Done with Lifx such a waste of time and money

I have tried and failed after 2 hours of ‘preparing Device’ I have reset everything several times but the clunky software {not suported) is not basic or advanced it is just hard to find anything needed, leave it to a wizard that does not speak.
These lights have been such a waste of my time since I bought them, they no longer will conect to anything so What am I todo with my expensive lights, that I bought for ease of use.
I will be buying a cheap set of wifi lights tomorrow and end my wasted time dealing with Lifx at all

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I literally just bought 12 new Philips hue lights tonight and replaced most of my lifx. I’m so tired of them “not responding” and after the past 2 wouldn’t even install after resetting I give up. I have spent far too much money and certainly far too much time troubleshooting and resetting and reconnecting and switching off and on at the wall or sitting in the dark waiting and waiting for the light to turn on.
Lifx was an expensive exercise but I’m out ! Cut my loses and moving on to something more stable and fit for consumer use

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LIFX definitely has problems but in a stable WiFi environment they work OK. We currently have 87 of them in use throughout our house. FWIW, about 20 replaced poorly functioning Hue’s.

LIFX are neither end-user level friendly nor do they have capabilities for network mgmt which does make it quite difficult to get them up and running or fix problems. Drivers for systems like Control 4 are quite poor. Other stuff is simply inconsistent.

Hue suffers from reliance on Zigbee which, as we and many others have discovered, is not an appropriate protocol for this purpose.

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Agreed. I have 58 LIFX bulbs and they’re pretty rock solid on my Ubiquiti UniFi powered LAN. Having said that, I advice against testing Ubiquiti’s beta firmware releases, because they tend to make things really bad.

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I have over 70 LIFX lights (various bulbs and strips) in (and outside) my house connected to a mesh wifi network (eero) that work in tandem with WeMo switches. I use python scripts that I wrote and execute (on a raspberry pi) to control the WeMo switches and LIFX lights automatically every day to the weather and sunrise/sunset times. They all work with my python scripts perfectly and flawlessly 99% of the time. I automate several routines throughout the day using these python scripts over the last 4 years and I’ve only ever had ONE LIFX bulb fail (keep in mind many of these lights are OUTSIDE all year in Michigan weather!).
All of that being said, I find the LIFX android app a little clunky and the “press and hold” function to turn on/off a light over a period of time doesn’t seem to work anymore for me. The WeMo Android app for controlling the WeMo switches doesn’t work AT ALL anymore (shame on Belkin) but they work perfect with my python scripts.
In my opinion I think the LIFX products themselves are AMAZING! I think the app could use a little work though. Oh, and I HATE Belkin’s app.

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Well, am driving my LIFX lights from nodejs with my own app layer. Works flawless 100% of the time.
Until now, I have not found better smart lights with this set of capabilities for home automation.
Hue causes tons of problems but as someone already said, that is mostly due to the choice of zigbee as protocol for them.
Granted, the pairing process could use some improvement and maybe should come with some networking tips for unexperienced users. A proper WiFi setup is key to any IoT based on that.

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LIFX are approaching this like they’re making a toy for hobbyists rather than a product for use by the general public. IMO they need to:

1 - Make the setup process reliable, consistent and fool-proof. When people with decent tech abilities have so many problems just getting them to work then there’s a problem.

2 - Provide mgmt capabilities. The start of this is simply a really good tech document explaining in some detail how they function (and what fields map to what). Next is probably just a decent reporting capability to list all of the lamps in a facility and each lamps attributes (including last use, last signal strength, etc.). A dashboard similar to some of what Ubiquiti have done would be very helpful. But there’s so much more they could do to make managing installations easier and more reliable.

3 - Improve HA capabilities, particularly with Control-4 but also Savant and others.

4 - Better CRI / TM-30.

LIFX have a great opportunity but they may loose if others get their act together first.

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I agree. They are great lights but impossible to reconnect. It is a trial and error process and support is non existent. I’d really like to find a public forum to post on as that is the only way we are ever going to get support. BUYER BEWARE

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Want to get rid of LIFX? Let me know!

This is my 1st post, so not sure of all the rules yet. How to contact you?
Let me know your inventory and desired price, we’ll come to agreement.

Cheers, AL

Selling? Let me know: Community.LIFX@AndrewSite.com

I’m so sick of these damn bulbs. My roommate is a tech person who is constantly reconfiguring our network to try and support them to work consistently. It’s so much time and effort. These lights are only good in theory not In practice. I’ll never buy another LIFX bulb again. Hopefully the other brands will create some of the good in theory tech that these have like the candle flicker or visualizer. Until then sayonara suckers.

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The frustrating thing is that the actual low-level communication seems to be rock solid. Whenever I control my bulbs via my own bespoke programs I have no problems, even on a fairly weak connection. It’s just the official app that’s glitchy.

