We've got 8 Easybulb 9W RGBW bulbs up and running in our lounge - 2 sets of ceiling lights (of 2 bulbs each), one set of 3 wall lights, and one standard lamp - each set of lights running on its own channel, so we are using all 4 available channels. What we really like is the ease of use (both via the remote control and via the iPhone/iPad app), and the scope for tweakage of the lights. Set-up was fairly straightforward; the only real issue we had was that I had to do a factory reset on the wi-fi box before the wi-fi box would work properly.
We'd originally considered the Philips Hue system - which, while more advanced than the EasyBulb in terms of the number of colours that the bulb can reproduce, and the features available on the app - was a lot more expensive than EasyBulb - as well as being out of stock pretty much everywhere - whereas we received our EasyBulb order a couple of days after placing it - and that was with free delivery too! So, for the equivalent of what we'd have paid for Philips Hue for just 3 bulbs, we've got 8 EasyBulbs!
Control via the app or the remote control box is reasonably intuitive; if you press the "on" button for a particular channel, then subsequent operations (e.g. dimming, changing the colour, switching to party mode) will apply to bulbs on that channel only - which is good, as it means you can adjust the settings of the bulbs on a given channel independently of those on other channels. However, if you do want to change the settings of all bulbs on all channels at the same time, you can press the master "on" button - as all subsequent operations will then apply to all bulbs if you do that.
As to what could have been done better... well, the choice of colours in RGB mode is limited to fairly "saturated" colours - and you can't have both white and RGB LEDs on at once within the same bulb. So it would have made a lot more sense if the control software were able to specify a range of brightness values for all 4 LED choices (R, G, B and W) independently of each other - this would then have brought the capability of the EasyBulb into the same league (if not better) than the Philips Hue, for example - as you'd be able to specify something like, say, R = 25% brightness, G = 30% brightness, B = 38% brightness, W = 62% brightness, for example - which would allow a much wider range of colours to be created than the current software allows.
Another thing that I'd find incredibly useful is a Java API for sending commands to the EasyBulb wi-fi interface - so as to be able to control the bulbs from a Java program, rather than just via the smartphone app. So saying, however, if it's possible to decipher the UDP network commands sent from the app to the wi-fi box, then I could always write my own and open-source it on GitHub or wherever...
Ruth
on
7th Dec 2013