Yeelight is an underrated HomeKit vendor. They make a wealth of products for an extremely fair price. The company’s bulbs avoid the dreaded ‘No Response’ that many HomeKit vendors also end up with. This unique kit includes a slick floor lamp that’s perfect for a bedroom and consists of a HomeKit bulb as well.
HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
Unboxing and setting up
Yeelight ships everything in a reasonably compact box, which is excellent as the lamp is pretty tall when assembled. You’ll strip the protective plastic away from the body of the light and then screw each piece together. An off/on switch is built into the cord, but since you’ll likely be using HomeKit, you’ll probably turn it on once and leave it alone. This is a standard lamp outside the HomeKit bulb included in the box. If you ever want to use it outside of HomeKit, you can easily do so.
It’ll take around ten minutes to unbox and assemble the lamp (grab scissors for the plastic). The included HomeKit bulb is this model. If you already have a lamp you want to use, you can buy it much cheaper. Combining the light and bulb makes for a great gift idea. The bulb has the HomeKit code embedded in it, so it’s great for future needs, but thankfully, it includes it in the manual as well. Screw the bulb into the lamp, plug it up, turn it on, wait 10 seconds, and then scan the QR code in Apple’s Home app. Once it’s added to your network, you’ll be able to choose a room, name the device, as well as look at the suggested automation options. Lighting-wise, the bulb lets you adjust the temperature from soft, warm white to cool daylight or choose from over 16 million colors by setting your own. HomeKit’s built-in options covered everything I was looking for, though.
Wrap up
Overall, the lamp is a great value when comparing the quality of the physical lamp, the reliability of the HomeKit bulb, and the single packaging makes it a great gift idea for someone who loves HomeKit and is going off to college, buying their first house, etc. The bulb offers plenty of color options and can easily be used with HomeKit automations to come on at night or when motion is detected from a HomeKit motion sensor.
Grab the Yeelight lamp and bulb combo from Amazon.
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