Wi-Fi Light Bulbs Shipping Soon

An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld has an interview with an Australian startup called LIFX, producing WiFi-connected LED light bulbs. Each light bulb is a small computer running the Thingsquare distribution of the open source Contiki operating system that creates a low-power wireless mesh network between the light bulbs and connects them to the WiFi network. The wireless mesh network lets the light bulbs be controlled with a smartphone app. Through a Kickstarter project, the company has already raised a significant amount of money: over one million USD. "

Comments

Wi-Fi toothpick

[justthinkit]

I'm waiting for the Wi-Fi toothpick.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[ganjadude]

yeah, and the wi fi doors.

look, i dont want my 45 cent light bulb costing me 50 bucks. I dont need a light bulb with a computer in it, can i think of fun things to do with it? sure but when i have over 100 light bulbs in my home, i dont want them all costing me a months pay to replace. what is wrong with a good old fashioned light bulb??

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Brett Buck]

Wi-Fi toilet paper. Finally, mankind's eternal dream of wiping from the keyboard cones true!

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[crutchy]

don't forget wifi blow up dolls

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[thereitis]

Seems to me that wifi-enabling the light switch would be more useful and cost-effective (for most people) than doing the same to the bulb.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

I think it won't be too long till the added cost of Wi-Fi in a bulb will be a couple of USD. Remember: a Wi-Fi chip has a microcontroller inside of it. That microcontroller should be enough to run Wi-Fi and a simple mesh network. It doesn't need a full-blown webserver, but even that could be done on a micro. The volume lets you optimize the heck out of everything. It would cost $0.0 in materials to have this chip control the light that already needs to have a power supply built into it anyway. In fact, the added on-top-of-Wi-Fi chip cost might even be negative if they let the Wi-Fi chip do power regulation in firmware as well. That way you lose the voltage regulation silicon, so that may cut some cost. Why the heck not, every modern industrial servo drive does all of the control in software anyway, and it's a couple control loops worth more complex than a power supply :)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

switching 110/220 is a big deal involving mechanical relays that tend to stick open/closed or flutter when they fail.

what's more interesting is someone writing a virus/trojan that scans for these devices and then tries to trigger an epileptic fit by flashing all the lights on/off when it's night time.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

what's more interesting is someone writing a virus/trojan that scans for these devices and then tries to trigger an epileptic fit by flashing all the lights on/off when it's night time.

Yeah that'll really fuck over the 0.00001% of the population who might seizure that way. At least until someone else unscrews the damned things. Man, it's definitely worth the effort to write that malware! Every doer of indiscriminate mayhem agrees it's the best bang for the buck!

Just wait till the comic book supervillians get ahold of THIS idea!

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[UltraZelda64]

what is wrong with a good old fashioned light bulb??

Apparently they're too dumb...

But I do agree with you. As long as they don't force this shit on us and it's just another option at the store, then I don't mind a little bit of extra choice. I'm not even so sure that I would want to have two dozen basically meaningless "devices" (light bulbs) wasting my router's resources in the first place... but depending on what these things allow, maybe a few of them in certain rooms wouldn't be too bad.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[davetv]

a semiconductor device - a triac - is more widely used for AC switching than relays

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[hedwards]

Which makes far more sense that wi-fi bulbs. I think this article is evidence that there's a bubble forming in the tech sector again. Or really, that it's already formed.

WAP built into lamps might make some sense, but building them into the lightbulb makes precisely zero sense. What would probably make the most sense would be building it into the socket, so that it could be easily replaced, but not require replacing whenever the bulb goes out. The bulbs themselves tend to be rather fragile, whether incandescent or fluorescent, they're the part of the set up that needs to be replaced the most frequently.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Stumbles]

Your angst is shared but your spitting in the wind. You see there are far to many people with their heads up their ass to realize not everything in our lives needs controlling by a computer. Sadly you will never be able to convince them.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Stumbles]

I have never seen a bulb of any type that did not eventually go out.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[raymorris]

what is wrong with a good old fashioned light bulb?

It used energy, and was made of sand. Therefore your 50 cent light bulb needed to be replaced with a $50 biohazard made of mercury and other toxins sold by campaign contributors.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[willy_me]

Yes, but they result in very dirty power that tend to kill cheap ballasts. If you're making a switch for lighting, a relay is the way to go if you want to support compact florescent bulbs. But triacs are good for incandescent bulbs.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[FuzzNugget]

Speak for yourself, but I can't wait for these things.

As for cost, how much would it be to have whatever existing proprietary system installed in your home? That's the cost of the hardware itself (I'm guessing hundreds if not thousands), hiring an electrician, possibly ripping out and redoing some drywall for rewiring, etc.

These? Whatever the bulbs cost, however many you want. In my home, I'd say about 8-10 bulbs. Do you think whatever proprietary systems exist would cost $400-$500 for complete installation?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[hairyfeet]

If it costs just 10c its STILL stupid and wasteful, okay? Just because a dumb thing can be done cheaply doesn't keep it from being a dumb thing, especially when others have pointed out a VERY obvious way to get the benefit without the stupidity, and that is putting the Wifi in the socket NOT in the bulb. This would keep the electronics farther away from the heat, let you build a better antenna because you'll have more room, it just makes a hell of a lot more sense to just put it in the socket than it does in the bulb.

Personally I'd go one better and put it in the switch, as most wall mounts are in hallways anyway, putting it in the switch gives you an easy manual override (the switch itself) and since one switchplate can have 2 or 3 light controls you could use less chips by having one master control say 4 switches and cut the cost down further.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[FuzzNugget]

It's a matter of balancing cost and convenience. Putting the brains in each bulb makes it more generally accessible and effortlessly scalable.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

Putting the brains in each bulb makes it more generally accessible and effortlessly scalable.

Unless cost is a factor.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[thegarbz]

Erm sorry but that's false. TRIACs only result in dirty power if they are used to chop part of the sine wave such as in a dimmer circuit. If you connect it high via a transistor or optocoupler it will start conducting from the very start of each half cycle and will not result in any harmonic distortion.

The only time you'll see dirty power while a TRIAC is used as a simple switch is when it's not conducting. The leakage current is not constant. However if a few milliAmpers are likely to kill your ballast it was well and truly time to replace it anyway.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Wovel]

The bulb will last more than 15 years. Your arguments are ludicrous.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[i.r.id10t]

112 years enough?

http://www.centennialbulb.org/

Even survived 6 hours of down time...

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

I can't wait for these things.

That's very good because you don't need to wait, or to pay at Kickstarter.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[thegarbz]

As a matter of interest what resources would they waste other than IP addresses, of which you should have more than plenty anyway?

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

cfl & led power supplies are reactive. this causes misfiring in the triac, overheating of the cfl/led supply and possibly flickering. also, the triac leakage causes the capacitors in the cfl/led supply to slowly charge so the bulb emits a quick flash (measured in milliseconds) periodically (10s of seconds).

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[FuzzNugget]

Cost vs. what? Plain old "dumb" bulbs? Sure, but then you're obviously not interested in this type of thing anyway.

But cost of this vs. other systems? OK, maybe a bit more expensive, but you're *getting* so much more. LIFX is an open system, uses existing standardized networking protocols and is *programmable*. That last point, I think is what makes LIFX so much more than other systems (oh, you can turn your lights on with your phone and select 8 different preset colors? How cute!)

I'm not astroturfing, I swear, I've been excited about these totally hackable lights since I heard about them months ago.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

LEDs will save you more in electricity than they cost (even now). Your 45 cent light bulbs cost a lot more over time than an LED when you include the energy costs.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

So how many are you going to buy?

As an adult, with children, mortgage, etc, etc ad nauseum to pay, we'll be buying a big fat ZERO of these.

Now, if there were "intelligent light switches (and power outlets)" with built-in powerline network adapters and who's control protocol is openly documented (so that I could write Linux apps), then I'd consider it.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it really last that long? They said similar things about the lifespan of CFL's, and very few (if any) of them deliver. Lifespan is one of those things that get lost in the drive to reduct cost.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

How about residual power to keep the controller and Wifi alive even when the light is off...multiplied by the number of bulbs in the building?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

I use Insteon and Z-Wave at this house. They run on cheap 8-bit processors and do not require fancy clocks, or complex modulation, or multiple channels. WiFi is overdesigned for the task, is chatty, and needs configuration of some sort.

If you are interested in home automation, the last thing you want to do is to jump on a technology that is advertised to you through Slashdot. There is not much you can do with a single light bulb; however if you get a proper set of sensors, switches and stuff (Z-Wave on more expensive end, Insteon in the middle, and X10 at the dirt cheap prices) then you can build a usable system out of that, one that detects your activities and does the right thing. A single light bulb might be fun to play with ... for about five minutes. To do more you need more. Insteon market has many devices that do what you need. Z-Wave manufacturers make new devices every day.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

The bulb will last more than 15 years.

Because that's what the manufacturer says?

Your arguments are ludicrous.

Believing self-serving advertisements is ludicrous.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

Interesting.

Does Insteon have an open protocol? IOW, does it work with Linux? Can I write bash scripts to control and monitor my house?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Xtifr]

An LED lightbulb, yes. But is that still true of a combination LED/computer/radio? Frankly the whole idea seems to me to be slightly missing the point. Just how much power does this beast draw? I imagine that the LED itself is the smallest part of the load. I think I'll go with a plain, unadorned LED bulb. Geting up to turn on/off the lights is not exactly hard work.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[ganjadude]

ive had CFLs (10X the cost of a normal bulb) die within 6 months, numerous times. ive had normal bulbs die within that time frame as well, but ive also had them last me YEARS. longest CFL i ever had last me was slightly over a year. no i havent spent 40 bucks on an LED bulb when by my avg it would take over 50 years to be cost beneficial at current costs of materials and energy.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

But the capital cost of an LED bulb is so high that it off-sets the energy savings.

When the price of CFLs came down, I started putting them in my house, mainly for the convenience of not having to replace them as often. But only when the price dropped.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

Insteon is a proprietary design, but the protocol is open. It is necessary if you want to control something. I have the PDF on this box somewhere, and I used it to hack the thermostat code to add a function (fan on/off) that wasn't there initially.

Insteon can work with Linux. My own setup runs on Windows, just because I'm using Homeseer - and until just a month ago HS did not run on Linux at all. The hardware interface (USB or serial) plugs into a userspace service, and that one exposes a port (don't remember what type) for multiple clients to connect. HS connects to that port. You can bypass all that if you need to, or you can even build your own Insteon hardware if you have nothing else to do :-) I can't think of anything secret there.

You can write Bash scripts to run your house. You will want to have some framework, though - you get a better view from shoulders of giants. Check out MisterHouse and LinuxHA. Do not waste your time on reinventing the wheel; use existing code and build on top of it.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

If you're still using incandescent lights an LED will save a few times its cost in electricity.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Mashiki]

The bulb will last more than 15 years. Your arguments are ludicrous.

I seem to remember them saying 5-10 years on CFL's, odd that up until I dumped them all and went back to incandescent's, I'd replaced a dozen of them at least twice--though under warranty until I'd simply had enough.

Hell, even the new replacement 36" mini bulbs that they're pushing to replace the 48" florescent tubes, rarely last 2 years. The bulbs might last a year, maybe. And I've replaced 8 arrays in the last 4 months(all with a standard 2 year warranty), made by sylvania, and phillips. The 48" jobs that I still have, have ballasts made in the 80's and are still working. Hell I've got one tri-bulb 36" assembly that was used in street lights in the 70's where I live, and the ballast is still good.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

The bulb will last more than 15 years.

Because that's what the manufacturer says?

They've been in modern use for 50-ish years and are well understood. I'm not sure what you're trying to ask so maybe I helped.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

Balanced by the energy they save? I don't think people understand how much more efficient LED lights are than incandescents.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like people and phones [see below], I prefer solidly dumb plain vanilla light bulbs. Forget all these eco-tubes, wifi-aware ones. What next, your lightbulb is going to have its won Facebook page?

[footnote] I like my phones dumb and my people clever, not smartphones in the hands of ___(autocomplete it yourself).

captcha: fanatics .. yes, I am one.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not terribly exciting.
The survuval rate of an incandescent bulb is related to the square of the filiment voltage. If you go to a store that sells long-life or rough service bulbs you'll notice the filiment voltage is 130vac, not 120vac. What was the intended filiment voltage of the century bulb and what is it running on?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

CFLs are and were a bad idea and off topic. Here's a link to a cost calculator, but it's all simple math. An LED putting out the light of a 50W incandescent only uses 9W. Most LED bulbs are rated anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 hours and longer. So for 50,000 hours you'll buy 50 regular lightbulbs at $.75 = $37.50. If you don't want to pay $59 for the fancy LEDs you can get simple LED bulbs for much less than $37.50 at a big box store. And the whole time use one fifth the electricity for those 50,000 hours.

