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Solved: Setting Up a Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb with a Dimmer Switch

When we first moved into our apartment several years ago I purchased a bunch of ‘smarthome’ equipment. One of those items was a Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb.

It never really worked. At the time it was because our kitchen light was on a dimmer switch and — as I learned — smart lights do not tend to work (well) on dimmers. The only solution was to replace the switch or, instead, not be able to have a smart light.

We couldn’t replace out the switch given that we live in an apartment. And so the Smart Bulb instead acted as a (not very good) dumb bulb for several years. Until now.

The Issue

When I installed the Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb into the kitchen light that was on a dimmer switch I was able to turn on the Smart Bulb. However, I could never get it to connect to my smart home environment. This is a documented issue on Nanoleaf’s support webpage.

I exclusively use Apple products and, in this case, was unable to get the smart bulb to connect to Apple Home or to the Nanoleaf app.

The Environment

The items that I was dealing with included:

The Solution

Fortunately this ended up being a surprisingly easy thing for which to solve.

  1. Remove your Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb and record the 8-digit code that is below the QR code on the bulb.
  2. Remove front plate over the Lutron AYCL-153P Dimmer switch.
  3. There will be a small ‘dial’ that you can turn on the switch, to the right of the toggle switch. Turn it all the way to the right.1
  4. Factory reset your Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb2
  5. Disable the 5Ghz wifi radio temporarily on your Eero Pro 6. This involves: Open Eero App >> Settings >> Troubleshooting >> My Device Won’t Connect >> My Device is 2.4 GHz Only >> Click ‘Temporarily Pause 5GHz’. You must do this so that you can connect the Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb to your wireless network, because it only has a 2.4GHz radio.
  6. Add the device to Apple Home on an iOS device. This involves: Click the ‘ ’ icon in the upper right corner of the Apple Home app >> Add Accessory >> More options >> My Accessory Isn’t Shown Here >> Enter Code >> Continue >> Finalize adding the bulb to your Apple Home application.

You will now be able to access your Nanoleaf Essentials A19 Smart Bulb from Apple Home.

  1. IMG_0015
  2. From Nanoleaf: Turn off, wait for 3 seconds, turn back on for no more than 3 seconds. Repeat for a total of 5 power cycles. Bulb will flash red three times if successful. Note that it may take 2-3 second for this flashing to occur after the final power cycle. ↩︎