Other Lighting Deals here, Starts 5th Oct.
Smart LED 8W Downlight $14.99.
All depends on how close you live to an Aldi
2.4 kms…
120 km for me…
You need to check your maths, 7sec would indicate you live 2,100,000km from aldi
@42: Uhhh… It would take 1,700 hours for thunder to travel that distance.
And you would definitely not hear it.
I hate to say it, but JV was right for once. Thunder would take 7 seconds to travel 2.4km.
Have you confused the speed of sound and the speed of light?
@NobalaKoba: I have no idea why JV gets downvoted in this instance. For once I actually made an audible laugh (that was heard 2.4km away 7 seconds later)
Did they misspell lighting? I don't get your joke.
Some of us did. Now we Al di laughing.
I would rather go to Audi :D
Its worse than a dad joke.
It's
I will wait 7 seconds for the Thunder Sale.
Since we're going down that pointless path.
lol
It’s all Cloudy with a chance of Thunder.
Only good thing is i can close the lights in my bed without the need to throw objects at the switch.
I trained my cat.
I trained the wife.
if cat untrained, throw cat
Can't do the same with wife ;)
One time solution, you throw the object on the light!
I use the schedule feature to turn the lights on and off and dimmer. They also have the RGB models which I missed out on.
Anyone know what brand the lights are? I have some Arlec ones that use Tuya, so hoping they might work with the same app?
Their homebrand
Yeh they are tuya. Look back at the previous years and you'll find plenty of info in the comments.
I have approx. 10 of these lights. They are Tuya based. It uses the Smart Life app which then can be synced with Alex or Google Home. I use the schedule feature to turn the lights on and off and dimmer.
dont you need a hub/gateway to control the lights? or you just add them to the smart life app directly?
not for these aldi ones (Tuya protocol with network connectivity on the device). Once you've got them into your preferred (Tuya) app can control there, or via your alexa / google / HA etc integrations.
@xwx: Thanks mate, I was asking because I bought some bluetooth lights from Kogan that looks similar but find it painful to control them (need to turn on both bluetooth + location)
I added them via the smart life app directly, then I linked my alexa app to the smart life app and it detected all devices (lights). I was then able to group them by room and control those lights by the groups.
@dbtrk: Thanks but for some reason my bluetooth lights shows as offline in google home. I've done some googling and found out apparent bluetooth lights dont work with google home…unless I get a gateway/hub.
Thanks for that. Guess I’ll be going to Aldi next weekend 😁
To add to the other comments, these work over wifi with the Tuya platform. You can add them to a variety of apps (I use the Tuya app) and they can be controlled by Alexa/Google or Home Assistant + others.
If you get keen you can also flash custom firmware onto them with CloudCutter. This allows you to drop the tuya requirement and use them completely locally instead of relying on the tuya cloud & your internet connection.
Surprised Aldi isn't selling actual lightning, they have everything else :)
Those solar lights (the spot and the street light look good if they will honor the 3 year warranty advertised) - many of the products in this price range from China are simply not made for the harsh uv of Australia (especially places like QLD). These look way better than the ones you can get from Amazon for $25-30.
Especially the flood with the external sensor , looks like it has a bigger range of adjustments to the usual built in pit sensors
FYI I've bought direct from https://www.tsunlighting.com and they've been good in our UV the past 2 years or so, still working well despite being in full sunlight for most of the day (I've got deck, post and spike lights from them). They do sales every once in a while and delivery takes <2 weeks.
Thanks for the tip I will suss them. I trialed 4 different suppliers and styles of solar motion lights on Amazon, they’ve been ok, but you can tell being in the sun all day everyday is taking a toll even 8 months in (Screws rusting, body fading etc) - i took preventative caution by siliconing around possible ingress points too . Also you can tell the output has really reduced a heap - prob crappy batteries and they are too high for me now to check without a ladder but I bet the solar panels will probably show some sun damaged too
Sun damage to panels is major issue in my experience with some ALDI & other solar lights.
Replacing batteries Won't help when clear top of panel becomes opaque, reducing charging.
Bought some ALDI gutter lights - all failed just past 60 day return period. Batteries were fine, but solar panel or switch had failed. Opened up - 1 had wire glued rather than soldered to contact!!
ALDI solar motion lights fell off wall - mounting fell out of back of light a day after wasting time installing😖
Whereas ALDI solar motion Shed lights were a great buy. Batteries finally failed after 5 years. Might replace the batteries.
Wifi :-(
Better go to Aliexpress and get Zigbee for the same price.
