Integrating Zigbee Canless Lights For Entire Home - Juno Connect

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#1

Hi all,

I am in the early stages of building a house and am considering integrating Zigbee tunable white ceiling lights. Up until recently, the only options for tunable ceiling lighting were either (1) smart bulbs or (2) retrofit style can inserts. However, I came across these new lights from Juno/Acuity Lighting that may fit the bill.

On paper they seem great, but I am curious if anyone has any experience with these or other tunable white canless ceiling lights. Do these integrate well with the Inovelli switches or Zigbee hubs like Hubitat?

I am also curious as to what is the best way to setup these lights. I am planning to setup Blue Series switch to supply power to the lights at all times and simply use Zigbee to control on/off/dimming/color temperature, however, will this result in any unexpected issue (e.g., will all the lights in a room turn on at the same time or will there be cascading; will some lights fail to respond at times). Basically I’d like to know if people have tried something like this and if they have any regrets or words of caution.

I will probably buy a few of these once the Blue Series switches come out and play around with them, but any help or suggestions in the meantime are greatly appreciated.

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#2

You should be able to get binding going to get them all turning on at the same time and dimming together. So that should not be an issue. Just check out the videos in the blue series switch thread. It’s binded to 6 bulbs and they all turn on/off together. While it’s not the exact same fixture as these, the function should still be the same.

Personally, if I’m setting up a room with multiple fixtures I will always use fixtures with changeable bulbs. I think ahead to the future when 1 of the LED fixtures burns out and the manufacture no longer exists. Then I’d be faced with having 1 fixture that’s different or having to change all 10 to make them match. So for me I’d use regular recessed lights with something like BR30 smartbulbs. But that’s just my personal preference.

#3

Just chiming in to say that I will have the exact same setup as you.

I actually already have 10 of these bulbs installed, and was able to get them setup in home assistant. However, as the part of the house that these are installed in is still under renovation, I simply haven’t used these beyond being “dumb” bulbs yet. And of course, don’t have a blue switch yet.

But if nothing else, know that someone else is in the same boat as you!

Also, to @MRobi yeah I would have preferred to go the can with changeable bulb route, but there were several factors as to why that didn’t happen. @JimK I would suggest always buying 2 extra in the event any of them die down the road.

#4

Is this the same one?

JunoConnect WF6C RD TUWH MW M6 Wafer LED Tunable Downlight, 6-Inch, Matte White Amazon.com

I can take one for the team and test it for you guys.

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#5

Thanks @Eric_Inovelli! That appears to be the flush version rather than recessed, but the driver/module should be the same. I actually cannot find the recessed version on sale anywhere.

@travis can you elaborate on why you went with canless lights instead of cans and changeable bulbs? I understand there are potential cost savings as well as potential energy efficiency benefits to using canless, but am curious as to what swayed your decision.

@MRobi thank you for the suggestion of binding as well as potential issues in the future. I need to explore initial cost savings vs upgrade cost savings as you suggest. These will be cheaper to install vs cans plus smart BR30 bulbs, so maybe I order a few extra to be safe if I end up liking the way they look.

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#6

Ok great! Just ordered one and it should be here tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted on the results!

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#7

Yep, @Eric_Inovelli those are them! Although they were almost $10 cheaper when I bought them.

#8

@JimK I went with canless mainly becuase of cost.

My contractor working on my home reno had already installed lights he had purchased without consulting me. I just came home one day and there were basic canless dumb lights already installed.

When I told him that was a no go, it became an issue of course. The cost of removing the 10 lights, installing 10 cans (which required more than just installing, but I won’t get into it), and buying 10 can smart lights, was more than I was willing to do. We made a compromise that I would buy the model I wanted as long as it was canless; and the removal of old lights + install of new would be free.

Boy oh boy I had no idea finding a smart canless light that didn’t have bad reviews or could only be purchased on alibaba with 23 different variations and no guide as to which to buy, or wasn’t $50 a pop would be so hard!!!

@Eric_Inovelli if you guys are still into bulbs, it seems like there’s a huge gap in the market for zigbee smart canless lights… that’s ready to be filled. Almost all new builds and renos (that don’t have cans already) go with canless for their ease of installation. I was honestly shocked to find that there were basically 3 or 4 total companies selling zigbee canless lights and none of them provided me any brand or product trust or transparency that I was desperately seeking (something you guys are pros at)

#9

Alright, I’m going to spill some beans – probably shouldn’t, but whatever.

We’re going to be bringing on a COO in the coming weeks to help us from an operations/finance standpoint. Part of their job is to look at our innovation calendar and figure out what is and isn’t feasible.

I was chatting with @kreene1987 offline and explained that my goal for Inovelli has always been to be, “the Ring of lighting” – that is, come in to the lighting industry and shake it up the way Ring shook up the alarm industry.