Obviously it depends on the cost of your electricity, but nowhere is that cost cheap enough to be negligible. Break even on an LED is typically around 3 - 5 years and over the 45 years when used three hours a day the savings is almost $300 (after the cost of the bulb).

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

Not true. See my long winded post above regarding energy savings.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

If you're still using incandescent lights an LED will save a few times its cost in electricity.

Since LEDs are a metric ass-load more expensive than incandescents, they'll need to last an appropriately metric ass-load longer than incandescents.

But since CFLs were also supposed to last 10-15 years but don't, color me skeptical in believing LED light manufacturers claims of light bulb nirvana.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

LED light bulbs have been in modern use for 50ish years?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

And for full disclosure, I discovered as I replaced more incandescents with LEDs my natural gas consumption increased ever so slightly during the winter because I wasn't heating rooms with 60W / 100W bulbs any more. I don't have air conditioning, but if I did that increase would be offset by reduced cooling costs in the summer.

I don't get nearly as cranky when my daughter leaves her closet light on all night. It now uses 6.5W instead of the 60W bulb that came with the house and then the 40W I replaced it with.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anrego]

x10 .. x10

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain that sounds fami.. oh god.. OH GOD!

Kidding aside, I played with x10 for a while and if anyone is thinking about it, my suggestion is: don't

It's a terrible and outdated protocol. A quick "of the top of my head" list of the major problems:
- It's one way (for the most part). There was a kind of handshake thing out there but it was never used.
- The signals are easily lost in what were called "signal suckers" in many x10 circles. Basically any device using cheap filtering could kill a signal. This was a bad combination with the first one. It was common recommended practice to send a command 3 times at a 2s interval..
- False positives! The protocol is insanely simple and came from olden times when there were generally few noisy devices plugged in. The result is the right burst of noise can actually be a valid message and result in anything (but normally it was your bedroom lights turning on in the middle of the night).
- Slow. I don't know what the actual command throughput was.. but it wasn't good.

The whole thing was a terrible experience, and ultimately the novelty of it dies pretty quick. The very few useful implications are easily dealt with using much simpler technologies. One of the nicer things was always turning off the bedroom lights while laying in bed. Now I've got a self contained wall switch/remote dealie that works _perfectly_ and didn't even require a neutral ground wire or anything.. literally just swap and go.

I still have most of my old x10 gear. I will usually pull some of it out during christmas time.. few appliance modules controlling christmas lights and such.. but I'd never even think of trying to automate a home with it.. stuff is garbage.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[GNious]

Personally I'd go one better and put it in the switch, as most wall mounts are in hallways anyway, putting it in the switch gives you an easy manual override (the switch itself)

LIFX, and likely all others, can still be controlled (on/off) from the switch.
Placing the logic in the bulb is a matter of simplicity, and allowing renters to install it easily/trivially.

Disclaimer: I've preordered 2x LIFX bulbs, and contacted a 3rd party about getting support for them in a different system I use.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[GNious]

if I've understood correctly, all WiFi devices need to reply to a beacon/ping regularly, resulting in a slight (1%) increase in load for each device on the wireless network.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[GNious]

I'm slowly replacing our regular lights with CFL and LED (location/purpose-dependent).
Over the 6+ years I've lived here, not a single CFL or LED has failed me, except where 1 was shaken loose due to house being on top of a metro-station (very small, almost constant vibrations).
The main reason for switching? Is easier not having to replace lightbulbs :)

I'd suggest the following:
* Make sure you're not dumpster-diving (bargain-bin'ing?) to get the cheapest possible CFLs. Quality is a factor
* Check that your electricity-source is stable
* Check that your lights are of a decent quality (dont come loose, bad wiring etc)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[ganjadude]

with solar panels to make enough elec to push back into the grid even with incandescent bulbs, its worth it not to buy 40+$ LEDs

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[jd2112]

So how many are you going to buy?

As an adult, with children, mortgage, etc, etc ad nauseum to pay, we'll be buying a big fat ZERO of these.

Now, if there were "intelligent light switches (and power outlets)" with built-in powerline network adapters and who's control protocol is openly documented (so that I could write Linux apps), then I'd consider it.

If you are an adult with children, mortgage, etc. how could you have time to write Linux apps?
As an adult with children, mortgage, etc. I barely have time to post to Slashdot.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

I don't use X10, actually, except a couple of motion sensors and one receiver for them. X10 is not reliable. Most of my house runs on Insteon because it's cheaper than Z-Wave. I have a few Z-Wave devices too, and I make new ones. Z-Wave is pretty good, but it's complex in programming (the firmware that goes into the device.) The serial protocol of the controller is not a pleasure either; to begin with, it's binary...

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Hamsterdan]

Never heard of solid state relays? I think I've something called a Triac, or maybe it was called a SCR ?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

If you are an adult with children, mortgage, etc. how could you have time to write Linux apps?

Everyone's gotta have a hobby. (Mine's more of writing bash and Python scripts, not C code.)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Since LEDs are a metric ass-load more expensive than incandescents, they'll need to last an appropriately metric ass-load longer than incandescents.

That's exactly what they are doing with traffic lights.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anrego]

Never really looked into z-wave, but I've heard insteon described as "x10 with the bugs worked out", which sounds nice. The idea behind x10 made a lot of sense, the implementation was just terrible.

Unfortunately my home automation craze ended. Kind of depressing really, it was real "house of the future" stuff and I was totally into it when younger. Now that I actually have the money and knowledge to do it properly, I no longer have the motivation.

I guess the gee-wiz factor of it died for me. With my remote controlled bedroom light, automatic coffee maker (or more commonly the tim hortons on the way to work..), and "smart" thermostats.. there's really not much else that makes sense to automate for more than the novelty of it. I know we are supposed to look at the "but why" question with distain.. but I can't help it :(

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Not much heat and the socket is a lot easier for the consumer to get to than a modification of the wall switch, so if they want to sell them that's the way they have to go. Impulse buy instead of getting an electrician in.
While it doesn't make so much sense for those of us trained since birth to turn off a light as soon as we leave a room I can see these things paying for themselves for those "born in a house with the television always on" to borrow a line from Talking Heads.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

That's exactly what they are doing with traffic lights.

And most likely built with sturdier and higher quality components.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[rtb61]

Rather than the light switch a simple controller that can be put in the circuit, so that it can be added to any mains power outlet. Personally I think that with regards to modern lighting the light source should be as hidden as possible. So up-lighting from the cornices with strip leds and light levels controllable by alternating the number of leds switched on. Also not necessarily the whole room on just the side the person is on or point lighting etc. This even allows very low level night lights (very few widely distributed leds) not consuming much power at all but maintaining safety and security. With two banks you can start adding colour and varying ratios of colour to improve overall light quality, say red and white for non-jaring night lighting.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[tysonedwards]

Philips has had these for a year or so (their Hue product), and their price point is quite a bit lower than this new offering. Amazed why someone would buy a more expensive product from a less known company who will be less likely to fulfill warranty requests 25 years from now (the warranty duration).

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I agree, architecturally, legacy infrastructure has serious inertia, which results in the world being largely held together by a mixture of dumb choices and dirty hacks laid on top of antiques that nobody wants to replace.

Even in situations where there is a logically-separated arrangement widely available(as with fluorescent tubes, where mechanical and electrical standards for fixtures with discrete ballasts have been established for decades), the market is still flooded with ghastly all-the-driver-electronics-crammed-into-an-E27-base-package models that usually fall over and die because their driver circuits are complete junk. People still buy them, because the alternative involves mucking around behind the wall with mains voltages.

With something like an LED fixture, especially if you want fancy color controls or dimming, or both, there really aren't any existing standards for sockets. The closest thing is probably gear designed for 12v halogen bulbs, which makes driving an LED array pretty painless; but that has no data/control channel. Power only.

If you had the luxury of doing a legacy-free design, top to bottom, things would definitely turn out much better; but unless you could do that and be able to get replacements from more than just a single vendor who may or may not go out of business and/or gouge you, you aren't likely to displace existing lousy but compatible solutions.

(Incidentally, this is probably why Wifi keeps popping up in home automation at all: it's brutally overpowered for the purpose, as well as relatively expensive, power hungry, and complex; but its sheer ubiquity and near-absence of vendor market power keep inspiring people to cram it into dubiously suitable places just because the alternatives are overpriced and proprietary, or only compatible with themselves, or both.)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[davester666]

There also the significant downside in that all your light switches become useless because you have to leave them all on, all the time.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Cinder6]

It's not like an LED must have WiFi to work. It's still an increase in power required over "dumb" LEDs.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Tyr07]

Wireless fixtures E.G X-10 modules already exist. If you're wiring your home that you own, I would recommend a long term well planned system put in such as wireless switches, touchless ones and other things that when painted over are unoticable, but work, like Star Trek - Just swipe hand over wall, light comes on, touch nothing.

If you're living in a place that's rented, you may not wish to rewire their light switches etc, so a wifi / wireless light may be more convenient for you. You'll have the ability to simple take the light with you should you move. As for the comment about perm circuitry, LED lights last an exceptionally long time over conventional light bulbs (Conventionally being incandescent).

Although I'm not sure of the reliability of the system or the idea per se which will prevent me from participating in the kickstarter, I may be a future customer if they proceed and it works well.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

There also the significant downside in that all your light switches become useless because you have to leave them all on, all the time.

There is a more significant downside, but to learn about it you have to have a few of those smart switches in your house.

That downside is that they consume a lot of power, regardless of whether they are on or off. They don't have transformers; but that wouldn't be a good solution either because 1 to 2 watt transformers are horribly inefficient (I measured them personally.) A switcher would be efficient, but they cost too much, and they require medium frequency, ferrite-based transformers, and an optocoupler... it gets expensive fast.

So what are these switches using instead? They have a small capacitor, a small resistor, a rectifier bridge, and a Zener diode. That's basically all that they have. This is a horribly inefficient system; a typical dimmer switch with remote control (Z-Wave or Insteon, doesn't matter which one exactly) easily dissipates a watt of power. Multiply by 24 and 365.25, and you end up with about 9 kWh wasted just on that one switch. If you have ten of them, that'd be 90 kWh per year. Not much, but it's energy that you did not have to burn. To put it differently, each switch consumes enough energy to keep an incandescent 100W light bulb on for more than three days and three nights. If you use an LED or CFL light bulb, it takes 10% of that power, and then the switch itself burns enough power to keep that light on for a whole month.

I have these switches, and they are heating the walls of my house. This is particularly easy to notice in summer. I can afford that because all my power comes from the solar (PV) array. But it's a factor if you just want to "become green." The best way to be green is to use LED light bulbs and regular, dumb switches - and to use those switches whenever you enter and leave the area. Automation saves energy only in very specific circumstances, when you cannot expect the lights to be turned off promptly. Corridors of office buildings, at night, is one such example. At home most people neither want nor need home automation. They will not be better off with it. It's just a toy, and as most toys go it costs you more than you save.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[viperidaenz]

If you're only making $5,000 a month you have bigger problems.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

No. Exact same LEDs and a similar board.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

the last thing you want to do is to jump on a technology that is advertised to you through Slashdot.

but but but.... It's on Kickstarter!

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Bert64]

Embedded in the wall is probably not such a good location for an antenna as suspended from the ceiling... Although you could embed powerline ethernet? Make each individual switch as dumb as possible, and have a central controller somewhere.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is most western lighting is really, really shit. We usually have one or two hanging bulbs to light up a room, and then put shades on them which prevent light reflecting off the ceiling. Rooms are unevenly lit and we need expensive compact bulbs with the electronics crammed into a tiny space.

In the far east, particularly Japan, they have big (~0.6m) diffuse lights that put out 5500lm (about 5x what a 100W incandescent produces). They are LED based and only consume 50W of power. They last a long time as the electronics are properly spread out and cooled. You get a remote control that adjusts brightness and colour temperature. They don't even cost any more than typical gaudy western light fixtures.

Over there they also have more small low wattage lights that are used for specific areas where people work.

LEDs are already excellent, we just don't use them very well.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

The real cost is in wasted electricity. Wifi needs to be connected to a network to receive packets. It has to process all wifi packet data looking for stuff relevant to itself.

433MHz or 868MHz radio would be better. Longer range, lower power, simple protocol that can be polled at a low rate (e.g. once a second). Less interference too. The only downside is you would need a dongle.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with putting it in the switch or the socket is that you then need an electrician to install it, or at least some knowledge of such things to do it yourself. With a bulb you just screw it in as normal, any consumer can do it. To the average person that is a big selling point.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, bullshit. If a pure sinusoid is chopped in any way (either with a leading- or trailing edge dimmer) it will result in odd harminics, always. Math 101.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

The Philips Hue is sold in Apple shops, and only douchebags use Apple. Also, they require a separate base - these Lifx bulbs communicate directly to the network using wifi.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe a MOSFET or a IGBT?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

If nothing else... open up a repair business. Drive through rich neighborhoods at 3AM, scan for their lights and flash them. Wake 'em all up.