I know, … you just want a few, so wifi is OK. But trust me, soon you'll have smart lights throughout the house. And fifty wifi lights is bad. Not to mention the whole "depends on a live connection to server in China to work" thing.
Wondering if these can be flashed with Tasmota
If they have the same chipset as previous models, you can OpenBeken them and then flash them. Mine are all on ESPhome.
I used tuya-cloudcutter to flash openbekken and libretiny.
You need to see what chip is in them and should be able to put esphome on it
https://esphome.io/components/libretiny.html
There is also OpenBeken that can be flashed.
https://github.com/openshwprojects/OpenBK7231T_App
Don't think tasmota support non esp chips.
What's the difference between ESPHome and OpenBeken? I've used lots of ESPHome with Home assistant. Is there anything I am missing for not using OpenBeken?
@CoronavirusVaccine: OpenBeken is deigned for Beken chips, which aren’t natively compatible with programs designed for ESP-8266/32 devices
If they're identical to the last time Aldi offered them (May 2024) they use a bk7231t chip, which can be flashed with esphome using cloudcutter.
That makes them cheap, fast and reliable… no need for crappy Tuya cloud connections.
Recommend the esphome configurations from here:
https://github.com/Roving-Ronin/myHomeAssistant/tree/main/es…
Zigbee vs wifi always comes up. If your wifi network doesn't suck (i.e. not an ISP-provided router) and you don't want to bother managing an additional set of devices with Zigbee, then wifi is absolutely fine!
@Elliottt: Thanks,
This is probably the best response.
If they have tuya firmware 1.5* you are boned I think.
I bought a load of mirabella lights from bunnings and :( Been slowly reluctantly upgrading to lifx downlights. Mega exy.
Who wants to buy some and report back what chipset they use?
@Elliottt: I actually prefer wifi over zigbee in situations where a power source is available. My zigbee lightbulbs are automatically configured as router in the zigbee mesh so whenever a household member cut off the power to the lightbulb then some of the zigbee sensors attached to that lightbulb becomes unresponsive (sometimes for a very long time despite zigbee meant to be a self-healing mesh). And there's no way to block the lightbulbs from taking a zigbee router role.
ESPHome on wifi has always been much more reliable from personal experience. But you can't beat the long battery life of zigbee sensors.
link some please.
Would you happen to have a link for any that you've purchased and tried from AliExpress? :D
I refuse to buy smart anything that doesn’t support Matter.
Needless to say I am not buying much.
why does it matter?
If Matter becomes the standard, you'll just need a Zigbee bridge that supports Matter in future. You don't need Matter support in the bulb.
Sounds like you might need to upgrade your router.
I had connection issues with my old router. Devices could find it but not connect. I think it had reached its limit on the number of connections so I upgraded to a new one that's supposed to handle 200+ connections since there's newer tech available.
If you own the house, you may also be better off getting smart switches so it's easier to replace lights with whatever instead of needing another smart light again.
Yep this is usually the issue. I currently have about 50 WiFi devices connected to a single AC-PRO mounted in the centre of the house (along with a bunch of Zigbee devices possibly sharing the frequency) and it handles it no problem.
You just need to use a better router or Access Point(s). Certainly a UniFi AP would have no problems with 50 WiFi devices connected to it. Chances are that if you have that many devices, then your house will be large enough to need more than one.
As for having a connection to China, well most people with that many devices or who are security minded would self host their IOT devices.
Link mate, people are asking for it.
here is one: https://www.google.com/search?q=zigbee+downlight+aliexpress
Am not seeing quite the same CCT ones as before. There are wifi colour under $10, Zigbee colour 10W for $25 delivered. (I may have been browsing in USD, but still a good deal.)
Colour modes are dim, you can ignore them and just use the CCT.
I see they have cheap lights with Wifi+BLE. That might be a good option. Start using Wifi, but option to go local with BLE later.
Not only that, make sure your devices are v.3 Zigbee if possible.
Why are many wifi lights bad? We've got about 8 of these and about to install another 12 with an addition.
Probably because cheap WiFi routers can become easily overwhelmed once that many WiFi devices are connected and start randomly kicking device connections. Personally I find it easier to manage separate WiFi and ZigBee networks without dropping them all into one network.
Also, if you want wireless switches dotted around, you're going to need something more appropriate than WiFi anyway
I believe our router is fairly decent. How would you know if it's not up to the task?
@stuckster: You don't really know until things start playing up but you can always try and then upgrade your router if you need.
Have these and works well. Made a routine to turn them off if no one home
How do you detect that nobody is home?
using google home app on phone, you can enable presence detection which triggers if all the phones in home are away or not
If you're running a lot of lights of the same switch, much better to get a wifi switch.
