This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/eaterout on 2024-08-28 12:19:54+00:00.

Hey guys, I just finished testing a ton of smart lights and put all the data into a big interactive database, thought y’all might appreciate it!

The Database

Here’s what it looks like:

You can sort and filter by brand, bulb shape, flicker, wireless protocols, CRI, lumens, and more!

You can check out the database here

So far we’ve tested just about all of the lights from the following brands:

• Philips Hue
• LIFX
• Wyze
• Nanoleaf
• Amazon Basics
• innr
• IKEA
• GE Cync
• Geeni
• Govee
• TP-Link
• Sengled

We still have a lot more to do but I thought this was enough to share finally :)

If there are any lights you’d like tested next please let me know!

There’s a learn more section at the top if you want to brush up on some terminology, but for the most part, I think it’s pretty easy to use if you want to play around with it and compare lights or just see what’s available.

The Details Page

For you brave folk who like to get into the weeds, each light has a view details button on the right-hand side, this will lead you to a page with more information about each light:

We’ll use the LIFX PAR38 SuperColor bulb as an example:

There’s a lot of cool information on these pages! It can be a bit overwhelming at first but I promise you’ll figure it out.

At the bottom, you’ll find an additional learn more section as well as helpful tooltips on any of the blue text.

White Graphs

Here you’ll find a GIF of the white spectrum:

As well as a blackbody deviation graph:

Essentially, the color of a light bulb is usually measured in Kelvins, 2700K is warm, and 6500K is “cooler” or more blue.

Most people don’t realize that this is only half of the equation because a color rarely falls directly on top of the blackbody curve.

When it deviates too far above or below the BBC, it can start to appear slightly pink or green:

Lights with a high positive Duv look green and most people dislike this look.

So the blackbody deviation graph can give you a good idea of how well a light stays near the “perfect white” range.

RGB Data

This section is pretty cool!

I was sick of the blanket “16 million colors” claim on literally every smart light and wanted to find a way to objectively measure RGB capability, so we developed the RGB gamut diagram:

To do this, we plot the spectral data from the red, green, and blue diodes onto a CIE 1976 color space diagram and calculate the total area.

Now we can see which lights can technically achieve more saturated colors!

We also have the relative strength of the RGB spectrums, as well as the data for each diode:

White CCT Data

At the bottom you’ll find more in-depth color rending data on the whites for each bulb:

These include the CRI Re as well as detailed TM-30 reports like this one:

A TM-30 report is like CRI on steroids! They’re quite a bit more useful if you want to see how well one light source performs against another in the color rendering department.

Dimming Algorithms

I’ve found that smart lights dim in one of two ways:

• Logarithmic
• Linear

Here’s what logarithmic dimming looks like:

And here’s what linear dimming looks like:

At first glance, linear dimming seems more logical, but humans perceive light logarithmically, so you’ll likely prefer lights that dim this way as well.

Flicker

And if you’re curious or concerned about flicker, you’ll find waveform graphs at 100% and 50% brightness:

An example waveform graph

There are also detailed reports and metrics such as SVM, Pst LM, and more:

And for funsies, I took thermal images of each bulb, mostly because I think they look cool.

Well, that’s about it. If you guys have any suggestions on how to improve this or make it more useful please don’t be shy!

Thanks for reading :)