Part of that strategy is to really revolutionize the way we think about lighting. No more just on/off/dim/color change, etc – but rather, have lighting work for you (circadian, hard of hearing notifications, energy management, etc). This is why most of what we’ve done traditionally (aside from the sensor – I will give that one a pass bc it was a white-label and cheap to acquire) has been bulbs and switches.

So what am I getting at? Lol, great question.

I’d like to really understand the process @JimK and @travis went through when building your house and selecting your lights. Like, did the builder give you Option A = Traditional Lights and Option B = Smart Lights for a premium? Or did you guys go to them and say, “Do you have a smart home package?”

What I need to do is put together some quantitative data and a story to sell the COO on why we should invest here and invest quickly.

The good news is his primary target for him will be B2B and this would include the builders, so I think this is a great fit.

–
Anyway, I guess what I’m asking is: @JimK and @travis do you guys mind if I start a thread and ask some questions around your experience with purchasing a home with smart lighting?

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2021-2022 Roadmap
#10

Happy to provide any feedback on my experience so just let me know how I can help. I can chat in a separate thread or talk via phone if that would be easier. Just let me know.

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#11

Excellent preliminary results with the Juno light.

I tested binding with it and it works amazing.

Check the video out below:

I didn’t have an extra switch at the house to directly wire it to, but I’ll do that tomorrow to test smart bulb mode.

The weird thing about these is that I think they may be owned by Samsung or something bc when I first plugged them in, my phone (Samsung Galaxy) prompted me right away and asked if I wanted to pair with SmartThings. I didn’t even have the app open.

I paired them to Home Assistant and sure enough, they came up as Samsung:

Screenshot_20220420-201214_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20220420-201214_Home Assistant1080Ă—2400 193 KB

I’ll come back and edit this tomorrow with my results from the direct wire.

But first impressions are good!

3 Likes
#12

Do those do CCT (warm and cold white) or color???

#13

From a lot of what I’ve experienced with my current and previous house (small Midwest metro for reference) is that a lot of contractors tend to go through a supply house (local or otherwise) for parts.

My plumber, for instance, uses a local branch of Winnelson which is part of Winsupply. At the same time, I can call them up and tell them I bought a whole house water filtration system and they’ll install it. If I need a new toilet I tell them to go through their supplier and bill me parts, the advantage being they generally will be able to get any replacement parts easy because the supply house will keep the common stuff in stock.

Of course electrical is a bit different (you don’t replace parts in a light switch) and it seems for the most part any sort of “smart package” means you are going to be getting Creston, C4, Homeworks/Radio Ra, etc. The proprietary, no publicly listed MSRP, can’t even tinker with it, high labor cost systems. Something else to keep in mind that might attract even more attention is if you manage to get something that works with 0-10v systems. LEDs have fantastic dimming capabilities, but MLV and ELV minimums tend to be at 20% and if you’re lucky, you can get 10% (I’ve seen someone mention 5%) whereas 0-10v systems (common in commercial settings) can dim much lower. I’ve read that it’s becoming more common in new construction too. Right now I’m only aware of Qubino having a 0-10v module, but I’ve been considering getting fixtures that can do any dimming method (WAC lighting has some), installing the 0-10v module, and then controlling it with an inovelli switch via bindings. It’s down the list though.

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#14

Great question - CCT and the Kelvin range is awesome. No color tho.

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#15

Circadian is where it’s at. Color is just a party trick anyway. My house LITERALLY makes my household feel more tired at bedtime, it’s crazy. Also helps wake us up gently!

Will have to look into these in the future…

#16

I’m sincerely intrigued. I love color lights but definitely think it’s overkill for overhead lights (I like the color for accent lights).

How do you have circadian setup?

#17

Based on the spec sheet these are not compatible with dimmers. So I think you will find that direct wire will only allow for on/off function.

Thanks again for testing, these look like a great option.

#18

GitHub - basnijholt/adaptive-lighting: Adaptive Lighting custom component for Home Assistant via HACS into Home Assistant.

Documentation: Adaptive Lighting - Home Assistant

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#19

The cool thing about these switches is they have “smart bulb mode” which keeps the load at 100% from the switch, but allows you to dim the switch “artificially” so the led bar and level reported show different levels, and when bound to the light it will follow the level of the dimmer, even though full power is flowing the entire time.

It’s something the community pioneered on the Red Dimmers that I use in most of my fully smart circuits.

So technically it should be no different than having it on a different circuit. I think Eric is just running a test to confirm that nothing weird happens in smart bulb mode.

#20

Yes, exactly! Love the community for this one :slight_smile:

@JimK – check this out:

I set it up exactly as @kreene1987 described and then also set the switch to work with an aux/add-on switch.

The one caveat I’m going to mention is that initially the transformer does make a slight buzz and the lights flicker – They weren’t joking about it not being compatible with dimmers! But once it stabilized and the light was put in smart bulb mode, it worked great.

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