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Smartest Light Bulbs Ever, Dumbest Idea Ever?

Posted by timothy on from the slave-to-flashim' dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A spate of smart LED bulbs and light sockets are coming to market and seeking crowdfunding, following the (apparent) success of Philips Hue. But do they really make sense for lighting control? Here's a comprehensive roundup of 13 products and the pros and cons of the category." I like the idea of controllable, long-lasting light bulbs, but I haven't yet been tempted enough to pay $50 apiece.

9 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Dumbest story title, ever? by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, not by a large margin. Also not "dumbest idea ever", but putting this in the title _is_ pretty dumb. Seems somebody is craving attention at any cost.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Yeah, let's do that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    *facepalm*

    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.
    That's real progress...right there.

    1. Re:Yeah, let's do that... by Flozzin · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No idea why you got downvoted. But.. It's going to be a cold day in hell before I get this crap. Just because you can hook it to the net should it be? Do you want it hacked? Do you need another wifi signal degrading signal in your home? Taking up bandwidth? Wake up and want to piss at night, fumble for your phone or hit a switch? It boggles my mind why they think people want this.

      --
      "Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
    2. Re:Yeah, let's do that... by Knuckles · · Score: 5, Insightful

      *facepalm*

      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.
      That's real progress...right there.

      Fix your router?

      --
      "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
    3. Re:Yeah, let's do that... by QuasiSteve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While getting into 'smart lightbulbs' is probably going to be a highly personal choice...

      Do you want it hacked?

      It's fairly unlikely that the light (I say light because some are bulbs, some are sockets) itself would be hacked, but rather your router - and although pranksters making your house look haunted would probably get old real quick, and e.g. flicker-induced epilepsy would be pretty bad, you'd probably have other issues at that point.

      Do you need another wifi signal degrading signal in your home?

      That makes very little sense.

      Taking up bandwidth?

      As does this. Are you suspecting these lightbulbs of serving up Linux torrents 24/7?

      Wake up and want to piss at night, fumble for your phone or hit a switch?

      I'd have to ask at what point you removed the switch. There's nothing preventing you from having a switch, and even a dimmer (depending on bulb being okay with it), in addition to the 'smart' application.

      It boggles my mind why they think people want this.

      Maybe they want their smartphone to slowly increasing lighting levels based on the time of day. Perhaps they want the light to come on automatically when they enter a room (having the smartphone on them). They may want mood lighting control outside of the expensive brand names and better than the $15 ebay solution.
      You could probably waste a few minutes searching the web for what people do with these and find dozens of applications.

      Just because you and I don't find them all that appealing (hey, I have the $15 ebay solutions.. they work well enough for what I want out of RGB lights), doesn't mean your mind need boggle.

      My main complaints with these are that they're almost exclusively bulbs which are going to be expensive to replace. I'd prefer them to be sockets. Unfortunately this would require a new standard in order to deal with RGB (and beyond) bulbs - and more likely than not, this would be proprietary solutions at first; why make a simple set of connector rings when you can use a serial interface with a proprietary encoding so that only your bulbs work with your sockets, right?
      Similarly, they all disagree on what wireless standard to use - even if they use the same wireless standard, the actual protocols or specifics of implementation may differ.

      I'll wait for some level of standardization, let the early adopters deal with the growing pains, and enjoy the cheapo ebay things for now. If I really wanted them to be 'smart' right now, I'd throw an Arduino or something at the problem.

    4. Re:Yeah, let's do that... by Ultra64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > My router falls over roughly twice a week and needs rebooting.

      Then it's broken and needs to be replaced.

    5. Re:Yeah, let's do that... by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're blaming a broken router on these bulbs. It's not their fault that you're unable to fix your shit.

  3. Re:X10 by mysidia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Remote off/on control of home lights and appliances just isn't that useful.

    Yeah it is... it's extremely useful; when combined with programming capabilities, it can save electricity, reduce human effort, and improve security.

    However, while it's useful... it's usually not useful enough to justify the price that manufacturers charge for it, and the total cost of refitting existing buildings and appliances with remote control features

    The automation people need is available through alternative methods that don't require remote control; timer on the coffee pot; outdoor lights with built-in day-night/motion sensor (instead of remote controller using the system time).

    When the technology is as cheap as the extra cost you pay for a coffee pot to get the timer feature; when the technology is as cheap as the extra percentage cost you pay for your car to get the "cruise control" feature or the "radio feature".... when the technology is as easy to use as those, and is as inexpensive to get setup and up and running as those;

    Then the technology will start to be adopted. Get it down to $5 - $10 per lightbulb, and if it's reliable and easy to use, it will become ubiquitous.

    It provides a benefit.... that benefit is just worth less than $200 for a bridge to run it plus the ~$300 or so in terms of cost for additional building surge protection (to prevent all the components getting fried next time there's a power storm), plus $50 per switched light, plus $50 per controller, plus probably ~$70 per circuit average, to get the electrician installation of the required components,; amounting to probably ~$4000+ for true whole-home remote control of just the lights

  4. How long will it last by Pallas+Athena · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are a couple of problems that I see with this: - price. With all LED-solutions that I've seen so far, you need quite a few of them just to light one room. At 50 a piece, that will turn into a quite expensive toy. - usefullness. While there is quite a geek-factor if you can light up your room in blue or red, I very much doubt if it will be used for anything else but 'dimmer/brighter' after a few weeks. Which can be had with a single dimmer and a few standard spots as well. - lifetime. Yes, LED-spots do have a very long lifetime. Now how about the router? Or the protocol itself? I can see in the not-so-far future a number of people with lots of smart LED-spots that can't be used any more because the router is broken and can't be replaced because the marked has moved on.