Advertise your services. Collect their money. Pay them a service call, poke around with your screwdriver and say your magic chants ( you have EMI in your power lines, let me adjust your CGM integrator node to cancel the tachyon field and we should be good to go.)

Rinse, lather, repeat from one neighborhood to the next.

Far-fetched? No one will fall for it?

Geez, bankers have pulled a similar one for years. Lower interest rates, get everyone to take out a loan, hike interest rates, then the borrower loses everything to the bank because he can't make debt service. Then once you have fleeced the gullible, lower the interest rate again for the next round of suckers.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

old fashioned light bulbs is slowly being banned in the eu

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is when a TRIAC is always on and doesn't chop the sine wave then there's no distortion?

Are you a natural genius or did you just read my post?

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[thegarbz]

Reactive loads are typically filtered with with small LCR circuits as used in any universal dimmer capable of dimming CFLs and LEDs without flicker. They just aren't very common yet as they have only been on the market for a few years. Also the mA leaking through the TRIAC will not provide sufficient fwd voltage to make it to the caps. TRIAC control is used widely in smart lighting configurations in commercial buildings, yet I've never seen a light randomly flick on.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you comparing them to incandescents? I expect most people buying these will use them to replace CFLs .

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

How about inventing light bulbs that last more than 100 hours. Google "Lightbulb conspiracy" to see what I mean.
I can just a two year kid getting a hold of the phone and turning lights on and off all over the house ;-) What if your phone is stolen... imagine the possibilites ...

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

And then they have to pay to clean the lights in winter because of the snow and ice build up.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

This again? That's only if they hire a monkey instead of an engineer to do the design. Seriously - how hard is it to have a gap at the bottom for the snow to fall out?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[CastrTroy]

This is what I don't like about current LED designs. They really should come in a multipart design. There's no reason I should have to replace the AD/DC converter every time a few LEDs decide to break. Putting everything in a single form factor is convenient, but makes things much more expensive to fix when a single component fails. Since LEDs don't need to be in a vaccuum like incandescent filaments, and don't need harmful chemicals like CFL bulbs, they should be easily user servicable, allowing individual LEDs to be replaced, or allowing the working LEDs to be connected to a new DC converter (or whatever it's called) should that part die. If you want a computer controlled light, that part should be a separate pieced that connects to the rest of the bulb.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Not hard at all. The tricky part is telling the snow and ice to fall when it's perfectly happy to be adhered to the light and fixture, and some of it is also blocking the gap.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

X10 is just worthless. It might have been a good idea once, but now there is so much noise that it never works.

On the other hand, Wifi is ridiculous overkill for this application. It quite literally makes no sense. Well, let me qualify that; one day it will make sense, when it costs much less to do, but today it literally makes no sense.

All of these problems could be solved trivially if you could just buy a power cable with some data wires bundled into it without spending a lot of money, then you could control all this stuff with wires (which could be brought together into a junction box next to the power junction) and use RS422 or what have you, like a pro. Of course, that'd only work for new installs, but it'd be better than all this fucking around with wireless.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

LEDs are already excellent, we just don't use them very well.

Speak for yourself. I get plenty of light from my Cree lights. Both are in fixtures with good reflection and they cast a lot of light. In fact, I'm going to have to install a dimmer in the bathroom because it's too bright in there in the morning.

Over there they also have more small low wattage lights that are used for specific areas where people work.

Nothing prevents people from buying desk lights.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

putting the Wifi in the socket NOT in the bulb. This would

...require replacement of fixtures, and therefore is a non-workable idea.

Personally I'd go one better and put it in the switch,

The switch is a good place to put it for some purposes, but a switch often controls multiple lights. How do you plan to interface three LED lights to one wallplate without a little keypad? Part of the appeal of a lightswitch is walking in the room and hitting it. Now you've also got to either add wires or do some X10-esque thing that will probably fail a lot.

In short, all your ideas are bad, and harm the purpose of the device. Which I also think is dumb, mind you, but your proposed solutions are non-solutions at best, and impede the usefulness of the device.

There's nothing dumb about using WiFi if you could do it cheaply. The thing that makes using WiFi dumb is that you can't do it cheaply. Not today, anyway.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

If you're smart enough to fix LED lights, you're smart enough to retrofit an LED light into your own enclosure using replaceable parts you buy from DX.com or similar. Instead of complaining, do something about it. Adding all that cost and complexity to something that doesn't fail if it's built worth a crap anyway (e.g. Cree-brand lights, which actually come with a respectable warranty) makes no sense while the prices are on a race to the bottom.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[CastrTroy]

It really depends on a lot of factors. My lights are usually only on at night. In my neck of the woods, they charge less for power in the evening and nights. 6.7 cents per KWh. For 50,000 hours, a 60 watt bulb would cost $200. A 9 watt LED $30. So over the life time of the bulb, I would save $170. But then we subtract out the cost of the bulb. Let's assume it's only $30. So that's $140 saved over 50,000 hours of operation. Assuming I use it for 4 hours a night, that would be 34 years. I really don't trust that the light will still be working in 34 years. Something will break. I would be surprised if it lasted 5 years. So over 34 years, I'd have to replaced it 7 times. At a cost of $30 a bulb, that would cost me $210. Which is more than the amount the electricity costs me. I've left out the cost of the incandescent bulbs, but they cost almost nothing and I've had them last a couple years, sometimes longer than the CFL bulbs. I've still got a few in my house that I've been meaning to replace with CFLs since I moved into my house 3 years ago, but they haven't gone out yet. And those bulbs get turned on and off a couple times a day.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

ive had CFLs (10X the cost of a normal bulb) die within 6 months, numerous times.

me too.

ive had normal bulbs die within that time frame as well, but ive also had them last me YEARS.

Me too.

longest CFL i ever had last me was slightly over a year.

We have shit power here and we have two CFLs that have been in service literally for years. Seven of them. One of them is an indoor-rated lamp used outdoors, in a carport.

no i havent spent 40 bucks on an LED bulb when by my avg it would take over 50 years to be cost beneficial at current costs of materials and energy.

Why don't you try going to the home despot and buying some CREE lights? You can see from teardowns online that they have a more serious cooling system and a more serious power supply as well. They cost $10 or $13 for the 40- and 60-watt equivalents, and have a ten year warranty. They look and give light just like a normal lamp, the only difference is they're very slightly longer and have a heat sink wrapped around them as per usual.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

with solar panels to make enough elec to push back into the grid even with incandescent bulbs, its worth it not to buy 40+$ LEDs

You're seriously FUDding against LEDs by inflating their price by a factor of four and telling other lies about them? Don't you have something better to do, like claim the moon landings were faked?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tompaulco]

Great They save 3 or 4 times the cost of electricity, but they cost 10 times as much and last about as long as incandescent. Total cost of ownership might work out to about the same, but it is mostly front loaded, which is exactly the opposite of what you want in an inflationary economy.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[hedwards]

And your point is? I've had far more trouble with those stupid CFLs than I ever had with incandescent bulbs. You pay more for them, you have to pay even more if you want one that can handle dimming properly, and now they're wanting you to also pay for an extra chip that has nothing at all to do with lighting the area.

The difference here is that I can replace a regular light bulb for less than a CFL and I'll be able to replace a CFL for less than one of these monstrosities with a WiFi chip built in. What's more, normal CFLs aren't a security risk to people breaking into them from off site.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Monoman]

I swore off X10 simply because of their pop up ad assault many years ago.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have a touch on/touch off bed lamp. Seems to work fine.

  Just have one question ... With all these wifi light bulbs chatting away to eachother, on 2.4ghz, what does it do to your wifi network speed?

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Phillips and Sylvania make rubbish.
Try Osram ...

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anrego]

Oh wow.

Yeah, I had completely blocked that from my memory. Those damn popups were everywhere.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[sjames]

Putting the brains in a reusable socket extension would make even more sense.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[iamwahoo2]

I think the description of the product is misleading. The system only uses wifi on a single master bulb which bridges the network of bulbs to the home network and allows things like smartphones to control the bulbs. Z-wave and insteon use similar bridging devices for connecting devices to IP networks. The network of bulbs are connected via 802.15.4 at the physical layer, an open standard. On top of this, Contiki implements 6LoWPAN, an IPv6 adaptation layer for low power devices. This is currently a draft IETF standard. If you are looking to install a system, these systems cannot currently compete with the likes of Z-wave, however, if you are into hobbyist embedded development, it is quite nice because you have a variety of hardware available from which to build custom systems and multiple open source frameworks to develop with (Contiki and TinyOS).

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[iamwahoo2]

The description of the LIFX is a little off. Only a master bulb uses wifi to create the bridge to the home network. The other bulbs are connected via 802.15.4 physical layer and a 6LoWPAN adaptation layer. This is likely more power efficient than a whole network of wifi bulbs and definitely scales better for a large number of devices.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[iamwahoo2]

Interesting article on the interpretation of expected bulb life:
http://www.gizmag.com/energy-star-led-light-bulbs/27027/

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

You get ten times the light for a given power consumption with LEDs.

Good old fashioned light bulbs are cool when you have power to burn, e.g. automotive headlights. Even there, though, LED modules provide a better experience; they have more controlled color temperature and a far longer lifespan, and can better be tuned to put the light specifically where you want it. The only drawback, as ever, is cost. Both the LED lamp and the enclosure are more complex than just using a good old filament lamp. And for an EV, the power consumption is an issue. Likewise, on a scooter or other small vehicle with small amounts of horsepower, a high beam actually requires measurable input. LED is superior there as well.

Most LED lamps suck eggs, which is why people think they're a bad idea. Get CREE lamps at home despot for the same price as cheap crap lamps, and save your receipts just in case they do fail and you need to take advantage of the ten year warranty. Ten bucks for a 40 watt equivalent, thirteen bucks for a sixty watt equivalent. Dimmable, extremely lamp-like, little larger than a normal lamp (but there are considerations there, which is a shame) and with a great warranty.

As an aside, you can also get a CREE flashlight on Amazon for ten bucks (e.g. FordEx Group 300lm Mini Cree Led Flashlight Torch Adjustable Focus Zoom Light Lamp*) and have it in your hot little hand within a week. Around 280lm on one normal AA, since they have a boost converter. I can run on a basic Eneloop (I don't even own any Eneloop XX, I'm cheap) for weeks of normal use, and by normal I mean that I do my own wrenchin' and need a light for that, I go out in the yard after dark or before dawn semi-regularly, etc.

* (affiliate link. if you don't like me, you know what to do)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[gnu-sucks]

If we're really switching to LEDs, why bother with these PWM-ish schemes anyway? Just use a transistor (collector) to drive the LED with a variable amount of current. This has got to be cleaner in terms of RFI, no possibility of flicker, etc.

Of course, this would not work equally well for every LED, some tuning woud be necessary... And probably a lot less efficient (but better power factor).

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Insteon solved all of this long ago.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

You're completely detached from real economics of the thing.

WiFi in the socket means that you need to replace the whole light fixture, as the entire thing has to be UL listed as a unit, you can't just swap out a socket for something else. That usually costs big money: a permit, a licensed electrician to do it, materials, etc. A light bulb has a much smaller regulatory footprint, and you're bound to sell it in much higher volume than light fixtures.

The electronics of course don't give a flying fuck about the heat, because in such a small unit there's no parts that degrade over time with heat, it's as simple as that - at least as long as you're talking about what adding WiFi would entail. I don't know if you realize what a modern WiFi solution looks like. It's a chip, a couple tiny external components, and an antenna. You'd be swapping the existing power supply controller chip for a WiFi chip. Chip count stays the same. I'm sure that at a small added cost you could get rid of the electrolytics in the bulb's power supply as well. That way you end up with a design that has can be made to work "forever".

