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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.
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.
In the UK, normal LED bulbs designed as plug-in replacements for incandescent and CLF bulbs typically cost about £13. The Philips Hue bulb, which can change colour with a remote control costs about £50.
Two reasons for the heatsink. Firstly, they can get pretty toasty, yes. Secondly, high temperatures greatly shorten the lifespan of a LED. Incandescents or CFLs can take the heat, LEDs can't, so even if the heat dissipated isn't that great they still need large heatsinks.
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.
I have noted some MR16 LED's I bought run hot. The "Shoe Palace" at the local mall installed this same kind of lighting and I notice about 10% of their emitters are now dead. It is my belief that the LED's were sold on their initial appearance of being very bright, not for their longevity. So the marketers overdrive them to make the specs look good for a quick sale.
I bought mine for outdoor illumination, but after examining them, it appears they are very poorly sealed against moisture. Not the LED, rather its the inverter electronics that appears quite vulnerable to condensation which would be expected in an outdoor application, much like you would expect same in a bathroom application.
I have been looking at those 10-watt LED chip arrays from China, which look like they would survive outdoors as long as I ran them substantially below their rated power due to not having them heat sunk very well. They still need a driver, but in this case, I will put up with the inefficiency of using a ballast resistor in order to get the reliability and robustness against moisture that I do not believe I can get from a buck ( switching ) converter.in a wet environment.
I definitely wanted the outside lighting to run on 12 volts ( DC, full wave rectified, minimal filtering for voltage spikes that would destroy the LED ), I considered the 12 volt 20 watt MR16 halogens unsuitable because their current draw demanded heavy expensive wire, I wanted to run my lights with repurposed CAT5 cable ( which I have lots of) snaked in old garden hose as a direct burial conduit. Obviously, the ends are exposed to water, kids and pets, so line voltage is definitely out. I can get 10 ohm 25 watt ( 1 volt per 100 mA ) ballast resistors pretty cheap, and run them way under rating so they barely run warm. They are well sealed, so if they get wet, no big deal.
You may have seen a lot of indicator type LED's and small flashlights and think these things are the ideal cold light source. When I played with higher powered LED's ( 1 watt and up ), I was quite dismayed with how much heat I was going to have to deal with. Incandescents make even more heat, but the heat does not destruct the lamp like heat will shorten the lifetime of a LED.
I have several UltraFire WF-502B flashlights I bought so I could re-use the lithium 18650 style cells I recovered from "spent" power tool and laptop battery packs. I was doing some research on how to build charge equalizers with the cells and later fell in love with the lithium cell technology. These are quite nice high powered flashlights which deliver an unusual amount of light. The flashlights are made from machined aluminum, and they are the first flashlight I have ever had that ran noticeably warm after it has been turned on for a few minutes. They have about a 5 watt LED in them, on a massive block of aluminum heat sunk to the aluminum body of the flashlight. Yes, a beautiful design, and it also illustrates well that high power LED's will heat up.
I know our Government is doing all they can do to ram Fluorescent and LED technology down our collective throats. It is still my firm belief that those technologies are downright dangerous in the bathroom, where condensation wets the innards of the thing, then when you turn it on, ka-blooie! By their construction, incandescent bulbs are extremely resistant to condensation ( and if they are on, no condensation will happen because of the heat ).
Yes, there are some good bulbs out there. There is also a lot of junk. I do not want to diss the new stuff, but in my book, its too early to retire the legacy incandescent.
I have seen the color changing ones where one can custom mix red, green, blue, white LED outputs to make almost any desired hue, and they have their application. I do not know if I really want it all that bad, but maybe it would be good for things like mood lighting. I know I highly prefer my light around 2700K, ( quite yellowish ), but others may want the higher temperature 6000K ( downright cold bluish ) light.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]