Philips living whites plug in module (Zigbee) Better than Z-Wave!

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
1

Since years I’m struggling with plug-in switching modules of different brands. Nearly all of them stopped working eventually - after one or two years they begin toggling on and off.

A few month ago I bought the Philips Hue starter set, which integrates fine with Vera using Inveltr’s plugin. I really like it. It’s reliable, easy to set up and the different colors are nice. The Philips system is based on Zigbee.

Now I tested the living whites plug-in module. It’s tiny and underneath the module there is a small switch, that switches it between dimming and switching mode, so you need only one type. You can associate it with the Philips bridge easily, so it integrates with Vera. It’s working absolutely stable and fast! And the best thing is: In Germany there is a dealer at Amazon that sells it for around 8 Euros! I bought five of them for the price of one Z-Wave module!

I’m really wondering if this will be a strong competition for Z-Wave at least in lighting…

2

The Zigbee stuff does seem to be priced a lot nicer. The problem with Zigbee, from what I understood from a smart home expert, is that the interoperability between brands is rubbish. A lot of manufacturers use Zigbee as a transport layer for their own proprietary protocol. However standards are emerging for some stuff, like Light Link, which is what Philips uses.

Btw, nice to hear that the plugin supports these dimmers.