Introduction to the Wiz smart lighting

Today you will get to know the Wiz lighting devices, for example, the filamentous (retro-styled) ST64 E27 bulb. The full name is “ST64 E27 WIZ DW FA Q”.

History of Wiz

Wiz was founded in 2017 as a startup, and in 2019 it already became a part of Signify, the world leader in the lighting industry. Signify is also the owner of Philips Hue. Wiz is the IoT platform of solutions for smart lighting. The Wiz ecosystem includes not only software solutions but also cloud features and products. Together with partners, the company offers lighting, devices, and accessories under different brands. Wiz already connected millions of devices in the market.

Unlike Philips Hue, Wiz offers smart lighting based on Wi-Fi, which is then controlled by a very handy app that connects to existing Wi-Fi networks. You don’t need a hub to control the system. The Wiz ecosystem covers more than 60 countries around the world.

Short characteristics and the Wiz ST64 E27

The light bulb is made out of glass, pear-shaped and retro-styled. The filaments are made out of rows of LEDs, that visually copy the filaments of “Edison’s lamp”. The light from such filaments is a nice white warm light with a cool temperature of 2200K. You can control the brightness of the lamp in a branded app. The max brightness of the lamp is 550 lumen, which is the equivalent of a 45W incandescent lamp.

I must say, controlling the brightness of the lamp by third-party dimmers is impossible, I recommend controlling the brightness from the original app only.

The lamp that sells in European shops has a plinth E27 and a voltage of 220-240W. That means using the device in the countries of North America would be impossible. Just as the advertisement booklet is stating, the lamp life is 22 years on the condition of work for 3 hours a day. The device has an energy-saving tier of A+.

Controlling the lamp is possible thanks to the Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b/g/n wireless standard with a frequency of 2.4 GHz. It is also possible to control the lamp using voice assistants or alternative smart home control systems.

The Wiz app for light control

First of all, after launching, the app will warn you that all Wiz devices added to your smart home, will only work with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi networks.

Then you will be offered to create a Wiz account. This will help control your device in the future. If necessary, you can log onto your account using Google or Facebook.

In the settings, you can turn on local device control. This will be required to control lighting using Home Assistant. On the same screen, there is a possibility to turn on third-party integration, for example with Google and Alexa voice assistants.

We can add or change rooms in our smart home and assign smart devices to them.

Adding the lamp isn’t hard, you can just press the correlating button in the menu and choose the way to connect the device. But before that, don’t forget to turn on the lamp. Next, you will need to enter the password to your network so that this way you will save it onto your device.

It can happen if after adding the new lamp in the Wiz app you won’t be able to control it from the app. I don’t know why it happens, but everything works as it should right after relaunching the Wiz app. I could be wrong, but this bug only happens the first time you turn on the lamp after adding. Maybe this is caused by changing the network in the process of adding the device to the Wiz smart home.

So, controlling works now, and you can change the brightness from within the app. In the same app, you can set up scenes and routines for the devices. And if you added voice assistant integration, you can control the lighting using either your voice or the Google Home app.

Making it possible to control Wiz in Home Assistant

In order to control Wiz devices in Home Assistant, you need to enable local communication (Allow Using Communication) in the Wiz app. Also, don’t forget to make the lamp’s IP static in the router settings. Now we’ll go to Home Assistant settings and add the Wiz integration.

Now specify the IP address of your lamp.

If needed, set a correct room for it.

The lamp will be added to Home Assistant, every light bulb in the integration will have three essences, but currently, some of them could be disabled or unavailable. This depends on the scene or the current lamp mode. Of course, the “light” essence must be always available.

For convenience, you can add a card and control lighting from there. And if you already have a working Wiz integration you can add new automatization rules with its participation.

That’s it for today. See you!