I fitted the first Energenie switch
in my mothers house in the bedroom I used using a remote control
since no two way switching and it worked A1 for the three years we lived with my mother to look after her, nothing done other than fit switch, had a 12 watt LED BA22d bulb, and very satisfied the way it worked.
I also had a double socket, and some TRV heads all using same system. Again worked very well.
When I moved to this house all energenie stuff removed from mothers house and brought here, and HomeBase were selling off energenie stuff so bought a load more.
This is when the problems started, of the 5 switches fitted, only one gave a problem to start with, so first added the load capacitor
but still got a shimmer when on, so changed bulbs the small one
had the shimmer, the large one worked A1, had some shimmer with GU10 bulbs, but only real problem was with the G9 bulbs, the E14 bulbs were OK as were the BA22d bulbs, the problem was the small G9 LED bulbs, putting just one quartz bulb with other 4 LED also worked A1, but did not really want tungsten bulbs.
Over the next year every so often the living room switch would stop working, if I turned off the power, and switched it back on it would work OK again, I think due to number of devices I have, but removed the switch in living room, and over the next year removed two more switches so now only 2 still in use, and a socket which seemed to turn itself into a flasher unit.
Since removing the 4 devices the rest have worked A1, but when Lidi did their smart range which uses Zigbee I started using Zigbee instead, the zigbee does not seem to work from the PC very well, but tablet and phone it works well with, now have 18 devices using Zigbee and the Smart Life app.
The Zigbee devices show in app if on or off, the energenie does not, every so often I have to reboot the energenie hub, never had a problem with zigbee, but the energenie remote control works direct and does not need the hub, and having the remote control at the side of bed works well. The remote control with Lidi will not work the relay, only the bulbs, some bulbs work through the hub, and some work direct to app Smart Life, I can't remember which are which.
There seems to be all sorts you can do,
but I found not all items have the ability to do all functions, it seems to vary make to make, however as yet touch wood, only one smart bulb has failed, I got a pair of GU10 colour changing bulbs for the centre of the chandelier shown on previous post, and one of pair failed.
I have not had many LED bulbs and tubes fail, can count on one hand, so would prefer to use smart bulbs when I can, as if anything does go wrong, it is easy to correct, simply unplug and replace, where when the light switch went wrong, I had to switch off all lighting power to replace the switch.
Using Nest Mini has been mixed results, think they like a women's voice, always do as told for my wife, but I will have a few attempts, maybe because I have no teeth and waiting for dentures, but see will say turn on landing lights and it works A1 for her. It is handy when carrying two cups of coffee upstairs to use voice commands, but that is to me being really lazy.
Nest Mini with energenie did not work so well, I would say turn off, as it was playing BBC 4 extra, and instead of turning off music, it would say turning off 5 switches and plunge us into darkness, but turn lights back on would get don't know how to do that yet. Likely using wrong phrase, but never got it to turn lights on, but it would turn them off no problem.
I love the automation, I will look at phone while shopping and if living room too hot, turn on the AC so room cool on return, when using so much the cost of the hub is nothing, however I find the eQ-3 bluetooth TRV heads work better than the energenie wifi heads even if the energenie were 3 times the price, but other than checking room temperature we don't really use the wifi function.
Yes I know your talking about lights, but with us same system also does heating and sockets, I even check on my beer brewing using same system. And can see when my car battery is charged.
As to Alexia v Google Mini, they seem to do same thing, son has Alexia, problem is when grand kids set an alarm call at 5 am before they leave.
this all looks super positive.
