I have an original lifx light. It worked fine without cloud connection, until a week ago. LifX is a full spectrum rgb led light that connects through WiFi. This is awesome because home-assistant can just control this light. However the light suddenly dropped of the Wifi.
There is a reset button on the light so I used that, but to get the light back on the network you have to use the lifx app, and also you have to make an account. I hadn’t used that app in years (thanks home-assistant!), so I had to install it on my android and to my surprise I got a cryptic message that my bulb was not compatible with android, please contact support.
I searched the lifx website and found no solutions for android. I contacted lifx support (told them I have computer and android, was there anyway to fix my light?) and got a fucking LLM that told me there was no way to do that. I angrily ordered zigbee bulbs to replace this fucking piece of shit, but a few days later an actual human answered my requests and send me actual useful information.
How to get your lifx lights (original) back on your wifi (without the lifx app)
There is a tool to onboard the device again with your laptop. It even works on linux (if you are okay with running a random binary from the internet) The tool requires your wifi credentials, and serial number of the device.
Since I couldn’t find that information on their website, and web search will now just make stuff up, I’ll just copy the relevant info here for others to find:
- Windows Download:
https://hosted.lifx.co/onboarder/original_setup%20windows.zip - Linux Download: https://hosted.lifx.co/onboarder/original_setup%20linux.zip
- Mac Download (Apple Chip): https://hosted.lifx.co/onboarder/original_setup%20mac.zip
- Mac Download (Intel Chip): https://hosted.lifx.co/onboarder/original_setup%20mac%20intel.zip)
I think in the future I only want esphome devices on the wifi and all other devices must be zigbee, or matter.