Again, the cost of the chip is nothing compared to the cost of changing anything more than a lightbulb. It's basically light bulb or nothing.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

Powerline ethernet costs way more than WiFi. You need a whole bunch of components to interface with the power line - components that don't exist in WiFi or Bluetooth solutions. These days the entire radio is integrated on one chip with a microcontroller. There's usually about 10 external components needed to get it on the air if you assume that suitable power supply voltage is available.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

In a WiFi solution the wake-up packet filtering can be done in the radio hardware, the microcontroller can be asleep. A receive radio subsystem doesn't consume all that much power.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[ganjadude]

sure you could buy cheeper LEDs and they are built cheeply as well. I see 4 packs of normal dumb bulbs for under 3 bucks at the store while a 3 pack of even cheep LEDs goes for 35 or 40 bucks. so i guess i could have been more clear it was a 3 pack price not a single bulb i was talking about.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

What do you think is in the wifi "solution"? It's almost certainly a microcontroller core.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

It's not that hard and is already done in a lot of places - just leave the bottom off the shroud since the sun never shines from that way making it nothing but decoration. Hence no gap to block. See - not very far beyond monkey skills.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

It appears I should have written "great big gap" such as leaving the bottom off the shroud instead of assuming that readers would be able to work that out themselves. It appears you are thinking of the tiny gap at the bottom of lights designed for warm climates that's just there to drain rainwater.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

No, really, the best LED lamps on the market (AFAICT) are the same price as the worst ones. Buy CREE LED lamps from the home despot, they are dimmable, have a ten year warranty and cost ten or thirteen bucks. They will most likely be on an end cap display someplace far away from the rest of the LED lamps. So far they are awesome. You can google around for a teardown to see that they have a much more credible-looking power supply than most LED lamps. No perceptible flicker, excellent color temperature. Very well heat-sinked. Barely longer than a normal lamp, but that is still a consideration.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[svirre]

A wifi module is unlikely to draw more than 50-80mW while active And it can likely idle a lot so the average should be able to hit 1mW. Replace the radio with something more power efficient like zigbee lighting (based on 802.15.4) and you can divide these numbers by a factor 10.

A LED module for domestic lighting would likely draw 1-10W while active, so unless it is on on a very short duty cycle the LED would dominate.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[UltraZelda64]

I'm not a fan of putting *anything* to waste. Yes--that includes having dozens of unnecessary IP addresses scattered all over the house. It's not about a lack of resources as much as it is a desire to have a cleaner, more easy to manage network.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[RCL]

45 cent light bulb? You probably live in America. Europe (and then Russia) banned 45 cent light bulbs. We're now using energy-efficient ones that cost about 10 USD on average. Buying incandescent bulbs is a challenge.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[RCL]

You have picked a wrong site for such a comment. We are computer geeks. I, for one, don't mind turning more "dumb" things into "smart" ones.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Mashiki]

Osram is Sylvania.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[iamhassi]

yeah, and the wi fi doors. look, i dont want my 45 cent light bulb costing me 50 bucks.

They're actually $69 each

Neat idea, but the price is prohibitive, and I don't quite trust Kickstarter, either the companies on there or Kickstarter themselves, because they only get paid if a project reaches it's goal so it's in their best interest for every project to reach it's goal, but what prevents Kickstarter from fudging the numbers a bit to make it look like projects reach their goal?

I'll buy one from a retail store when they're $5 next year.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[hairyfeet]

How long was the CFLs supposed to last again? /looks at fifth pack of CFLs bought in 5 years/...yeah..bullshit. Like MTBF on hard drives and SSDs anybody who has spent ANY time with electronics knows that you get cheap OR long lasting, NEVER both. If he buys their bullshit I have some swampland he really needs to look at.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[inasity_rules]

RS485, you mean. RS422 has too many wires to make it worthwhile over any significant distance for the sort of network loads we're talking about. Also, you need shielded cable, which can become pretty expensive quickly. A lot of your average loads will really screw with serial comms on switch on. Nowhere near as bad as an industrial VSD. Oh, wait, they're starting to put those into washing machines... Yeah, you need shielding these days.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[hairyfeet]

I've gone through 5 packs of CFL in my apt in 5 years and I have nice clean power coming straight off the mains (nice to be buddies with the super) while dad's ancient 48" florescent tubes put up in the mid 80s? Still putting off plenty of that sickly grey light without a bit of trouble.

Ya know I really hate to invoke that "Things ain't what they used to be" meme but when it comes to bulbs? The new ones suuuuck. I'll keep using the CFLs simply because i live in the deep south and the lower heat is worth it to me but I've had so many die that I don't even bother with the warranty, its not worth the bullshit. And before somebody says its might outlets? I got tired of ending up in the dark when I was in the bathroom so I picked up a 75c pack of incandescent and guess what? Even the super cheap shit incandescent bulbs last twice as long. The chips they are using in the ballast base are garbage according to an engineer friend of mine who tinkers with them, but they can get that chip for like 3c a pop....sound familiar?

You can have cheap or long lasting...PICK ONE. And most likely like everything else in this world you quickly won't even get a choice, the expensive ones will be the cheap ones with a few more bells and whistles.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[hairyfeet]

And unless you live in BFE its gonna suuuuck! You ever live in an apt? I live in an apt building that isn't even geek populated and there is no less than 4 wifi routers stepping all over each other, how is it gonna be when you have a couple of hundred bulbs all stepping on each other? Its gonna be "some guy down the hall keeps turning off my lights!" to the power of infinity, and that isn't even figuring in the jackasses that will focus on fucking with the lights for shits and giggles.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[hairyfeet]

Well I was ignoring the "Holy shit the whole idea is retarded" factor but there IS a reason why the whole thing won't work...douchebags. Sorry folks but the world is filled with 'em, you'll have douchebags with cantennas turning your lights into a fucking disco just because they think its funnay.

So at least if you built it into the switch you'd not only be able to control multiple lights but as a bonus you'd have room for a little security circuitry built in. Without any security? These things won't last a week thanks to all the douchebags.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[smaddox]

Providing the variable base current would require Pulse width modulation and a smoothing circuit. Better to just pulse the LED directly at ~22kHz, and let our eye takes care of the averaging. This would likely result in higher efficiencies, too, since LED efficiency is very nonlinear, and low at low biases. Of course there is a roll-over at high currents, so it depends where on that curve the normal operating bias is.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Amigori]

Do you have a link to those neat Japanese Led lights? I'd like to evaluate them for a project I am planning to build this fall. Thanks.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tftp]

There are quite a few HA enthusiasts. But the majority of them want results, not the process. Z-Wave is a known system that delivers known, and good, results. Is this one just as good? Nobody knows, it's still being developed.

Mesh networks usually constrain the number of hops, to prevent an infinite bounce of messages within the system. In Z-Wave the maximum hop count is four, IIRC. What do you do if your building is longer, or more complex, than that? You deploy additional (slave) controllers. They are independently connected (via Ethernet, often) and synchronized. Does this system support that?

The placement of the gateway into one of the light bulbs is also debatable. Why each light bulb has to have all that functionality if it is not used in most of them? Wouldn't it be easier to have a plug in the wall, like SheevaPlug, that can talk to the mesh over whatever control interface is available?

The procedure of replacement of failed components is also relevant. OK, one of the bulbs failed. What do you do now? Are they controlled as a group, as a scene, or individually? In all these cases the controller has to know the MAC (or other) address of the new unit. In Z-Wave the address is dynamically set; in Insteon it's a 3-byte MAC address.

As I said, Z-Wave and Insteon went through years of development, deployment, and fixes before they became more or less usable. Zigbee made big mistakes early on, and because of that Zigbee devices were not interoperable. That made use of them risky. Now Z-Wave (Sigma Designs) has certification schemes, where every new device is tested in special labs that it conforms to all the aspects of the protocol and will not interfere with other devices. There is a lot of that stuff in every successful large scale system. The guys who came up with this WiFi idea probably don't appreciate how much exactly it takes to become successful in this market.

Will they succeed? I don't know. There is nothing, technically, that would prevent them from making a system that is better than existing ones. But they must be careful to not construct roadblocks. For example, existing systems support battery-powered nodes that can work on a single battery for about a year. This calls for very rare activation, and for a special "beaming" scheme to wake up such a device. Is their system capable of that? It better be, otherwise they cannot build motion sensors, and smoke alarms, and doorbells, and door/window sensors, and many other similar devices.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

Sure.

Panasonic: http://sumai.panasonic.jp/lighting/

Sharp: http://www.sharp.co.jp/led_lighting/

Both 100V only I'm afraid. These guys claim to do 240V: http://www.kamidenki.jp/led_ceiling_e.html

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

But since CFLs were also supposed to last 10-15 years but don't

Sure they do. Sure some don't. I remember changing at least one light bulb every month. I hardly ever change a light bulb any more. I think I've replaced less than 5% of the CFLs I've installed. I even took them with me from one house to the next back when they were more expensive.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[fluffy99]

Since LEDs are a metric ass-load more expensive than incandescents, they'll need to last an appropriately metric ass-load longer than incandescents.

That's exactly what they are doing with traffic lights.

Sure, because the major cost for a traffic light is maintenance to change the bulbs. Depending on the number of lights, the city can spend $500-5000 in labor to change out all the bulbs at an intersection. The lower power cost is just an added bonus.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[fluffy99]

RS485, you mean. RS422 has too many wires to make it worthwhile over any significant distance for the sort of network loads we're talking about. Also, you need shielded cable, which can become pretty expensive quickly. A lot of your average loads will really screw with serial comms on switch on. Nowhere near as bad as an industrial VSD. Oh, wait, they're starting to put those into washing machines... Yeah, you need shielding these days.

You've essentially described canbus as used in modern cars. You just run power and data to nodes (such as a head light cluster) and the central computer tells them what to do. It dramatically lowers the amount of cabling needed, and provides much better control of everything (for example in cars, it can turn off the interior lights after 20-minutes to save the battery). The significantly lower power requirements of LEDs means you could put all of your house lighting on a single circuit.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[fluffy99]

I've gone through 5 packs of CFL in my apt in 5 years and I have nice clean power coming straight off the mains (nice to be buddies with the super) while dad's ancient 48" florescent tubes put up in the mid 80s? Still putting off plenty of that sickly grey light without a bit of trouble.

Ya know I really hate to invoke that "Things ain't what they used to be" meme but when it comes to bulbs? The new ones suuuuck. I'll keep using the CFLs simply because i live in the deep south and the lower heat is worth it to me but I've had so many die that I don't even bother with the warranty, its not worth the bullshit. And before somebody says its might outlets? I got tired of ending up in the dark when I was in the bathroom so I picked up a 75c pack of incandescent and guess what? Even the super cheap shit incandescent bulbs last twice as long. The chips they are using in the ballast base are garbage according to an engineer friend of mine who tinkers with them, but they can get that chip for like 3c a pop....sound familiar?

You can have cheap or long lasting...PICK ONE. And most likely like everything else in this world you quickly won't even get a choice, the expensive ones will be the cheap ones with a few more bells and whistles.

The major issue with CFLs is the power quality of the mass produced China crap that tend to overheat and die prematurely (did you notice the fine print about not mounting them base-up, like most overhear fixtures require?). Regardless of the less than advertised lifespan of a CFL, you're still coming out ahead on the electricity costs and lower maintenance.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

I swore off X10 simply because of their pop up ad assault many years ago.

You've confused the X10 protocol with a website called x10.com which sells some X10 based products. I've got piles of the stuff I picked up at garage sales, too bad it doesn't work with CFLs. Just because I don't like Lexus ads doesn't mean I won't buy a car.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[drinkypoo]

Without any security? These things won't last a week thanks to all the douchebags.

Well, that much I agree with. It's a lot of money to spend on a party gimmick.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[ickleberry]

If you can't even install a simple socket or a switch yourself there isn't much hope left for you. They are not hard to do

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

The bulb will last more than 15 years. Your arguments are ludicrous.

And I can buy how many "dumb" CF or LED light bulbs for the cost of one of these, that last damn near as long?

Speaking of ludicrous, try picking anything else to justify this new product next time. Longevity sure as hell ain't one of them.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

50,000 is a nice middle ground on the claims. And CFLs are off topic and irrelevant. I still remember cursing and pulling every one out of the house. >:(

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Amigori]

Fantastic! Thank you!

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

Yes. In their most common configuration they go back to the 60's. I'm having trouble (obviously) trying to put this into words. The design has changed little since the 60's but that is a changin'. I consider LEDs on electronics modern use even if it was 50 years ago.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[PNutts]

Definitely.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

And you just don't realize that sometimes the snow and ice just sticks to everything because it never studied law.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Nutria]

In their most common configuration they go back to the 60's.

Don't be a dip-shit. You know perfectly well that "100-240V white LED light bulbs to illuminate rooms" is what this discussion is about, not the tiny little low voltage red things in 1970s calculators.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

For CFL globes and fluorescent tubes my mileage varies substantially from yours, but I suspect I'm in a different country with different suppliers and different standards (including voltage and hertz).
My CFLs last years. My fluorescent tubes... I think I've replaced one. No, actually, I've still got the spare I bought, 10 years ago, I saw it yesterday (I bought a twin pack of fittings + 36" tubes and only installed one). It's possible that the fitting will rust out (it's outdoors) before the fluoro blows, at this rate, as the fitting is already pretty rusty!

