SMART LIFE AND MAGIC HOME RGBW / RGBWW problems
ok, so ive been using LED strip lights for years, before Alexa i used IR strip lights with a standard 4 pin RGB strip light setup for a backlight on my TV. These are nice and cheap and are a doddle to setup. When Alexa came a along I purchased two controllers for my lights which were supposed to work with Alexa, these were still just 4 pin LEDs and all worked ok., all colours would select on / off / dim etc etc, no issues at all.I then stumbled on RGBW which was a strip of RGB lights interspersed with white LEDs, here you could select all the RGB colours as usual but also select white tones like WARM white. This turned off the RGB lights and turned on the much bright white LED's, these worked great for ages.
My first unit was a generic WIFI LED controller, the app was "SMART LIFE", I also had some smart life plugs so this seems to be the best one to go for so i'd have everything in the same app. For months and months I had no problems at all, the suddenly one day I say "alexa, set backlight to WARM White), Alexa says "does not support WARM WH|ITE" and all my routines instead of choosing WARM white defaulted to RGB white which is a very dim pale blue. Logged a fault with SMART LIFE, no joy, pretty much ignored my requests and then randomly contacted months later when I got rid of the controller to tell me they couldnt find a problem, waste of time. I tried AMAZON who were utterly useless, they dont care at all whether the SKILL they have approved works properly at all, and at that point it was the skill as I could still select WARM WHITE in the app. Later on though it went form the APP to so I think there is something odd going on with RGBW certification, i'll come back to that later.
My next controller was a MAGIC HOME app variant, this worked well for years probably until the other day when I selected a routine and got RGB WHITE instead of RGBW white same as before.
I went though all the usually diags and resets, wasted hours and nothing. Went to AMAZON, as usual they told me to to speak to MAGIC HOME who dont really have a support offering at all, allyou can really do is give them bad feedback on AMAZON and ANDROID.
So here is my current problem:
(1)
through the MAGIC HOME app i can select all colours and WARM white, no issues at all, all working. Through Alexa I can select all colours but I can only SELECT WARM / COOL white if I first switch to a colour. Also, if I am on WARM white and I switch to COOL white it turns the lights off and they then wont respond at all until you set a colour again, what really odd behaviour.
(2) Routines wont select any RGBW whites at all, even if you have selected a colour first, routines have now been made COMPLETELY useless to me.
No amount of resets, uninstalls, wipes etc have worked, i've removed my controller umpteen times and re-scanned and reinstalled to no avail, i have this issue with all 5 of my current ALEXA devices.
I even tried my spare controller as I always buy in two's as they are so cheap, same problem.
This is why it gets interesting, I found this reply on a forum from someone who appears to be connected to MAGIC HOME.
Join Date: 3/14/2019Posts: 1Owned Amazon Devices:KindleFire TabletFire TVEcho & Alexa
"Hi guys!Thank you so much for all the feedback as we are always trying to improve!Regarding the WARM WHITE/ COOL WHITE commands with Alexa.We recently updated our Alexa certification and we were told that we needed to eliminate those commands for lightbulbs that are RGB and not true RGBWW bulbs. "
Starting two days ago, Alexa says "LightGroup doesn't support that" - Echo & Alexa - Devices - Amazon Digital and Device Forum
This seems to suggest that someone forced them to remove RGBW from their amazon SKILL in favour of the newer RGBWW certified units, now is this planned obsolescence, is it a mistake and why has it taken several months to affect me.
its all very confusing, hoping an expert in this field can shed some light on this as my SMART setup isnt very SMART anymore, its ruined in fact. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 I actually found a work around for the problem, you can now create scenes in the magic home app so you can create a warm white scene and it works using an alexa routine, really happy I discovered that as its fixed all my issues.
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