An IP Address For Every Light Bulb

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday NXP and Green Wave Reality announced to the world that they plan to give every lightbulb an IPV6 address. Hot on the heels of Google's 900 mhz announcement, Green Wave Reality already has iPhone / Android / and Web-based support. Looks like the lighting wars have started."

Comments

Wrong place

[plover]

Architecturally, this is the wrong place to put uniquely addressed devices. The addresses should be in the fixtures, to avoid the maintenance headache of readdressing bulbs every time they are replaced. If I want the lights in the room to dim, I don't want to tell the bulbs, I want to tell the room that I'm sitting in. The room contains the fixtures. The fixtures contain the bulbs. How the room talks to the fixtures and the fixtures talk to the bulbs are different questions, but individually addressable bulbs is a maintenance disaster waiting to happen.

Just because they're conveniently end-user replaceable doesn't make it a correct choice, just slightly more practical. X-10, Z-Wave and Insteon are all also equally incorrect in that they generally put the control at the point of the switch, instead of the fixture. Again, the user's ultimate goal is not to control the switch but to control the room's lighting, which is defined by the fixtures and their locations within the room.

Re:Wrong place

[The MAZZTer]

Easy, make the fixtures DHCP servers.

Re:Wrong place

[danlip]

If you had an LED light bulb it might last long enough to be functionally equivalent to the fixture. I think it is pretty silly either way. This feature will consume additional electricity, and if you want to turn the light bulb on remotely the circuit has to be always on even when the bulb is off. This does not seem to be a good way to save energy.

Re:Wrong place

[R0UTE]

And don't forget to NAT everything while you're at it.

Re:Wrong place

[kcbnac]

"An ultra-low-power standby supply controller with 10mW no-load capability"

So we want to go from having the switch disconnect power to the lights, to adding 10mW for EVERY lightbulb in existence...how the HELL is this part of a 'Green Wave' in helping me manage power consumption in my house?

Presume I have 50 bulbs in my house. At 10mW, we're talking 2.5W of always-on baseload draw. Multiply that times 75 million (rounded down from the 75.11 million Wolfram Alpha gave me): 2.5 * 75,000,000 = 187,000,000W of 'IDLE' power drawn so I can 'make the most of energy savings in the home.'

HA!

Source:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=houses+in+america
(It gave a 2009 count of owner-occupied housing units)

Re:Wrong place

[neurocutie]

no its a good way to easily slip in cameras, mikes, speakers, everywhere... electricity increase, at least at first, could be tiny... a few milliwatts...

Re:Wrong place

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Pervasive and ubiquitous surveillance, disguised as an assisting technology for energy efficiency.

How many gift Trojan horses must we look in the mouth, on a daily basis?

Re:Wrong place

[Moryath]

Since when has all this automatic stuff ever been done with energy efficiency in mind?

One look at all the craze over "wireless everything" shows you that people aren't serious about energy efficiency.

Then again, there was a time we had to get up off the couch to change the channel, too. Imagine the lazy people of today even thinking of such a thing or knowing where the controls were on the damn TV.

Re:Wrong place

[tlhIngan]

No NAT with IPV6; there are so many addresses that it's totally unnecessary. What, people want to do it anyway?

Well, if I want every lightbulb to have a consistent IP address when my ISP decides to give me a new prefix, I'd rather not want to renumber everything inside it. Or adjust all the settings.

Can you imagine? Your ISP decides to give you a new prefix and you'd have to program it into your switches so they can talk to the right lightbulbs again.

One of the benefits of NAT was the internal network was separated from the external - changes to the external IP addresses didn't influence the internal ones - simplifying management and administration. Some places don't mind going through the rigamarole, but I'm sure most homes have better things to do than manage their networks (if they even know how).

Sure you can assign more IPv6 addresses to ensure that your home server is always FC00::100, but having to know all the IP addresses of each machine when diagnosing things just gets to be a pain. Yes, you can use DHCPv6 to staticly assign addresses, but given how badly most devices handle DHCP IP address changes, it'll be a reboot fest.

Re:Wrong place

[Anonymous Coward]

"there are so many addresses that it's totally unnecessary" where have I heard that before?

Re:Wrong place

[DerekLyons]

That's why you should be talking to the house, not the room, fixtures, or appliances. One always on circuit that can power up downstream only circuits as needed. There are times when distributed systems are the hammer you need, but this isn't one of them.