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[thegarbz]

Wait manage? Isn't there things like DNS and DHCP that does that for us? A large $1m house would have like 70 lightbulbs, so less IP addresses than a small company. I think that is very easy to manage.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[UltraZelda64]

You still don't get the point. I like my systems and network to be nice and clean. Simple as that. I also tend to use static IP addresses for all of my machines (DHCP for others, especially those belonging to guests).

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Ignorance of the law of gravity will not save it :)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

But, arguably, those light bulbs, due to volume, will have the most vulnerability-scrutinized software stack ever :)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[tibit]

There's a long way between the antenna and the microcontroller :)

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[inasity_rules]

Aka devicenet. The problem is, these things aren't so bad with 12V or 24V next to them, but start adding strong signal sources from 220V (110V in america) power lines connected to nonlinear nodes and you will start to see why sheilding the comms from the power is a good idea....

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

LED globes can be had on Ebay for $6 each delivered direct from Hong Kong. I've had a whole house full of several different types (bayonet, screw and GU10) for three years and NOT ONE has failed cf compact fluorescents where one or two a year would die.

I call bullshit on your comments.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

yet, neither will it be its downfall.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[BigZee]

Where can I get such lighting systems?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Yet LED traffic lights that are designed by competent designers work in snow (as addressed in my post WAY above) in places as cold as Hokkaido so I really cannot understand what is motivating you to continue this pointless sniping. Just because some utter losers think they can change a major component in a design without consequence doesn't mean the idea is bad. Is welding always a worse idea than rivets just because some cost cutting war profiteers decided not to change the design to suit with the Liberty ships?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Z-Wave in my house - 2 deadbolts, 20 light switches, a few lamp modules and motion sensors. Expensive at first, but having a low power wireless protocol is nice. Although the protocol isn't open, there are opensource implementations that are pretty well complete.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Reality.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a felony. I think there are some people in jail for driving around and knocking out people's unprotected wireless routers, and then advertising their repair services. I believe it was likened to breaking and entering.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

claptrap - remote switching is commonplace

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Shirley Marquez]

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.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Shirley Marquez]

A CFL that is left on continuously and that has proper ventilation actually does last as long as they claim it will - in my experience, often longer. The claimed life expectancy of most CFLs ranges from 7,000 to 10,000 hours; that's in the vicinity of one year of continuous use (8,760 hours unless it's a leap year). You will also get close to the claimed lifetime if the bulb is turned on and off infrequently; a bulb that is turned on once per day for two hours probably will last ten years.

Two things shorten the lifetime of CFLs in typical home use. One, they get turned on and off many times per day, which is not good for any type of fluorescent lighting. (It also shortens the life of incandescent bulbs but less dramatically.) Two, they are often installed in fixtures with poor ventilation; the result is that the electronics overheat and burn out.

LED bulbs solve one of the two problems; turning them on and off frequently doesn't bother them at all. Overheating of the electronics is still an issue. Overheating of the LEDs is also an issue, which is why LED bulbs have big heat sinks. They also have even longer claimed life expectancies, usually 25,000 hours (about 3 years continuous) or more, and that rating reflects when the bulb will fade to 70% of original output rather than when it will fail completely.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed an incandescent bulb that lasted for no more than 24 hours. Then I burnt my fingers when fiddling when trying to get it to go, and I couldn't play guitar while my fingers healed.

They are unreliable, they're dangerous, and they prevented me from working.

Re: Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

But will 802.11n? Or will it be obsolete and be noise to the new ISM band technology that supersedes it.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[si618]

> In the far east, particularly Japan, they have big (~0.6m) diffuse lights that put out 5500lm

[citation needed]

I just installed a 3,300 (chinese;-) lumen SMD LED flood light which draws a claimed 50W. I can't measure the light output, suffice to say it's hella bright, but the 50W was pretty close, as measured by my cheapo meter reader.

Not calling bullshit, but pretty impressive they can get another 2,200 lumen for the same wattage, so a link would be good.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

High school metal shop levels of design enable people to deal with such aspects of reality. Using gravity to deal with snow is a pretty old trick.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[stub667]

And in many jurisdictions that would be a crime unless you are a licensed electrician.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Yes, that is true. But, snow and ice will still stick to some surfaces.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[RockDoctor]

when i have over 100 light bulbs in my home

That's either a very large home, or you've got some weird lighting. For our 2 bed house, I'm estimating about 30 lamps. Including several desk lamps. So, you're in a ~6 bed house?

Besides, If I'm understanding TFS correctly, you'd be looking at one wifi-enabled lamp per lighting circuit.

In the real world, you'd need to pull a lot of cable to actually make significant use of this (e.g., as someone said, putting all the area lighting into the cornices of the room), which is going to be significantly more expensive then the lamps themselves. Unless you're going to do your decorating yourself, and a lot of the wiring work (whether that is legal will vary with your jurisdiction) yourself too, your biggest cost by far is going to be the tradesmen to do the work.

I couldn't justify the cost and hassle of wiring the house properly, so I put in a wifi modem for the wife, and my den has it's wired network strung along the back of the desk and connected to the ADLS wireless router using a couple of "wall wart" network bridges. Since our current to-the-door connectivity is only about 4MBPS, and unlikely to increase hugely, then an 80MBPS wall wart connection is more than adequate for the foreseeable future.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[AmiMoJo]

See my other replies for a link.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single Wi FI session without glitches everywhere, the icon mismatching connection state, bytes going out while pages dont download, FACEBOOK mismatching GOOGLE email notifications, different laptops, w/w/o adapter, login session giving 401s, literal name unfindable in ANY search engine, I do not even know if my daughter is still alive or some IMBECILE IT IDIOT is **emulating** her/them in a facebook page, no reply even from automatic replies, missing emails from sent items, hotspots going in and out... and you want to wifi lightbulbs so one of those IMBECILES can even leave you in the darkness? Can you do something if some IMBECILE CRETIN SCHIZOPHRENIC does not even let me use my name without INTERFERING? - Make the wifi pluggable or your lightbulb will be just another A-freak-an waste.

THIS POST GLITCHED TOO!!! No page downloading after captcha, no comment in searches nor anywhere, and this is NOT ARAB nor CHINESE language.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Kalriath]

The other thing that will prevent you participating in the Kickstarter is that it closed in November 2012. They ARE proceeding, and this whole story is about the fact that they're finally delivering.

Which is news to us customers.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Well then in that case high school methods are not enough and you have to call in the undergraduates:
http://sustainability.umich.edu/news/engineering-team-develops-device-aid-led-traffic-signals-inclement-weather-places-overall-campu
Despite looking truncated that URL does work. It's about an undergraduate teambuilding design project as part of a competition.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Kalriath]

No its not, because the bulbs have a security model which prevents anyone but the "rightful owner" giving them directions.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Kalriath]

So at least if you built it into the switch you'd not only be able to control multiple lights but as a bonus you'd have room for a little security circuitry built in. Without any security? These things won't last a week thanks to all the douchebags.

Oh, just like the LIFX bulbs then. Phew, glad that's sorted.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[Kalriath]

The Kickstarter campaign closed 9 months ago. You can order them from LIFX now for $79 USD.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Yes, and snow and ice will still stick to some surfaces

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Thank you for your time Elizabot - you have just failed the turing test.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

that DOESN'T stick.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

It means that you are obviously pretending to be too dumb to be human.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Reality isn't on your side, so you have to resort to name calling. Proves you're human.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

What exactly was the point of this game you are playing? If it's to boost my ego by making me feel orders of magnitude more intelligent than yourself you have managed to do it.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

What makes you think it's a game?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

You are obviously not as stupid as your very long string of posts that could have been answered by a three word google search indicate. The "eliza bot" silliness of ignoring the content of my post but repeating key words back to me like is a bit of a clue as to the nature of your game. Obviously there is more at work here than providing me with the fantasy of a wise old man helping out a helpless and retarded child.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

I wouldn't stoop to calling you any kind of children, even 'tho you were first to resort to name calling.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

I'm not calling you that, instead I'm curious as to why you are pretending to be a retarded child. Please explain.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

I can't explain why you would have such an erroneous conception of what's going on.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Is it drugs then?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Look, I don't know what your problem is, whether drugs or lack thereof, and I'm not going to speculate. You said better design, i.e. a gap at the bottom would fix the problem. It helps, and it prevents build up, but it doesn't completely solve the problem like you said. You obviously realize that because you cited a design that puts heaters on the lights. Even that doesn't prevent ice and snow sticking to the lights and fixtures in all weather. Even the old lights couldn't prevent that.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Sorry but I'm not biting any more after you ignored that student project where the article answered everything you raised - both far above and now in your most recent post. I really do not understand this game of pretending that your reasoning skills are far below your reading age - is the score related to the length of the thread you can get to see who can bait the most patient people? What is it with pretending to be so stupid? It's got to the point where you are copying truly depressing stupidity and I cannot even laugh at you any more. Your petty game of "let's pretend" in an insult to people that actually are mentally retarded.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

I didn't ignore the article, and the article in fact confirms that snow and ice stick to things.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

... and undergraduate students provided a solution - hence that post of mine far above with the line "This again? That's only if they hire a monkey instead of an engineer to do the design".
That's right - I had already answered your question in that very first post you pathetic little attention seeking troll.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Your full post:

This again? That's only if they hire a monkey instead of an engineer to do the design. Seriously - how hard is it to have a gap at the bottom for the snow to fall out?
--
\'.'/

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

You mean you couldn't work it out from that? Please stop pretending to be far more stupid than your reading age.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Your post only mentions the gap. It was much later that you mention the study about adding heaters to the lights.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

Only after it was clear that you were pretending that you couldn't spot the obvious so I googled an example myself to rub your nose in it. Please enlighten me - what are you gaining from pretending to be so dim? Is this some new game?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

Your logic has been faulty from the start

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

That's no answer, it's just random shit an eliza script would turn out. Please do other than pretending to be too dumb to be human by providing me with an answer as to why you have behaved in this fashion.

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

It is an answer

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

However just as stupid as all your "but water is wet" bullshit, as if the obvious was not obvious - so why are you pretending that an easy task is rocket science? I'm seriously curious as to what motivated you to attach such a long line of embarrassing foolishness to my comment. Is "JustOK" a hijacked username of someone you want to make look like an idiot?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

and claiming monkeys could design traffic lights wasn't stupid on your part?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[dbIII]

So now you are pretending to have a level of reading comprehension far less than required for high school entry. Why?

Re:Wi-Fi toothpick

[JustOK]

How have I claimed that?

if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Trepidity]

Lights being controlled by computer! The power of home automation at your fingertips! Click here to order today!

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have my X10 stuff, too bad the PC transmitter uses serial...

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it come with a free X10 camera?

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[tibit]

X10 is almost useless in a modern home where almost anything you plug into the outlet has a switching power supply, including every light bulb. It wasn't designed to cope with that. There are much better and higher bandwidth protocols. They leverage modern signal processing. It lets them perform better than X10 in spite of being orders of magnitude higher bandwidth!

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Anonymous Coward]

It lets them perform better than X10 in spite of being orders of magnitude higher bandwidth!

So they perform better in spite of the orders of magnitude higher bandwidth? Wow, against all odds. That inspires hope!

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Anonymous Coward]

People today are too lazy to clap it seems.

Re:if only X10 could've lived to see this day

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the alternatives for X10 are VASTLY more expensive. Expect to play $50 or more for each module, compared to a 3 pack for less that $25 for X10.

Just what we need

[93 Escort Wagon]

We finally have energy efficient light bulbs that can last for years and don't cost an arm and a leg.

Can't have that - let's add some complexity to the system. It'll raise the price and increase the failure rate!

Re:Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

And why not? Not every item should be made to fit every need.

Re:Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

And the carbon footprint.

Re:Just what we need

[ganjadude]

we have had those for a good 50 years now what do you mean "finally"

Re:Just what we need

[crutchy]

increase the failure rate!

i think the point of the whole exercise is to increase the profit... and with millions of idiot consumers they can't go wrong :)

Re:Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

i think the point of the whole exercise is to increase the profit... and with millions of idiot consumers they can't go wrong :)

Why did you think the government runs the K-12 school system? To LOWER corporate profits? To churn out informed voters who think critically and question policy decisions? Hah! HAHAHAHAHA. Man that's a good one.

Fat and stupid and eager to consume, that's a good little sheeple.

Re:Just what we need

[hedwards]

Now, they're shaped like light bulbs.

Re:Just what we need

[crutchy]

erm... i think we're in agreement? :|

Re:Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

We haven't had white LEDs for 50 years.

Re:Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

What light source near 100 lumens per watt has been available to the general consumer at the retail level for 50+ years? Metal halide might qualify, but unless you need 10,000 lumens, they're not really helpful in the living room lamp.

Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait for andoid malware to takeover the lifx lighting and make your go nuts by switching on and off light at random times of the day!

Botnet

[MaxDollarCash]

Im building the wolds first lightbulb based botnet. Without kickstarter funding!

Smart phone as a universal UI...

[jasno]

I wonder how hard it would be to have bulbs like this subtley modulate their light output to broadcast their address to your smartphone? Your phone could then ID the bulb and give you control over it when your phone is pointing at the light. A scheme like this, implemented with cheap IR beacons, could be applied to other products to allow control without a physical interface. Want to change the thermostat? Point your phone at it and a HTML 5 UI pops up allowing a rich user interface. Someone has to have done this already...

Re:Smart phone as a universal UI...

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Why use IR, phones have cameras and LED flashes... better to use visual spectrum...

Re:Smart phone as a universal UI...

[crutchy]

Want to change the thermostat? Point your phone at it and a HTML 5 UI pops up allowing a rich user interface

wow life is becoming so much easier with all this technology... makes me feel so inadequate since all i have is a clumsy dial for changing my thermostat

hackers and have fun with this and maybe even driv

[Joe_Dragon]

hackers and have fun with this and maybe even driver people nuts / make them pay for all of this to go away.

just what the world needs

[Osgeld]

Nevermind this has been commercially available long enough for it to be featured on this old house, why in gods name do we need to control everything from our smartphone?

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a device that people likely to buy this product already own and carry with them, rather than a whole separate single-purpose remote control to buy and carry around. I've made my garage door controllable from my smartphone so I don't have to carry a whole separate dongle with me just to get back in my house.

Plus any device that you can "control with your smartphone" can be controlled from any other network-capable computing device, and the people likely to integrate such devices are typically smart enough to know that.

Re:just what the world needs

[ganjadude]

Plus any device that you can "control with your smartphone" can be controlled from any other network-capable computing device

all the more reason I DONT want it. if *I* can control it with any network capable device, so can hackers 1/2 across the world or even worse, the NSA

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao!!

Re:just what the world needs

[Ksevio]

The LIFX ones haven't been available that long (except for the kickstarters). It's a more complete solution than others that have been available.

Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone? Could even do some cool hacks so the lights come on automatically when your phone is in range and it's during hours that would be dark.

Re:just what the world needs

[fostware]

How can you patent it without adding "...with a phone"?

Re:just what the world needs

[Nutria]

Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone?

Not everyone has a smart phone.

Not everyone carries it around every moment of the night and day.

You can flip a light switch with your elbow when your arms are full.

The many 10s of millions of people with presbyopia and myopia don't need glasses to flip light switches.

Requiring everyone in a family -- from the very young to the very old to carry a smart phone, and to pay for all those contracts, is plain, fucking stupid.

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, from the 802.11ac article, people were arguing that landlines (and DECT phones) are obsolete because everyone has mobile phones and has no need of a landline...

But, a smart phone isn't that expensive and you don't even need a contract. Heck, you don't even need the cellular service so any sort of tablet or media player (with support for apps) would do. Hell, you could go one step further and just have a "beacon" device which you could carry in your pocket or clipped to your belt.

To be honest though, I would just go with changing my current bulbs with plain old LED bulbs as they die...

Re:just what the world needs

[Osgeld]

please explain how its a more complete solution, I would love to hear about how its more complete than a web enabled RGB light bulb that can go into any socket that is already available

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

LMAO!! Thank you for making my day with some beautiful stinging logic!

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone?

Not everyone has a smart phone.

Not everyone carries it around every moment of the night and day.

You can flip a light switch with your elbow when your arms are full.

The many 10s of millions of people with presbyopia and myopia don't need glasses to flip light switches.

Requiring everyone in a family -- from the very young to the very old to carry a smart phone, and to pay for all those contracts, is plain, fucking stupid.

I think it is pretty stupid to assume that you'd need a smartphone to turn the bulb on, the switch is still there and should work just fine. You will need a smartphone/tablet for advanced functionality, scheduling, etc.

Think before you post? o.O

Re:just what the world needs

[Ksevio]

The main difference is the LIFX ones are direct wifi whereas others on the market typically require a base station of some sort that controls the bulbs and acts as a bridge.

Re:just what the world needs

[Ksevio]

No one's suggesting the only way to turn on the lights should be to use the smart phone - it's just one option that can be made available. You can bump the switch with your elbow when your arms are full OR you can have the lights turn on when your phone is in range after you come home OR automatically turn on when your garage opens and it's dark at the end of the day OR you can turn them on from a button in your car OR wire them up to a motion sensor somewhere completely different.

There are endless possibilities once you have the technology in place, but you're limited to very few options if you're required to flip a switch on a wall to control your lights. But I get it - smart phones are complicated and those damn kids use them too much already so no one should have more technology - especially not nerds on a tech news site.

Re:just what the world needs

[tftp]

You can bump the switch with your elbow when your arms are full

This light bulb has to be always ON at the switch. Perhaps you can cycle it off and on, and then it will default to "on" after application of power. But that's inconvenient and counter-intuitive.

you can have the lights turn on when your phone is in range after you come home

Perhaps that will work if you are a King and live in a palace, with rooms that are far apart. Modern homes have rooms packed close to each other, and drywall does not block RF. You will end up activating lights in all adjacent rooms, regardless of the need.

automatically turn on when your garage opens and it's dark at the end of the day

My garage opener already has two light bulbs (LED) that activate for 5 minutes after the door moves. That's plenty of time to park the car, grab your things and get into the house.

you can turn them on from a button in your car

Once you get into this level of functionality you want to have an established home automation system, like Z-Wave or Insteon. They already have portable and stationary controllers, and a bunch of devices that can be controlled. Is this company on Kickstarter is trying to compete with Z-Wave? They'd become yet another proprietary solution that is a thing in itself. The huge advantage of Z-Wave is that it is a standard, and everyone can make Z-Wave devices that will work with everyone else's Z-Wave devices. For that purpose Z-Wave has published a set of classes, where the programming instructions for every class (sensor, light switch, etc.) are explained in detail. Technology-wise, Z-Wave is also a mesh, it runs in the 900 MHz ISM band, and it does not interfere with your 802.11 networks. Insteon is a mixed (power line and wireless) technology. Both are pretty inexpensive.

But I get it - smart phones are complicated and those damn kids use them too much already so no one should have more technology - especially not nerds on a tech news site.

You want more than one controller at your home. Do you want to pay for several smartphones that are just laying around the house so that visitors can use them? Do you *always* have your smartphone on you? (I don't even own one, and I have no plans to get such a thing.) What if you forget your smartphone at work, or lose it, or break it?

Re:just what the world needs

[froth-bite]

first they made running shoes more expensive, then phones, then bottled water, now light bulbs!

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's faster to walk to the switch and flip it than it is to:

• find and pick up my smart phone (without any light?)
• switch the phone on and unlock it
• find and open the app
• wait for the app to start
• navigate through the app to the light in question and flip it

Re:just what the world needs

[Nutria]

No one's suggesting the only way to turn on the lights should be to use the smart phone

GP sure did when he wrote, Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone?

Re:just what the world needs

[Ksevio]

Who says the switch on the wall has to control power to the bulb? Seems kind of silly to be routing power through all the walls anyways.

It seems you've already found similar technology useful! You find that 5 minutes is a good amount of time after you've parked your car to have lights - now how about expanding that thinking. Maybe the bedroom light could turn on at night after you shut off the TV in the living room.

The advantage to these are they use already common and existing technology. Most places already have a wifi network setup - no need to set up a redundant one for the lighting. WiFi is an established standard with plenty of devices.

Re:just what the world needs

[tftp]

WiFi is an established standard with plenty of devices.

I would like to know how you are planning to enter the WPA key, or the SSID, into the light bulb.

To compare, Z-Wave devices are securely paired with the controller by the fact of physical presence of the controller - either near the device, or on the network and in a special mode. You have to activate a function of a device by hand, it won't join the network otherwise.

Re:just what the world needs

[Ksevio]

I would like to know how you are planning to enter the WPA key, or the SSID, into the light bulb.

Sure, Plug in the bulb, connect through adhoc network with the bulb, enter SSID and WPA key.

Re:just what the world needs

[Svartormr]

Why bother to have switches at all when you can have lights controlled by your smart phone?

As well....

The power's been out and your smart phone is dead. Or you've just come home with a dead smart phone.

Someone's cracked the crap security on the wireless light control protocol and has turned your house into a pulsing light extravaganza.

Has the light bulb come on yet?

Re:just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

You havent clearly read about the product. It does not replace light switches, if yo want the light on turn the switch on, if you want it off then turn the switch off. If you want to mess with the additional characteristics of the light then use the smart phone.

This makes no sense.

[Chris Mattern]

Why would you put control circuitry that doesn't wear out into the replaceable part that *does* wear out instead of into the fixture that holds it?

Re:This makes no sense.

[Trepidity]

In principle it's not the right place for it, but it does make transitioning much easier. If you were going to put it in the fixture, you'd need to put out a whole range of devices with the new fixture, ranging from recessed ceiling lighting to lamps to whatever else people have in their houses. And once you did that, people would have to replace their existing fixtures with the new ones.

While if you put it in the bulb, you can just screw it in to any of your existing fixtures quite easily.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Jeremi]

Why would you put control circuitry that doesn't wear out into the replaceable part that *does* wear out instead of into the fixture that holds it?

One of the advantages of LED bulbs is that they don't wear out for a very long time. It wouldn't surprise me if they outlast the control circuitry.

Re: This makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

An LED will likely outlive the control system. Your idea of lightbulbs dying fast doesn't convey.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Belial6]

The same thing could be done with a screw in adapter. Adapter screws into the fixture, bulb screws into the adapter. Same feature set. More flexibility.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize they've been making these for quite some time. Since the 60s/70s at least. An adapter similar to this would be much better to build it on.

Re:This makes no sense.

[msauve]

Why would you put control circuitry that doesn't wear out into the replaceable part that *does* wear out instead of into the fixture that holds it?

Fixtures are pretty permanent (difficult to replace for most homeowners). Bulbs are made to be easily changed by anyone. LED bulbs should last a very long time, longer than quickly changing home net/mesh technology.

Why would you want to lock yourself into a new technology by making it difficult to upgrade? Does this answer your question?

Re:This makes no sense.

[shione]

I see what you are saying but its actually the other way around. In a LED light the LEDs has a longer lifespan than the controller. You can see this in a LED streetlight. The control circuitry is a simple plug in plugout to replace. The LED panel is modular too but thats more so the streetlight designer can specify how many LEDs for the lumens he needs.

Re:This makes no sense.

[PNutts]

Screw in adapters typically cause problems with lights fitting in fixtures. Forget about enclosed lights and they can also cause problems with cans or even fitting under the harp.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not thinking like a business man.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Nutria]

At least since the 1950s. Possibly even the 1930s.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Nutria]

In a LED light the LEDs has a longer lifespan than the controller. You can see this in a LED streetlight.

I'll believe it when there's quite a few more years of real world results. In the mean time, let the first adopters with lots of disposable income (and a lot less sense) buy them.

Re:This makes no sense.

[bill_mcgonigle]

In the mean time, let the first adopters with lots of disposable income (and a lot less sense) buy them.

My silly power company is giving me $10 back on each of the LED's that I buy. They must not have enough generating power, because I'm getting 60W equivalent (2700K) LED bulbs for about the same cost as operating a 60W incandescent for a year. The ones that look just like an incandescent have a high WAF.

So, if the LED lasts a year, I've broken even. If it lasts more than that, I'm saving money. I think you have to have disposable income to not switch to LED, if you can get in on the rebates and have a minimum amount of capital to hold for a year.

Re:This makes no sense.

[Nutria]

My silly power company is giving me $10 back on each of the LED's that I buy.

Or you're inefficiently paying for them via your tax dollars. For whatever the reason, my electric company doesn't offer such rebates (or isn't advertising it).

Anyway, we don't have any more incandescent bulbs. When the price dropped, we bought CFLs, installing them either (a) when incandescents burnt out, or (b) immediately in certain desk lamps where they are a burn hazard.

Re:This makes no sense.

[drinkypoo]

$10? That will outright pay for a 40W Cree equivalent with a ten year warranty. You're not getting them for the same cost, you're getting them for free (Well, three bucks more if you get the 60W)

OTOH I don't get any LED rebates, or if I do, they've not told me about them. Which is too bad...

Re:This makes no sense.

[bill_mcgonigle]

$10? That will outright pay for a 40W Cree equivalent with a ten year warranty.

Sadly, the rebates are on units $15 and higher. This was fine before the Crees came out, but now it's worth paying the $13 for the Crees in some cases. I just wish the HD would charge me $15 for a 60W Cree.

