Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Lightify

Using Amazon Echo voice to control lighting is appealing for seniors,  especially if the lighting is not in easy reach.

Initially I used smart switches at the wall to control lights by voice.   Now it is cheaper to use smart bulbs.

I selected the Sylvania Osram system called Lightify because the price had come down sharply from what it had been before.

I noticed that Amazon comments were conflicting, though.  Many commenters were strongly negative and yet many were strongly positive. Some indicated that Lightify could not be used with Alexa, whereas others indicated that Lightify worked fine with Alexa.

But nobody explained HOW Lightify could be made to work fine with Alexa.

So here is the explanation for the conflicting comments.

The basic installation to smartphone works well.  The connection to Alexa is simply confusing.  

The problem is all a matter of passwords and serial number.

Where the instructions say to use the information on the back of the Hub to connect, that information is not correct.

The login password is not the password indicated on the Hub. Instead it is the password used with your login which in my case was my email address login password.

Then the serial number is not the serial number indicated on the Hub.   The dash and digits following at the end are NOT to be included.

With those changes everything connected and paired.

Lightify uses a system called Zigbee, for which even cheaper bulbs are available than those from Lightify.   I have not tried them.




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