Livingcolors Gen 2 WILL work with Livingcolors SmartLink
Correction :
Die hard nerds know this all along : don't trust the manual. I tried this out in a big store and Rde in the comments pointed this out as well.
In a previous post this was still unclear, now it's sort of confirmed : the Gen2 remote wil work just fine with the SmartLink lamps and adapters and the Livingwhites Smartlink remote will work with the plain Gen2.
So now it's clear there are only two generations and protocols : The Gen1 and the SmartLink.
The picture in the manual for the LivingWhites Starterpack adapters is still pretty confusing:
LivingColors remotes, Gen2 no Smartlink
The one on the right could be the Gen2 remote but also the Gen1 remote.
Philips adds new models to LivingColors product line.
In a clever plan to keep their customers permanently slightly confused, Philips has added new models to their LivingColors product line. The boxes and lamps are virtually the same, the remote is different. Both versions are labeled as "Generation 2"
LivingColors Gen2 but no SmartLink
The new buzzword is "smartlink".
LivingColors Gen2 with SmartLink
According to the manuals, both the old ( 69143 ) and the new version ( 69171 ) of the Gen 2 lamps use IEEE 802.15.4.
So now we have the "Generation 1" which does not work with the "Generation 2", and there is the "Generation 2 smartlink". Gen 1 and Gen 2 will not work with each other and i'm pretty confused about mixing "Gen 2" with and without "smartlink".
The original LivingColors was pretty over engineered of what it did and it gave me the impression that Philips had bigger plans for these lamps. Apparently they do now with smartlink, but the original LivingColors was more of a prototype.
smartlink is interesting and promising. Philips was one of the founders of the Zigbee name and concept and they used some of the concepts and protocols of Zigbee for the smartlink enabled LivingAmbiance lamps.
For now, I'm stuck with two incompatible lamps.