It's OK, I like the $30 LED can lights - I bought six of them to re-do the kitchen lighting. I tip-toed into CFL early on, but I can't wait to re-do the whole house in LED now. As far as I can tell, the Cree bulbs are perfect.

Re:This makes no sense.

[drinkypoo]

I just wish the HD would charge me $15 for a 60W Cree.

Maybe they can give you a contractor account and overcharge you for the led lamps.

one million dollars startup funding?????

[Anonymous Coward]

for a light switch operated by a smarthone app rather than, you know, pressing the real button in a second or so ?

And how easy is it to flick that switch when you come home after a good few beers rather than faffing around with your phone (presuming you remembered it)

I'd love to see a detailed breakdown of the funding on this one, I can't imagine a better scenario for a serious academic study into how imbeciles get parted from their cash by means of investment opportunities for totally worthless, pointless crap.

Re:one million dollars startup funding?????

[crutchy]

i think the objective is to allow welfare bums to live on their couches... the whole concept of having to get up to turn a light on or off requires too much energy to even contemplate in an era when government supplies everything and working is for the poor ignorant fools who still have an unfounded belief in the American dream

Seems like a great way to...

[SemmiZamunda]

...absolutely POLLUTE the airwaves with junk wi-fi signals. Seems like this would add a ton of unnecessary interference on currently existing wireless networks.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wifi has collision avoidance in its specs. Thus any device that uses these specs (aka, the light) will have collision avoidance, thus not sending whenever anything else is sending. This means that if these lights do not have to communicate much (it is unlikely the lights will be high bandwidth) they will not interfere and have no noticable impact with other wifi items.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[crutchy]

what should happen... level of junk wi-fi signals reduced
what will happen... power in wi-fi transmitters increased

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[DigiShaman]

Agreed. Just because WiFi hardware will be cents on the dollar (or soon at this rate) doesn't mean we should be slapping a WiFi chip on every fucking electronic device just to fart over the airwaves. What's next, an IPv6 address for every single kitchen and household appliance? I suppose I should be so snarky about it. I could see the point in being notified when to replace food or notifying you that the burner or oven was left on (no thanks to the kids or elderly). Regardless, WiFi hardware doesn't need to be installed in gimmicky products just to make name for yourself in the market. So again, your point still stands.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the article? They are talking about IEEE 802.15.4, not necessarily using the same wifi bands that are used by our current wireless devices.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, WIFX is using bog standard 802.11b as the physical layer.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[jhol13]

A ton? How much traffic you'd expect one light bulb to have on an average day? Kilobyte? Whether you count wi-fi packets or usefull payload.

I think wi-fi lamp or light switch makes more sense than wi-fi bulb, for obvious reasons, though with LEDs the advantage is small.

Re:Seems like a great way to...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's 2.4 GHz, yes, that would suck in dense wifi areas. If they are smart and make it 5 GHz, there's no problem here. They aren't broadcasting beacons like an AP, they are clients devices (like a laptop or phone). And if implemented correctly there's no reason it would be talking on wifi at all unless they are getting or sending an update.

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[Anonymous Coward]

bright, maybe
efficient not even fucking close
no POSISON!! incandescent contain heavy metals as well

Why?

[Anubis350]

So that people don't have to rewire their house to use them.

I mean, I'm not buying them, but that's a pretty obvious answer

Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Yahma]

While not WiFi, Smarthome has had a network connected LED bulb for over a year now. In my opinion, it is better suited for home automation than the WiFi bulb in the OP because it utilizes the Insteon Protocol, which is the replacement for X10.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[hjf]

Same with Philips' "Hue" lights.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

I like wifi better because it is already here, rather than having to add more hardware and have to support yet another network with yet another addressing scheme routing, etc... And Insteon is not IP, uses both RF and powerline..., and very low bandwidth... interesting but I prefer to use general purpose networks, say Wifi for RF, and HomePlug for powerline, both of which can be used by many more devices (in terms of compatibility), so reducing the total RF flying around.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[adolf]

More WiFi clients == less RF flying around?

No, not really: Insteon (and X10) are dead silent unless commands are being sent. Meanwhile, WiFi devices are inherently somewhat chatty; they all spend a significant portion of their time broadcasting "Hey, here I am! I'm still here! I'm still here! I'm still here! Hey, everyone! I'm still here! Are you there? Good! Because I'm still here!"

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Belial6]

There is no good reason that a light bulb that is designed to screw into a standard socket should ever use any kind of wireless technology for it's control. The thing, by it's very nature, is already connected to a wired network in the home. Using wireless pollutes the WiFi spectrum while simultaneously exposing the device to hackers.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[dfghjk]

Spoken like someone with no knowledge or experience with Insteon.

Curious how you think WiFi light bulbs would *reduce* the amount of RF "flying" around compared to Insteon (which would be powerline). Even in RF form Insteon is low power and low range in comparison...oh, and Insteon is "already here" too as are the networked Insteon bulbs. All you need to use them is a switch and a powerline bridge. No big deal.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[PNutts]

Meanwhile, WiFi devices are inherently somewhat chatty; they all spend a significant portion of their time broadcasting "Hey, here I am! I'm still here! I'm still here! I'm still here! Hey, everyone! I'm still here! Are you there? Good! Because I'm still here!"

WiFi is Facebook?

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[PNutts]

There is no good reason that a light bulb that is designed to screw into a standard socket should ever use any kind of wireless technology for it's control. The thing, by it's very nature, is already connected to a wired network in the home. Using wireless pollutes the WiFi spectrum while simultaneously exposing the device to hackers.

OK, Debbie Downer.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Anonymous Coward]

and wifi is probably more secure

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[GNious]

LIFX was apparently looking to use something similar (ZigBee?), but decided that instead of having masters and slave-units, they would add WiFi to all of them, and have a simpler product selection.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[GNious]

All you need to use them is a switch and a powerline bridge. No big deal.

Am assuming this technology can be trivially installed without opening/replacing anything already installed, for those that rent the place they live in? I know I cannot install/"upgrade" anything on the other side of the faceplates, so stuff like powerline must be external adaptors.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously fearmongering lightbulb hackers?

Step away from the computer, and remove your tin foil hat.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[adolf]

WiFi is Facebook?

Close. Wifi is noisy all by itself; Facebook is noisy due to (alleged) human interaction.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[adolf]

There are digital control technologies other than WiFi that are wireless. Most (!) of them are not even in the 2.4GHz range that common 802.11 occupies.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Insteon is low power, low range, low bandwidth... 2800 bit/s. If I don't have any other insteon equipment, why would I have a bridge? I wouldn't. I already have a wifi point because it is useful for general purpose (computers, smartphones, gaming devices, etc...) I prefer general purpose network that uses a medium thoroughly, rather one that uses multiple media and needs to share all of them and worry about multiple networks interfering. I prefer to debug interference with one PHY at a time. Granted... Insteon is going to be at a completely different wavelength, being so slow, but that also means I cannot see the packets going by without an Insteon sniffer... I'd rather just be able to use tcpdump on a wifi or ethernet port.

It isn't about whether Insteon works, It does. And it is here now... and it will be crushed by wifi and homeplug as adapters for those get cheaper/easier to incorporate into hardware because they are far more flexible future facing. What these people are doing, using existing networks instead of inventing your own is just a better way to solve the problem over the long run.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Belial6]

Granted. I will will restrict the comment to there being no excuse for polluting the WiFi spectrum when you are already connected to a wired network.

Re:Smarthome networked LED lightbulb

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, of course, that the power you *would* have saved by using LEDs for the light, you waste on the (by necessity always-on) wifi..... Heck, why didn't they just make 'em be wind-up clockwork flint-strikers while they're at it?

Troll level: 99

[girlintraining]

Yup, I can see it now... Drive by someone's house, whip out the phone, plunge them into the stone ages. Keep driving. (puts on sunglasses) AWWWWWW YEEEAAAAH.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually have encrypted connection, so as long as the people can't actually get on your internal network (aka, your wifi is secure), you will not be able to do this. Maybe try to read something about the whole thing before judging. I know its hard but it makes everything a lot easier.

Re:Troll level: 99

[girlintraining]

They actually have encrypted connection, so as long as the people can't actually get on your internal network (aka, your wifi is secure), you will not be able to do this. Maybe try to read something about the whole thing before judging. I know its hard but it makes everything a lot easier.

Anonymous Coward: Not having a sense of humor since 1997.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

If the light is already off and you rely on your encrypted connection to turn it on, a DoS would actually have some negative effect.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, thank god you can defeat win an argument when flaws in your original statement are pointed out by going for a personal attack and ignoring everything that was said.
In the end, what you said is completely wrong. You can't whip out your phone and put people in the stone age unless your phone can crack AES-256, in which case the NSA will be contacting you soon, or if your phone does wifi jamming, but thats also rather unlikely, and even if it did, the phones probably wouldn't automatically turn off whenever no signal is found.

Also, if you gonna whip out the "I trolled you into responding" defense, do note that I will just argue that I did the exact same.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

Why crack the encryption when a simple replay attack will do the job? You don't have to know what encrypted packets say as long as you know how the system responds to them. This being a commercial product for sale to anybody, it will be hacked.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is. Which is fine, but doing a DoS to stop people from turning on their light strikes me as something that really will not be happening all that often. People don't park a car with a jammer in front of peoples houses to stop them from doing things online at this moment, its unlikely somebody will find it useful to ensure you can't put on the light. Sure, I could think of some possible scenarios, but they all seem rather far fetched and extremely targetted that the average person really shouldn't worry about it.

This strikes me as a "I wont fly because of possible terrorists on planes" while you drive while SMSing people. Its just that if you really have so little to worry about that somebody dosing you to stop you from turning on the light is next on your lists of things to protect yourself from, you probably live a rather carefree life.
Its not automatically wrong for new technology that takes over the job of old technology to introduce problems that weren't there before if it also introduces enough features that weren't there before. Its really a tradeoff with what you want.

Re:Troll level: 99

[crutchy]

did you run out of prozac this morning?

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

The lifx.co site has little info on this but does say this:
  We have considered security. The WiFi connection will use the standard security set-up that you are currently using. Mesh networks based on 802.15.4 will encrypt packets using AES-128. Higher network stack layers will need to handle exchange of security keys and deal with problems like "replay attacks". In short, your lights will be as secure as your home wifi network.

Certainly, they don't list their security measures to stop replay attacks, but its not that they haven't thought of the possibility and thus likely will be attemting to stop this from happening.

And even if it was possible, what is the fucking use of hacking these lights? Any possible scenario where it seems to have some use that I can think off involves being very far fetched and having way, way bigger problems than the lights not being under your controll.

Re:Troll level: 99

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr

How do they get the wifi "password" into the bulb?

Re:Troll level: 99

[tbird81]

Morse code.

They'll be sued...

[Anonymous Coward]

They will be sued out of existence by the Apple/Philips Hue bulb guys. Because that is the only way corporations know how to handle competition now days.

Subtle mind control

[PPH]

Barely perceptible changes in lighting levels or hues aimed at changing your behavior. In response to your activity online. Or whatever the NSA deems appropriate.

Re:Subtle mind control

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could just make sure the only lights turned on in your house are the one you're currently in and then turn the lights on/off as you walk around your house.

This will work until we invent thumbs

Re:Subtle mind control

[PPH]

That's my dad's job.

Re:Subtle mind control

[sbrown7792]

Then comes the malware which makes all the lights in your house turn on except for the ones in the room you're currently in... which would be ever so frustrating (and tempting)

Re:Subtle mind control

[Anonymous Coward]

Your dad's job is to invent thumbs?

I guess you don't need power

[Anonymous Coward]

... since light fixtures need to be WIRED to be powered.

Are people really this ignorant of reality??

Re:I guess you don't need power

[crutchy]

existing wiring can be used to transmit data, but controlling from your smartphone still requires wireless

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[jrmcferren]

Modern Incandescent lamps no longer use lead in manufacturing. If you include the energy used during manufacturing and transport incandescent lamps are rather energy efficient as little aluminum is used in the base and there are no plastics, semiconductors or other materials that use a large amount of energy (or are made from crude oil) used in the manufacturing of incandescent lamps.

Watch out for copyright trolls

[ozduo4]

Especially Uncle Fester, he had an interactive bulb 40 years ago!

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[crutchy]

Bright efficient light with no POISON!!

yeah guddammit i wanna be able to light a campfire in every room of my house!

What I expect with WiFi bulbs

[manu0601]

There have been experiments of light bulbs as down link: the bulb adds HF data signal in light emissions, and mobile devices can use it, leaving traditional WiFi spectrum used for just up link. I thought this was what this story was about and I must confess I am a bit disappointed.

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[tibit]

Too heavy? What the fuck?