$249?!
Wonder when it goes on sale
"Clinically-proven"
When the product description needs to open with that….
Marketing speech for "trust me bro"
Anybody else also experienced that these downlights randomly resets and looses sync with the app and when you turn on it starts to blink on off until it is resynced back on the app. Happens to me randomly (no specific timeframe maybe more or less a month) across different downlights and its very annoying to keep resyncing.
Not these specific lights but I've got 3 pendant lights that do that - it's such a pain and seems completely random.
yes the aldi ones do this almost monthly
Yep, some Smart downlights I bought from Aldi a few years ago (not sure if they are the same as these, their brand name was "Brilliant Smart") would do this randomly at least once a month. Eventually I got so sick of having to resync them I bought some dumb led downlights from Bunnings and replaced them all.
Yes they are probably faulty.
I purchased 18 of these lights in the last special, 2 of them had the exact same issue you described above.
Luckily I purchased spares because having a couple of down lights not matching would have been a pain.
I think they call it the bath tub curve they usually fail early on or after years. If you get past 30 days you’re usually pretty good.
At 8w I would assume the lumens are about half what you'd actually want from a downlight.
I can’t 100% say for this one but in general with colour changing lights, Half would be generous. Assuming a single pcb arrangement, only a fraction of the led is really lit at once
Eg red, only red part on
Purple , blue and red on etc
I have ~40 of these RGB Aldi downlights in my house. Typically two in each room. Cool and warm whites work quite well. They’re werent noticeably dimmer than the 10W dumb down lights I replaced.
Some of the colours are dimmer than others, red for instance, and some colours displayed don’t match up exactly to what you tap on the colour wheel of the tuya app or in HA either. But you can work around that easily enough.
Anyone know whether these are IC4 rated? i.e. you can put insulation directly over the top of them.
Assuming they are the same as last time yes they are.
Mine's not plug, would I need a sparky to replace them?
Legally, yes. They would need to wire in a plug outlet base for you to plug these into. Once done you can than change them out at anytime with subsequent lights with plugs.
Consider getting sparky to put in plug tops , save you some trouble in future assuming you have anything except an e27 or gu10 setup.
I don't mind a few creature comforts but not sure what I'd do with these?
Any practical uses?
Turn up light without getting off the couch when it’s movie time or whatever
Timer mode (like to make it look like someone home when you’re away)
Creating different ambience
Automation
Turn on the dining room lights at dinner time
Turn off the lights at bedtime
Brighten the lights on slowly at sunrise
Turn lights off during movies
Turn off the lights when no one’s home
Plenty of other options. My hallway lights turn red & green each morning to tell my kids when they can get out of bed. Saves us having to be woken at 5am every day cos the young fella wants to go to the park… haha
Basically smart dimmers lights.
We make the lights dark red when the baby is asleep, otherwise if you open the door and a light is on she goes from upset to wide awake.
They make great night lights if you don’t want to turn on all the kitchen lights in the middle of the night etc.
My partner also knits so when I’m watching a movie I turn off all the lights apart from the one above her chair.
You can pair them with other sensors too, for example one of my kitchen lights goes blue if the babies room drops below 16c. We have had issues with the toddler playing with the thermostat so it’s a visual reminder to check the temp.
Can anyone kindly advise if an ideal set up is feasible with these light bulbs.
Right now i have a standard downlight with a physical switch and i want to now go "smart" and be able to control the light via phone however don't want to lose the physical switch function to turn the light on and off.
Reading the comments im happy to learn more and things to consider with others more knowledgeable
You can turn it on and off with switch, but if it’s in off mode obviously you cannot override with the app
Assuming youre using home assistant, one solution is to use a shelly behind your wall switch. You need to put shelly in "detached" mode. It means power is always connected to the lights. You can then write an automation to turn on/off the light in HA.
Another option is that you could use a "Smart Button Switch" (like an IKEA one) to control……with Homeassistant.
Can I control these lights on Google Home or Samsung smarthings without downloading its random Chinese app?
I don't trust their app in terms of security.
You'll need to use Tuya for initial set up but after that it'll link and work with Google Home.
IM pretty sure Google home talks to Tuya Cloud, Tuya Cloud then talks to the light. No App per se but theres a connection in the background still to Tuya.
Ideally, you need to create a DMZ off your router at home and put IOT devices in that. Then prevent access from that network to you home network.
Part of me belives that the Chinese government subsidies these IOT devices to get a presence in peoples home. Hence why people have made apps like cloudcutter
Will wait 7 seconds for the Thunder Sale…