward, but it can be done. App setup with the required cloud login was a major b!tch - took about a half hour of Hail Marys and patting my head while rubbing my stomach, with multiple logins using different passwords for every step. I persevered, suffered through a forced firmware upgrade, and eventually got it going.
Gamut was little different than Hue. Red would knock your socks off, blue a little faded, very poor saturation on green, and barely-there yellows and oranges. They are claiming RGB, but like Hue there's very little "G". I didn't play much with the tunable white, but from the little I tested it, Hue has a better temperature range. The diffuser globe didn't quite blend on some colors - with certain blues you could see a red spot.
The killer - which is why it is going on eBay - is about an hour into my testing it asked to login to their cloud again. WTF? If that's the way it's going to be this is a dead product - awkward awkward awkward. I think it was triggered by the number of control sequences executed. Who is going to put up with a required log-in at random times when they want to turn a light on or off?
I was hoping for a better gamut with the OSRAM bulb, but obviously that's not the case. So I'm still weighing DMX spots versus Philips Hue for special effects. I hope to make that decision in the next week or so.
EDIT: Shame on me for omitting something important here. The OSRAM Lightify lights
apparently are not destined to be sold in North America by their Sylvania subsidiary. OSRAM has partnered with Belkin, their bulbs now part of the Belkin WeMo "smart home" system. I have an inquiry pending asking if the RGB+W bulb is going to be natively supported by WeMo since they have started supporting other OSRAM-branded smart bulbs. I don't know the WeMo system or app yet, so maybe they won't make the same stupid stumbles as with the Lightify app.