Re:Wrong place

[geekoid]

50 bulbs? really? big house.

Anyways, let say your bulbs are 10- Watts.
That means if you use 1 of your 50 bulbs for 15 minutes less per day, you break even. Everything else is a gain.

Re:Wrong place

[cayenne8]

You know...I'm thinking that there might be a good black market demand for good old fashioned, incandescent light bulbs...no IP addresses, nothing to monitor your use with....and good nice lighting that is pleasant on the eyes.

Hmm...wonder what it would cost to make a few of these on the side?

Re:Wrong place

[VGPowerlord]

There also isn't DHCP with IPv6, hence the sarcastic comment...

Yes there is, defined as RFC 3315. Do your homework next time.

Re:Wrong place

[hoggoth]

Yeah, motion sensor lights are just great.

A few weeks ago I was sitting on the toilet in a stall in the church bathroom. I was taking longer than usual; After about 10 minutes the lights shut off. So there I am sitting in complete pitch black. I called out lightly, but no one heard. I was too embarrassed to yell. I reached my hand under the stall door and waved it around trying to activate the motion sensor, to no avail. I reached up and took my light jacket off the hook on the door and started whipping my jacket over the top of the stall door, again to no avail. Then I was getting pissed. I partially stood, wiped as well as possible in pitch darkness, and pushed the stall door open, but still nothing. Then I waddled a couple of steps forward and started waving my jacket around towards the entry door hoping it would break into the motion sensor's area of view.

That's when the door opened, the lights snapped on instantly, and a little boy stood staring in shock at the nut case waddling like a penguin with his pants around his ankles waving his jacket in a circle over his head.

Yep. Love motion sensors.

Re:Wrong place

[operagost]

You've just conceived of the scenario where the possession of a simple incandescent light bulb could be grounds for a charge of treason and punishable by death.

Re:Wrong place

[tj2]

Okay, I have to know. What, exactly, does light add to the process of wiping? Do you crane your neck over your shoulder to watch, or do you look between your legs? I'm actually curious because I've had a light time out like that as well, but it didn't make me flail about. I finished my business and exited the stall, at which point the lights came back on and I washed up and left.

Or is this simply the story you came up with when the kid's dad wanted to know why you were in the middle of the restroom with your pants down?

Re:Wrong place

[bames53]

Can you imagine? Your ISP decides to give you a new prefix and you'd have to program it into your switches so they can talk to the right lightbulbs again.

You shouldn't be accessing them by IP address. You should be accessing them by service instance name, and that's under your control (and has reasonable, human readable, factory set defaults). Zeroconf takes care of the details of figuring out the hostnames and IP addresses for you.

Re:Wrong place

[StikyPad]

Presume I have 50 bulbs in my house. At 10mW, we're talking 2.5W of always-on baseload draw.

Uh, no, 50 bulbs * 10 mW/bulb = 500 mW, or 0.5 Watts for the SI challenged.

Re:Wrong place

[Bengie]

"Can you imagine? Your ISP decides to give you a new prefix and you'd have to program it into your switches so they can talk to the right lightbulbs again."

You probably wouldn't want each light/fixture to have a public IP, just private. Let the control unit in your house have a public IP.

"One of the benefits of NAT was the internal network was separated from the external - changes to the external IP addresses didn't influence the internal ones"

At least with Vista/7, each machine gets 3 IPs by default. A private IP, a static Public IP, and a random public IP that changes avery few minutes and refuses incoming connections. You don't need to worry about your private IPs changing, just your public IPs. No biggie.

"Sure you can assign more IPv6 addresses to ensure that your home server is always FC00::100, but having to know all the IP addresses of each machine when diagnosing things just gets to be a pain"

Thank god for name-to-IP protocols that have been standard for the past 2 decades.

The transition will be annoying, but once we get use to IPv6, it will be easier.

Re:Wrong place

[amliebsch]

Be careful! Unless you are absolutely certain that everything is to code, that switch in the wall doesn't guarantee to cut off power to the fixture, only to break the circuit. That break should be in the hot leg of the circuit - but it isn't always!

Re:Wrong place

[wasabii]

First, your ISP probably won't randomly give you a new prefix. There's no need. You'll probably have a static one assigned. Because there are enough prefixes for every one of their customers to just have on assigned.

Second, manual configuration of IPv6 addresses is almost completely unnecessary, since addresses can be statically assigned within a prefix based on the hardware address of the device. The router gives out the prefix, the device will always have a predictable address underneath it.