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I’m so stuck! I have 22 Lifx bulbs in my home. When I first got them (some more than four years ago) I had little to no problems getting them set up - even after a power outage I could get them back online with no issues. Fast forward to last year - I’ve had NOTHING but problems. I even updated my entire network because I thought my network was just not stable enough. I bought a $300 router, redid EVERY SINGLE BULB, and I might have one entire room work at a time now. It looks like we have strobe lights in here because inevitably one or two lights will randomly turn off and then back on for seemingly no reason. Currently, I have one room of four lights + a lamp in another room that works as designed.

I wrote to Lifx last year about this and they said that due to COVID their warranty department was quite slow but they would get to my claim of my three lights that are literally broken. I get it - 2020 sucked. Lifx was not my top priority. I reached out again a few weeks ago and it’s as if they’ve never heard of me, even though I have them my ticket number. What gives!? My dumb ass bought three new Lifx bulbs to replace my broken ones because we were finally having visitors for vaca and I hated that three bulbs weren’t working. Now I can’t even get those bulbs linked up because while I’m on iOS, I do not use Apple Home. I am at my wits end.

Is there a fix? Can I sell these lights (all of them) back to Lifx? Some of these lights are 3 years old - I have no freaking idea what their dumb apple home number is. Argh!! $1100 in lights - completely wasted. :frowning: I have referred so many people to Lifx and now feel like a complete idiot.

~Tara

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I have to laugh every time I see some defend LIFX by posting that their LIFX products work 99% of the time with their $600 routers, custom python scripts, and computer engineering degrees. If you need all that for some lights to work, then I think you prove that LIFX’s software/firmware is garbage. Guess who’s products I don’t need all that to work- almost every other brand of smart products I own, including cheap Tuya, Magic, and Gosund based lights. Hell, even the C by GE products I hate work more reliably (they just don’t integrate with any other products). I may have to fix a non-LIFX product that is off the network once a year if that- and all of it works reliably everyday with Home Assistant (except C by GE, DAMN YOU!!! lol).

My LIFX products, on the other hand, have been a nightmare. At first it was just lights not turning on and off reliably with schedules in the app (this was actually the reason I was introduced to HA in the first place). Then they worked well with HA for a few month’s, but now I lose connection with the lights every few days and have to go through the horrible task of trying to reconnect everything to this garbage app.

So long story short, as every other brand of smart products I use (I think I counted 8 separate brands) work reliably on my network, and only the LIFX products need this incredibly perfect network to function, or even stay on the network for that matter, then yes, their products, or at least their software, is junk.

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hi, have you bought any beam starter kits or any beam parts, e.g. 12" light sections, power supplies etc.? i might be willing to help you unload them buy purchasing them from you instead of maybe throwing them out, sticking them in a box, preferably the original box they came packaged in. they must show no signs of misuse or abuse or damage of any kind as the light’s pins are delicate and easily damaged if mishandled or burned. and as far as your 2 hrs of “preparing device” could be as simple to solve by double checking your network’s password. more than 5 mins indicates something is not right. all my lighting is lifx. i’ve had issues but lifx has always replaced when needed or solved other issues not hardware related. my only downtime was due to out of stock for replacement parts. other issues i encounter are isp related. i don’t understand how everything you have is not working as intended. this is about as politely i can say this but sounds like an operator related issue.

i’ve just read multiple replies. i don’t have degrees in any of this tech. like most everything i do, they’re more of a hobby than something that should work according to my degree and tech knowledge, writing my own scripts and geez i’ve nfi what most are saying in their whiny complaints. my set up is simple. seems everyone else made their own circumstances worse by knowing too much. i do lose a beam now and then but it magically comes back on it’s own almost every time. keep it simple. they’ll work.

Make sure you are on the latest operating system on your device.
Was having all kinds of problems reconnecting lights that went dark.
Didn’t realize there was a new Apple OS update.
Updated my IPAD and now everything is back to normal.

The support is non existent.
Stick with a proven product that has better support.
I’m getting form emails as responses to my issues.

Sometime some of the lights drop off the app, google and my network and them randomly come back on.

Araknis Router, Access points and Power management.
Not my network that’s causing the issues. That I’m sure of.
Test the theory on another propert with only a Cox Modem/ router. Same bullshit.

My unifi wifi has has 70 Lifx a19 on a single
SSID and 3 APs

I’ve got another unifi setup with
120 Lifx on a single SSID with 15 APs.

Not saying it has been pleasant.

I agree if it were easier they would sell
more.

And +1 @delfick

Many thanks for helping us while you were working at Lifx, the anti-profit self-defeating organization.

Well said.

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