Prompted by George's heads up and the discussions re Home Automation
with others here recently, I diverted from our dog walk though a
fairly quiet Lidl earlier and picked up one of their 'Smart Lighting
Starter Kits' (£39.99) and a Smart Socket (£7.99).

The starter kit consists of a wired (only I believe) 'Zigbee 3' spec
hub inc Ethernet cable and USB style PSU, 3 x ES27 white LED lamps (9W
/ 806 lm / 2200-6500 K) and a single 4 button remote.

Upon plugging the hub in, nothing happened so I tried a phone charger
and the LAN and Status LED's lit up so it looks like a dead USB-wart
(the supplied USB A -uSUB cable is ok as I'm currently powering it
from the MacMini USB port).

I then installed the Lidl Home app and got it connected to the hub ok.
I then plugged the smart switch into the mains and added that equally
easily. Fun to toggle the thing on and off from your phone. ;-)

I then found a B22 to ES27 adaptor, screwed one of the new LED lamps
in and it was fading up and down (indicating it was in 'pairing
mode').

I added that to the Lidl app and again, was able to turn it on and off
from my phone and play with the brightness and colour temperature
controls.

Getting the light remote was a little trickier (all this was without
reading the manuals of course, part of my test for how intuitive
something is) but the onscreen prompts got me going there. You
basically simultaneously press the power on and off buttons for 5
seconds (to get the indicator LED flashing on and off) to pair the
remote to the hub then simultaneously press the brightness up and down
buttons (for 5 seconds) to pair the remote to the lamp you want to
manage (via the app).

Then I remembered Theo (I think) talking about he 'Smart Life' app so
I installed that, unlinked the hub from the Lidl app and re-connected
it to the Smart Life app and all went as easily as before (easier as I
now had a bit more of a clue), the idea being that it might be a bit
more flexible than the Lidl one (that it looks like it's based on)?

Then I replaced the dusk to dawn LED lamps in the front and rear
lobbies with two of the Smart LEDs and set them up to both go off and
on at sunrise and sunset (for this region). It will be interesting to
see if they are off when we come down tomorrow. ;-)

The dusk to dawn LED's they replaced needed quite a bit of ambient
light to go off so this time of year they were quite often on most of
the day. I noticed that the smart setup had 'overcast' as a setting so
I might be able to include that on these lights as well.

The current lamps are in std B22 pendants and because these smart
lights happen to be ES27, I have to use converters. I was wondering if
it's worth changing to ES27 pendants as it seems many lamps from the
likes of Ikea / Aldi / Lidl are only ES? Has anyone fitted an ES
pendant and can recommend some 'nice' (as in mechanically / design /
usage) ones please?

The next step is to see if I can link any of this into Google Home ...

Cheers, T i m