I have three GE “Wink” light bulbs, and a GE Wink “Link” hub. In general, it works fine, but the GE Link hub is pretty limited in it’s abilities. It doesn’t seem to have any firmware update, nor does it seem to be able to update the firmware of the bulbs (According to Wink, at least, the Link hub has been EOL’d since Quirky declared bankruptcy). Also, it doesn’t work AT ALL with non-GE bulbs (I found this out when I tried a Cree bulb, and wasted over an hour before finally finding a non-GE page somewhere that stated this limitation).
Anyway, this has been annoying. So when I was recently on eBay, I found a cheap Wink Hub to purchase ($25). I know these were blown out a while back at Home Depot for about that amount, but I wasn’t in the “know” at that time. I bought the hub, and it showed up relatively quickly. Out of the box, it was running a VERY old firmware. Getting this to update took a bit of work, requiring a couple resets, and moving the unit around the house until it apparently had a good enough wireless signal to download and install. Once that was done, and the Wink app was working, I tried pairing my GE bulbs (I had to reset them first). None of them would pair fully. They would flash like they were paired, but the Wink hub would never finish and confirm they were paired. I emailed Wink support, and within a couple hours they got back to me and after confirming I had done the basic stuff, they did a reset of the Zigbee chipset. After a power cycle, the bulbs fully paired. =) Well done Wink support (I don’t see any way I could have done this on my own).
I did have to completely recreate all my schedules with the move to the new hub, sadly. But after that was done, things seemed to work. I do notice that the GE bulbs seem to respond very slowly to commands with the new hub, but they DO respond simultaneously. With the Link hub, a dim command for all bulbs would happen one at a time, kind of (you could see one dim before the other). Now, they all dim, turn on, turn off, simultaneously, which is nice.
And because the Wink Hub does so much more than GE bulbs, I’ve since purchased 2 LeakSmart sensors, one of which lives in my Shed, and the other in my Garage, and I hope to work on some API calls to pull logging info and see how the temperature of my Shed and Garage change throughout the year. At some point maybe I’ll get actual temp/humidity sensors instead. I’ve also purchased a GE outdoor “outlet” to control some string lights we have.
All and all, once Wink support helped out, I have been very happy. I have heard the Cree Zigbee lights work faster than the GE ones, so I may have to try those at some point, but for now, I’m very happy.
[xrr rating=4.5/5]
