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Sadly all we get in the west are those stupid Philips Hue bulbs that change to a variety of pointless colours.

Sadly, you have no idea what you are on about. Using the API, you can switch to any color you like, and you can get as complicated as you like with it. And F.Lux has support for controlling Phillips Hue, so you can have it happen automagically through that or other means. What a surprise that you of all people are talking bollocks.

Why is this modded up?

The API that the Bridge uses to communicate via HTTP is also open, published by Philips.

Yeah, go ahead, here's a link to the documentation. Now tell me what happens when you click on it. Since I know no one will, I'll just tell you: it says "access denied." The protocol isn't open, it's only open to "registered Hue developers," whatever that means.

Pairing non-Hue Zigbee bulbs generally isn't for non-techies, they often don't work quite right, and Philips is still supporting some of them.

Philips has a fairly good statement about the situation and what they are doing at http://www.developers.meethue....

They say "we introduced a change which stops untested products being able to join the Philips Hue bridge."

I've read through all the comments on this article so far and seen little defense of Phillips and their motivation. As a critical thinking requirement, I try to always understand both sides of any argument and am surprised there aren't more people pointing out the obvious valid reasoning for Phillips to take the approach it has.

If you sell a product that says it has the ability to do X and you test it and confirm that X works but then start getting complaints from consumers that X isn't working, then of course you want to find out exactly what has gone wrong. When you find out consumers are encountering problems because they are putting in untested and improperly implemented components, you have every reason to stop that from being an option. Your reputation for producing a good product is on the line if you don't. Of course you don't turn off the working systems and Phillips hasn't.

It seems unfair to limit consumers to only your own brand since the components should be interchangeable if only they actually meet the standards you're relying on, so you open certification to third parties. This, Phillips has also done.

What the consumer has working now is not blocked. If consumers wish to use third party products, the third parties can certify them so consumers can continue to buy from the third party of their choice. Phillips can continue to sell and support a product that it can expect to reliably perform as advertised. Yes, it is walling off the community garden, but it is a wall put in place to keep out weeds and predators, not prevent growing new flowers. This is a gated garden where anyone can have a key so long as they agree not do bring in things that harm the community.

This knee jerk reaction we have on slashdot troubles me. I'm generally in agreement with the consensus, but bothered that people seem to want to shout about how right the opinion is rather than examine and address the fundamental issues driving the other side. My purpose in posting is to at least give some point to repeating the summary's stance. If you disagree with the reasoning I've presented, or if you see problems in it, at least you have something specific to address.

I like to make short posts that address specific issues. I like to have my name recognized as someone who does think carefully how to communicate successfully and succinctly. Experience has taught me that attempting to do so in these types of circumstances results in a flurry of angry and usually shallow responses, doing harm to my reputation and requiring more effort in discussion than I can reasonably offer. I'm posting AC because I will probably only check back on this comment once or twice and don't care to try to defend my observations. I'd actually rather take the other side, but alas it seems there are few opportunities.

Since nobody has bothered to link to the primary source, here's a link: http://www.developers.meethue....

Basically, all they've done is remove support for untested device combinations from the API. The hardware still supports ZLL, and the lamps are still ZLL compatible. This has no effect on the lamps, only the Hue bridge.

I bought:

* Logitech Ultimate Home Control
* Logitech Home Control
* Nest
* Philips Hue Bridge
* 3 Philips Hue Luxe Bulbs
* 2 Philips Hue bulbs
* Philips Hue Light Strip
* 2 Philips Hue Taps

The Ultimate Home Control is in the living room along with the colored Philips Hue bulbs and the Light Strip. I also put one Tap in there right where the normal light switches are.

The bedroom is the regular Home Control with 3 Luxe Bulbs... again with a Tap where the normal light switches are.

Everything synced up perfectly and works perfectly. Having integration with the Logitech remotes is awesome. You just press "Watch Movie" and all of my AV gear resets for watching a movie while the lights dim: awesome! After the movie you turn the system off and the lights automatically come back on: sweet!

If you don't know what a Tap is... go check it out: http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/...

It's essentially a "light switch" that makes running the whole system super easy. Each one has 4 buttons that I've set up as different lighting combinations: Everything on, dim, dimmer, everything off... essentially. I have both set the same way in both rooms so that you can easily remember what the buttons do. Also: they don't take batteries! They're powered by the force of pressing the buttons themselves... so they are very reliable.

All of this is so dang simple and fool proof that my wife even loves it... she is a non-techie but she loves the extra flexibility with the lights. If she's reading at night she'll even pop open the Hue app on her phone and dial down all the lights except the one on her side of the bed.

My advice: don't go cheap. Buy actual name brand stuff: Hue, Logitech, Nest. Don't try to cheap out on something that you need to interact with all day every day...

These light bulbs offer far more than on-off control, so enabling the light switch wouldn't do the same thing. They are multi-color bulbs using three colors of LED (RGB) so you can change the intensity and the color of light you get. The Philips Hue system is the most direct competitor; it uses a standalone bridge that you connect with a cable to your router, rather than a WiFi-enabled bulb like the LIFX system does.

Smart light bulbs are a mixed bag for energy savings. On the one hand, the ease of controlling them means that lights are less likely to be left on in situations where they are not needed. On the other hand, a conventional bulb turned off at the wall or fixture switch consumes zero watts of power, but a smart bulb has to use some power to be able to respond to commands. The LIFX kickstarter clams that it's a very small amount, but their claim that "a AA battery would keep a LIFX smartbulb in standby mode for approximately 1-2 years" probably is just the amount of power that the controller itself uses and ignores power supply efficiency. The master bulb is more power hungry, requiring 2-3 watts. Currently they seem to be selling only what the Kickstarter called master bulbs; every bulb has a WiFi chip as well as mesh networking. But now they claim that the standby power is less than 1 watt.

RGB bulbs are also less energy efficient than phosphor coated white LED bulbs at present. LIFX says their bulb uses 15W and is the equivalent of a 60W incandescent. (They don't give output in lumens, so I can't evaluate how equivalent it is.) The current state of the art for phosphor-coated bulbs is 9-10W for a 60W equivalent bulb.

I can't think of anything worse than a bulb that's at the mercy of your WiFi router. My router falls over roughly twice a week and needs rebooting. Congratulations, you just took one of the most reliable appliances in the home and made it grotesquely unreliable.

I have a set of the Philips Hue bulbs, and just to clear things up, they're not "at the mercy" of my router- sort of.

By default, all the lights are designed to "turn on" when the power is restored to the bulb. It's a full-brightness, slightly-warm light, about as close to an incandescent 60W as it can manage. Right now my lights are "off", but the power's still flowing. They revert to the default state whenever the power is turned off and then back on, meaning even if the router is down you still get "dumb" functionality. It also means you don't get a bulb stuck in a less-than-useful state (for example, I have a low red setting for when I watch movies. Great then, not at all useful anytime else).

Obviously, that's a lot of money to spend on a dumb bulb. If the router's down you lose the more useful features, like scheduling or colours, but the bulbs aren't rendered useless. The bulbs don't revert to the default state if the router goes down but power remains consistent, meaning no sudden colour changes.

I've been using the bulbs since their release, and I haven't had any issue with the router being a problem. My biggest complaint is that the default app is pretty crap. Fortunately, Philips has freely released the API, so hopefully a better app will get out soon.