Second, you'd probably access these devices using some sort of multicast discovery protocol anyways. A UPnP profile for lighting control already exists, for instance.

Re:Wrong place

[BlueStrat]

You've just conceived of the scenario where the possession of a simple incandescent light bulb could be grounds for a charge of treason and punishable by death.

The incandescent light bulb ban might have a secondary benefit; it might increase border security with Mexico.

If "contraband" incandescent bulbs are being smuggled in at the Mexico/US border, the EPA and Progressives will have anti-personnel landmines laid, missile-equipped Predator drones patrolling, and automated gun turrets installed at the border before you can say "mass graves".

Strat

Re:Wrong place

[hldn]

ipv6 provides 2^128 addresses.

that's 340282366920938463463374607431768211456.

that's 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 456

that absolutely dwarfs the number of stars in the entire observable universe (one septillion is a high estimate.)

i think we'll be okay (at least for a little while~)

Re:Now let's wait for someone to hack them

[oldmac31310]

Her 'last' song? Does this mean she has retired? Surely that is to much to hope for.

How many sysadmins

[Ukab the Great]

does it take a change a lightbulb?

Re:How many sysadmins

[geekoid]

Zero, it's a hardware problem.

Unless it's a router table error, in which case, 7.
1 to do it and 6 others to grumble about it on /. because the ;stupid user' doesn't know even the most rudimentary ways to use some obscure design.

Re:How many sysadmins

[Megahard]

does it take to change the IP address of a lightbulb?

Steven Wright

[ThatsNotPudding]

Soon his joke about randomly flipping a light switch and getting nasty letter from some guy in Germany willl come true JUST AS THE PROPHECY PREDICTED.

Re:The world is running out of IPv6 addresses

[spun]

Dude. No. Trillions are chump change. A trillion times a trillion is chump change compared to the number of IPv6 addresses. 2^128 is a very big number.

Re:In ten years.

[hjf]

2^128: think a planet, the size of earth, made of only sand, 1 cubic mm grains. now think 300 planets. that's 2^128 grains of sand.
do you get the picture now?

wanna calculate? calculate the volume of a 40.000km circunference sphere, in cubic milimeters. divide 2^128 in that. result? roughly 300.

control lights from your phone

[aapold]

No longer will you need a lousy LED flash on your phone camera. Just tap to brighten all lightbulbs in the area. Or if you're into being dark and mysterious, a constantly running app that dims all lights within 50' of your GPS location... people will know when you're coming...

Re:control lights from your phone

[gmhowell]

Or if you're into being dark and mysterious, a constantly running app that dims all lights within 50' of your GPS location... people will know when you're coming...

There was a Space: 1999 episode something like this. But now I'm dating myself...

Just as well. If you're on slashdot, there's no chance of you dating another human being.

Re:Will this finally shut up

[Hatta]

NAT is *always* about address space conservation. That is all NAT does. Any other function you believe NAT implies can be provided with a stateful firewall and no address translation.

distributed denial-of-lighting attack

[circletimessquare]

DDoL

you heard it here first

Re:Will this finally shut up

[hjf]

I wouldn't, if you knew how to properly set up a firewall. You obviously don't know. Hint: NAT is not for hiding things, firewalls and internal addressing are.

Does this mean

[Vahokif]

Does this mean you'll be able to hack someone's toaster, like in the movies?

Re:more 'efficiency' absurdities

[dnahelicase]

Hello support? I think my lightbulb has a problem?

Have you tried turning it off, unscrewing it, waiting 30 seconds, screwing it back in and turning it on again?

Yes, but it won't turn on

Bypass the router and plug your lighting system directly into the cable modem

Surely you don't think it's the router?

If it's not the router I cannot verify it is a hardware problem. There must be a virus or some other software problem, which are not covered under your support warranty. Would you like me to transfer you to software support?

No thanks, I always take my lightbulbs to a local kid. He's a real wiz at this kind of stuff, and much cheaper

Re:Will this finally shut up

[Hatta]

That's what DNS is for.

Re:I'm not getting this

[GameboyRMH]

I assume he's thinking it will be possible to see how many bulbs are in your house and their on/off state, so it might be possible to see if the house is occupied or if you're running a grow op (as "smart grid" tech already does with large appliances). But I'd only use well-secured OpenBulbs myself.