Okay, I didn't actually buy the Hue, but the Lux. I don't need rave lights in my house. Shakespeare quotes make the blog more classy is all. :-)
The Lux is a wireless bulb that's more than a little pricey. Really for the cost of this thing you can get a good quality LED build and a Z-Wave switch to control it. The only real advantage of this is that the bulb is dimmable (most of the cheaper Z-Wave switches don't support dimming) and it's a decent option where you can't get the fatter smart switches installed. There's no way that I could get a Z-Wave switch installed into a few of the outlets in the house just because of the tangle of connections in there, so I got some of these for those areas.
Installing it is easy - you need the smartphone app installed and you just mash the big button on the top of the hub to make it findable. The kits all come with the hub, or you can snag one off eBay (the kits are a bit cheaper than buying the parts, so there are a lot of extra hubs out there) . You hit the same button to chain it to the SmartThings hub.
The troublesome switches now have Lux bulbs and are happily turning off and on through the SmartThings switch automatically.
What sucks about this is that if somebody forgets and turns off the wall switch, the automation is broken since the bulb is 'dead' by that point. Also it's expensive. Z-Wave is cheaper for a big house by a huge margin.
I think the only time this would make sense is if you have a few unreplacable switches (like me) or if you are renting. For an apartment this is awesome - you could replace the 4-5 bulbs in your place and completely automate the lights using your smartphone. The Hue does support basic rules so you could get by just with the bulbs and the 'free' hub. For a onesy-twosy case I found a cheaper option that I'll talk about later. I sort of regret buying these bulbs now, but they're not a bad option. There's just a better one if you own and already have something like SmartThings.
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