The dream of a completely smart home is coming true, though not exactly how many people first envisioned it. Instead of a whole smart home, we’re getting connected devices piecemeal that make the home living experience (whether you’re there or not) better and more efficient.

Among the quickly emerging categories, which includes locks, thermostats and appliances, are lights. Philips Hue are probably the best known connected bulbs, which you can control via a smartphone app. Now Phillips competitor Cree, Inc., which sells a line of energy efficient LED bulbs at Home Depot, is introducing its first connected bulb, the 60W-equivalent Cree Connected Bulb.

This new bulb looks exactly like Cree’s newest 60W LED. So much so, said Cree, Inc., vice president, product strategy Mike Watson, that Cree had to add a green base to help consumers differentiate the two soft-white bulbs (which, aside from the vents in the plastic housing, look like standard incandescent bulbs). While the original LED consumes 11 watts of energy, the connected bulb eats 11.5 watts. Plus, to remain connected, the light still has to feed some power – likely that extra half watt — to the device, even when the LEDs are off. There’s one other way consumers will be able to tell the difference between standard LEDs and the connected ones: the price. At $14.97, the connected bulb costs roughly twice as much as Cree’s standard LED bulb.

Designed to work with existing connected home hubs, the bulb is ZigBee communication protocol compliant and Wink Hub and Wink Relay-ready. Phillips Hue also uses the Wink Hub. There’s currently no built-in integrated Wi-Fi support in the Cree LED bulb, though it can communicate with Wi-Fi devices connected through a Wink or ZigBee hub.

“You could build every wireless tech into the bulb...it gets a little expensive,” said Watson. It’s also, he said, the early days of the connected-home tech market and their bulbs will be able to work with future technologies that plug into these hubs. Included among them is Apple’s HomeKit, which is already ZigBee-compliant.

While the connected bulbs native features include turning on and off and dimming from 100% down to 5% illumination, additional features will come courtesy of whatever connected app consumers use to control the bulb (Wink Hubs allow for remote control, timers, conditional lighting depending on other Wink-connected devices). As far as Cree is concerned, whiz-band features like, perhaps, the built in color changing options in Philips Hue bulbs, are really not necessary.

“We’re very strong believers in connected market, but not strong believers in…niche cases that elicit a positive response from media or for showing commercials,” Watson told Mashable, adding, “Any device has to function as what it’s supposed to do first, [the same] as any bulb that’s not connected.”

The Cree Connected bulb goes on sale at HomeDepot.com later this month.