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Smartest Light Bulbs Ever, Dumbest Idea Ever?
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.
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.
*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.
We've had LED bulbs for a while in Taiwan, and I've never seen them go above about $30usd (and even that is on the high side). I'm constantly hearing about $50 and even $80 bulbs in the states. Do you all have special tariffs on LEDs there?
X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10! X10!
"Home control" has been around since the 1990s. It was once promoted with some really annoying blinking pop-up ads for the X10 wireless control system. Around 2001, X10 was the fourth most popular property on the web. You can still buy X10 gear. It works fine. Nobody cares.
Then there was Echelon LonWorks. This was a technically better system than X10 (which was mostly one-way), and it's widely used in commercial buildings. It has really good noise immunity, which has resulted in it being used to control auxiliary systems (lights, HVAC, destination signs, etc.) in subway trains. As a home control system, which was the original plan, it went nowhere.
There's no problem doing this, and plenty of products are available. Remote off/on control of home lights and appliances just isn't that useful.
The light socket was a standardised power source, for a time. The first electric appliance to make it into the home was the electric light - and no others were anticipated, so there were no sockets. This meant that for a time the light bulb socket was the only available source of electricity for appliances in many homes, and became a de facto standard. If you look at many early appliances, such as the first electric vacuum cleaners and toasters, their power cords terminate in an Edison screw* connector to fit a light bulb socket. The user would take the bulb out, plug the cleaner into the ceiling, and swap back when done.
*Guess who invented it.
Right after the holidays there are loads of xmas strings of lamps.
The color balance can range from nice to awful.
A small string can be wound around a foil covered cardboard tube with a lamp adapter at the end.
The whole thing only draws a few watts.
That's quite cool, I didn't know that. It reminds me of how the cigarette lighter is a de facto power source for the car - are people wanting to change this?
In answer to you question, Tesla?
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.
Home Depot has them for under $10 now.
In Florida.
What pisses me off about the current crop of devices is that everyone is reinventing the wheel with a bunch of proprietary bullshit and unnecessary new protocols. The DMX512 lighting control protocol has been around for decades and is used by hundreds of existing stage and commercial lighting device manufacturers. I want RGB bulbs that talk to a bridge device that I can control with existing lighting control boards or any computerized system. I can already buy the devices for residential outdoor applications. Why the hell can't these indoor bulb idiots use what everyone else in the world is already using?
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
>>*Guess who invented it.
Tesla?
I use switch king for my home and I think it works great, works with the X10 stuff as well but there are many more adapters available and they only cost around $20-$30. Some mount behind switches and communicate wirelessly with a server, I use a cheap netbook for $300. I have probably spent about $700 total to get 5 rooms controlled wirelessly. I can control my lights with the switch king app on my iphone, any computer, or any switch on the wall. I can also schedule when lights should turn on and off if I want to. It's a nice and cool setup but is it still worth it, probably not :)
Anveto
I'll pay $50 for a light bulb, but only if it's manufactured locally by union workers. And it better last a long time, not like these "5 year" fluorescent bulbs that I'm replacing every year.
Fortunately, the fluorescent have gotten really cheap.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I just wish more came in 4000K rather than 3200K.
Most people use lighting at night, before going to bed. There's a fair bit of research to the effect that high-temperature light before sleep interferes with sleep quality.
Office lighting is another matter entirely -- there, high temperature light is not only good for vision but increases alertness.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
These bulbs are so expensive that soon you will either remove them all when you move or you will add them into the sale price of your home. It could easily reach a thousand dollars if every bulb were replaced.
Hello -- interesting comments. I wrote this piece for CEPro.com, which serves professional installers of home automation, lighting control, audio/video and other home technologies. We're huge advocates of lighting control in general for security, convenience, ambiance and energy savings. But this new smart-bulb thing is a completely new paradigm for our industry. Traditionally, the intelligence resides in the light switches and hub. Most consumers aren't willing to swap out a light switch, but they may very well change out their bulbs. So will this smart-bulb thing catalyze the DIY market for home automation/lighting control? Will it encroach on traditional lighting-control architectures? My opinion: maybe so for cool RGB special effects, but this whole issue of having to leave the light switch on at all times, and the inability for kids and visitors to control the lights ... that's a problem. Best opportunities are probably in commercial environments. Thx
I use them where I don't need light soon, or much light, or for very long
I actually use this to my advantage in bathrooms. I have a line of small globe lamps on the top of the vanity. 5 of them are cold-cathode CFL lamps, which are VERY slow to warm up. 1 of them is a regular incandescent. When you flick on the lights in the middle of the night, you are not greeted with blinding light - the lights take about a minute to come up to full brightness. I normally hate the way my face looks in the mirror with CFL bulbs, but the single incandescent brings the quality of light way up.
If instant light is what you desire, GE makes a "hybrid" bulb that has a halogen inside the CFL coil. The bulb runs the halogen for a few minutes until the fluorescent part is up to full brightness. Note that the quality varies quite a bit within the brand. I find the ones rated for indoor/outdoor hold up far better than the indoor only. Problem is, GE does not mark the packaging - only the bulb itself! I see the indoor/outdoor variety at Walgreens for $10 and the indoor only in 2-packs at Target for $14.
Of course, a $10 bulb is going to screw up the payback time, so... :) I mostly use them because my house has so many lights that changing lightbulbs was a daily chore. Gotta love the 70s and the popularity of can-lights!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How much of that energy efficiency is negated by having to power the "always-on" circuitry in order to respond to the WiFi signals? One of the appeal of highly efficient LED bulbs is the savings gained due to the fact that they use far less energy when they are on compared to other bulbs. Products such as the Phillips Hue, may use almost as much energy when they are "off" just so they can respond to a WiFi signal from my smart phone. I couldn't find out from their website just how much power is drawn from the Philips Hue when they are "off". The total cost of ownership will need to include not only how power is used to illuminate the bulb for 3 to 5 hours a night but also how much is used when they are in stand-by the rest of the day.
The amount of power used to produce the replacement light bulb also matters. A closet light is on perhaps a couple of minutes per day. It's the same reason why I still have CRT monitors on my servers. Those monitors are only on for a few hours a YEAR (basically only during upgrades that can't be handled over a remote connection, or to restart them if things go wrong after a power outage), so the energy saved by replacing them would never offset the energy cost of manufacturing the new monitor. If those monitors ever die they'll probably be replaced with other castoff CRT monitors, unless castoff LCD monitors are essentially free by then.