Of the smart light bulbs on the market, it seems like Roku and Wyze have the brightest bulbs available (1,100 lumens).
However, I ran into a problem with Wyze bulbs in comparison to other smart bulbs in that it seems to depend on having an internet connection for *ANY* smart functionality of the bulb.
There are some functionality that I would expect to require having an internet connection such as upgrading firmware, smart assistant integration or performing changes remotely.
But even when standing 5 feet away from the bulb, the app still won't send commands directly to the Wyze bulb over wifi or bluetooth. Instead, it *ALWAYS* sends a command to api.wyzecam.com and then that server must issue the command back to the bulb. Sending every single bulb command to a server in a different state seems to be very inefficient and it shows in how sluggish the bulb is to respond to changes in color/brightness I make in the app. This design also seems to suggest if Wyze goes out of business then all smart functionality including just changes the brightness of the bulbs will be lost as soon as Wyze shuts down their cloud servers.
Another limitation is there doesn't seem to be any official SDK from Wyze for creating third party apps.
I am hoping Roku does not have this limitation. Roku has a history of being friendly to the third-party developers and more sane product control. For example, with the Roku media player's External Control Protocol, third parties can send remote control command directly on the same wifi network. There is no odd requirement for the ECP to go to the cloud and come back to get to a Roku in the same room/network as me.
So is Roku bulb control similar to a Wyze cloud-only control design or similar to a Roku media player ECP design?