There's something similar out there now

[Anonymous Coward]

that allows you to control the color and I think style/effects the lights do.

I can't remember who it was that makes them but I recall reading about it a while ago and seeing them listed on one of the online stores that specializes in LED lights for the home

Re:There's something similar out there now

[saintted]

These have been available for a few months now. http://www.limitlessled.com/

Taking it further

[jones_supa]

The wireless mesh network lets the light bulbs be controlled with a smartphone app.

Great! Although I have personally taken that idea even further in my Smart Home concept: I have dedicated switches embedded directly on the wall for each of my light sources. They allow me to discretely turn on/off any LED bulbs in the house (CFL and incandescent also fully supported).

Re:Taking it further

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out on interest, would this dedicated switching technology support changing collors, dimming from any location in the room, automation (for example lights going on in the morning when you have to wake up or moodlights to fit with some music).

And before you say you don't need that, other people may actually like to have that, which is why these light bulbs are not mandatory but can be bought if you have any interest.

Put it in the switch

[crow]

If you really want automation, put it in the switch, not the bulb. Then you can use any bulb you like. Just program the switch to tell it what type of bulb (whether it's dimmable, and what type of dimming to use). The only advantage in putting it in the bulb is that you can do effects where multiple bulbs on the same switch can be controlled independently, which I don't see as a significant advantage.

Also, if you put the control in the switch, you can choose between WiFi and powerline ethernet. You also don't lose control if the light is switched off.

Re:Put it in the switch

[chill]

Putting it in the bulb allows for simpler installation. Insteon allows for powerline and RF connectivity this way and makes just such a bulb.

That is a big advantage if you're renting and can't make wiring changes.

Finally, the LIFX and Hue bulbs allow for different colors, which you can't do with the controller in the switch.

Sooo... You know you can get non-wifi bulbs right?

[Sycraft-fu]

You can have nice, efficient, LED bulbs with no WiFi in them. Go to Amazon, Home Depot, pretty much wherever you like. The Philips L-Prize bulb is the one I'd recommend. Very nice spectrum, more efficient than most other LEDs, long life.

Or I suppose you could just whine on Slashdot about a product that isn't on the market yet.

My take on home automation..

[Anonymous Coward]

My take on home automation and controlling things from your smartphone..

They are not as convenient and easy to use as the plain old KISS approach.

Take someone who has some form of wireless audio/speakers deployed.
For one, those systems are not cheap and the selection of speakers and amplifiers is very limited. They often do not stream everything and they are not as flexible. Sure, you can get them to work and work around their quirks but is it worth it? You can buy a cheap receiver or regular old self powered speakers and plug your or anyones iPod/Pad/Droid/$10mp3 player device directly in right there on site you still have the local smartphone controls, no proprietary wireless distribution system needed and probably 1/2 the cost of a decent one. Sure, you don't win at the geek factor though but the system is simple and just as transparent.

shoving lightbulbs in your ass

[Anonymous Coward]

why do some people do this - don't they know it's going to break?

i mean of all things, a lightbulb??

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[Worthless_Comments]

Did you suggest we tax LED bulbs extra because they are heavy? Are you fucking retarded or something?

Philips already has this

[Logger]

I already saw Philips version of this called the Hue at the local hardware store.

Re:Philips already has this

[webminer]

Apple store has them for $199 - starter pack with 3 bulbs and the wireless bridge (supports upto 50 bulbs). Each additional bulb is only $59.50 (Dont you love that its 50 cents less than $60). No thanks! Not going to spend $200 when I can move my butt, get off the couch to turn off the light!

Re:Philips already has this

[PNutts]

Hue lights can do more than be turned off remotely.

Re:Philips already has this

[Anonymous Coward]

And they use zigbee wireless mesh networking which is based on IEEE 802.15.4. It's advantages over WiFi are that it's light weight, a fully compliant software stack runs fine on arcane 8-bit CPU's. Most of which are embedded on highly integrated SoC's available from lots of vendors (such as TI's CC2530 SoC which has an 8051 where the stack uses some 200kB of ROM and 6kB of RAM which is available in low quantity for less than $10). No external components other than some decoupling capacitors and a crystal are required. Energy usage is also much, much lower compared to WiFi. On the application side, Zigbee provides specifications and profiles suited for real world applications (Philips Hue uses the ZLL or Zigbee Light-Link profile) with well defined interfaces. Using WiFi would create more problems than solve them I think.

Lumens per watt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll eat my hat if these silly, overpriced, toys are even remotely green compared with more sensible ways of designing intelligent lighting.

But that will not stop people buying them, in the short term anyway.

Re:Lumens per watt?

[PNutts]

Speaking for LED lights everywhere: Whoosh!

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[hedwards]

Theoretically, the energy that's spent in manufacture of CFLs is made up for over the long run. In practice, they've had reliability issues. Most of the early ones I tried burned out well before they made up for the extra cost or expenditure of energy to produce.

Mods are dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell gave this guy a +5? The sentence is incoherant. I don't know what he's trying to say but dammit it must be Insightful. Methinks you are voting yourself up with alts Joe.

What a dumbass idea

[Tridus]

Yay, let's significantly increase the cost of making light bulbs (instead of simply making an attachment that screws into the socket and then takes a normal bulb), so we can increase the power requirements to run the light bulbs, so we can add yet more signals and interference to an already overcrowded wifi spectrum, so that we can make our light bulbs hackable... all in an effort to do what? Avoid having to flick a switch?

About the only thing they're not doing is wrong is suckering people out of money on kickstarter.

Re:What a dumbass idea

[Ksevio]

LED bulbs (even with extra electronics) are already much more power efficient than other bulbs. They also have some definite advantages such as changing colors and lifespan. Controlling the lighting can do a lot to improve the atmosphere of a space. It's easy to change intensity and color of LEDs, so pretty much anything is possible. You can have a rave in your apartment or a flickering fire in your den or just a low blue nightlight in your hallway.

Honestly I'm amazed at the resentment of so many /. users to being able to control their environments electronically. Nerds are the ones that embrace technology and push the cool ways to automate simple tasks like switching light switches BEFORE it gets to the mainstream. Guess people are getting old and starting to fear change and these new fangled smart phone connected devices.

Re: What a dumbass idea

[Wovel]

Slashdot seems to be turning into a home for displace technophobes.

Re: What a dumbass idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is full of realists, cynics, critics, and some actual nerds. If it's gadget addicted geeks you're looking for, this isn't the best place.

Re:What a dumbass idea

[tbird81]

Slashdot is just full of negativity about everything. Just stupid overused jokes, and ridiculous theories about what a "hacker" or the NSA could do to your system. It's hard to think that people here are able to achieve anything in the real world harbouring such pathological cynicism. The world is actually a pretty cool place.

There's nerdiness - in which people should get excited about this type of stuff; and then there's bitterness - where everything is stupid and a waste of time. I hope that the two are independent variables.

I've only just (in the last 2 months) started browsing reddit. Sure there's a lot of crap, but everyone seems much more positive than they do here. Nearly every new device or technology, from the Ouya to the Oculus, including every new Nasa project, every new discovery, is just bagged without any real interest on Slashdot.

Slashdot seems a lonely place.

Re:What a dumbass idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is just full of negativity about everything

Says the person bitching and complaining about everything..

Are you here participating or do you think of yourself as just an observer looking in from a parallel universe?

Re:What a dumbass idea

[tbird81]

Parallel universe.

One Million USD

[sconeu]

And nobody's put their pinky to their mouth yet?

Additional energy consumption

[daveinaustin990]

One of the benefits of LED light bulbs is to reduce energy consumption. Although wi-fi mesh networking has benefits in a number of areas, this seems to be a step in the wrong direction. It would be interesting to determine how much energy would be consumed if even 10% of each household used this technology 20 years from now.
TL;DC #didn'tCalculate

on LIFX

[moxfactor]

so no one here knows that the LIFX is a colour changeable lightbulb? and everyone expects the only use for a lightbulb is for home? ok....

Re:on LIFX

[drinkypoo]

If you're going to have large numbers of lamps, it doesn't make sense to have each one have a lot of intelligence. The only practical use for such a lightbulb is at home.

I'm guessing you never heard

[Anonymous Coward]

... about ethernet over power. No need to be wireless all over the house. By just hooking up the device to a centralized router you can achieve the same (and more reliable) results without having to flood the wi-fi bandwith with useless signals.

Re:I'm guessing you never heard

[crutchy]

ethernet over power would require pass-through devices at each light switch in walls and running of ethernet from each pass-through device back to router... idea in TFA sounds much cheaper

Re:I'm guessing you never heard

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, no.

Just what I need...

[Anonymous Coward]

Another set of devices I have to administer instead of just use.

Re:Just what I need...

[tbird81]

Actually, you don't have to do anything. Stick with your old bulbs, and cheer the fuck up.

Lightbulbs aren't pricey enough as it is...

[HockeyPuck]

For a 60W (or equiv brightness) bulb at Homedepot...

Incandescent bulbs are dirt cheap at $.40 a bulb.
CFLs... at $2.25
LED is $13.

You now want to put wifi in this thing? It takes a long time to recoup the cost of a $13bulb... I can't imagine what it would take to recoup some $25 wifi enabled bulb with encryption.

Wouldn't it also be the ultimate power vampire? You'd now be putting your lightbulbs into standby if you wanted to turn them on and off via some smartphone app. Last I checked when I turned them off via the wall switch, they actually went off.

Re:Lightbulbs aren't pricey enough as it is...

[tbird81]

$25! Shit, you're have to be a thousandairre to afford that.

Re:Lightbulbs aren't pricey enough as it is...

[LanMan04]

CFLs are more like $1.50 each:

http://www.amazon.com/GE-13-Watt-Energy-SmartTM-replacement/dp/B000NISDNU/

Re:Lightbulbs aren't pricey enough as it is...

[MooseMiester]

Add shipping and your above the Home Depot Price...

Overkill?

[PsyMan]

OK, Just how many coders does it take to open source a light bulb? Could these be used on things like Christmas decorations and programmed to flash and amuse people?

EthernetOverPower?

[fostware]

Why not do everything through EoP? Once volume gets up, it'll be just as cheap, and it'll mean less RF interference.

I realise it doesn't work through different phases, some power boards, or surge filters, but it's less susceptible to outside access.

Dumb

[Animats]

It lights up. It can be turned on and off and dimmed remotely That's where we were with X10 in the 1980s. It doesn't relay data around for other WiFi devices.

It has over-the-air firmware updates. Your smartphone doesn't really talk to the lamps. It talks to their "cloud server", to which the lamps phone home. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Dumb

[Kalriath]

Incorrect. Your phone talks directly to the bulb, NOT to any LIFX servers. The bulbs also don't "phone home". Where are you getting your info from?

Go for function not form

[dbIII]

There's been a lot of rants about CFLs on this site for a few years and I just could not understand them since they were a long way from what I'd seen. Then I got a piece of crap Phillips bulb that was designed to look like an incandescent bulb and it fits all those rants about taking forever to warm up etc. The answer guys is not to get the bulbs designed to be pretty - get the ones with big ugly loops designed to be functional and forget about dimming and shit - the ones that will work in cold climates at 110v instead of cheap stuff that's OK on 240v in subtropical bits of China.

Re:Go for function not form

[drinkypoo]

There's a lot more to it than that, unfortunately. You also can't just buy some lamps at your local supermarket. You have to do some research, figure out which ones are worth half a crap, and then track them down. I've bought over a dozen cheap CFLs and all of them have been garbage. This does not shock me, but if I can't get them cheap then why would I want them? Anyway, I should really get paid for saying this so many times, but the Cree lamps that you can pick up for ten or thirteen bucks (depending on lumens) from the home despot kick ass and have a ten year warranty. I have two of them in service now and they're slick as hell and cost literally no more than the crap you can order on DX.com, which I've personally bought and run into the ground within a year.

Re:Go for function not form

[dbIII]

I've only had one dud, but you are right that LEDs are more impressive and now comparable in price. I'm putting one in this week that's an array of LEDs to replace a long flouro and I'm assuming it's going to last for ages (it can lose a few LEDs before it needs to be replaced).
Anyway - my point is a combination of warm climate, 240v and people happy to buy CFLs that work instead of worrying if they are pretty has meant that I don't get to see those dud CFLs that people here rant about. If you get enough sun in the daytime who gives a shit about the colour cast of your light bulbs at night? Most of the time whatever paint is on the wall is going to have more of an apparent effect anyway.

Re:Go for function not form

[drinkypoo]

I wonder about just building LED lamps out of breadboard power rails... Then you could replace individual emitters at will while running. You'd need some kind of retainer and maybe an anti-oxidant, but I bet you could get some of these cheap by the case.

Maybe Khyber will chime in on why this is a bad idea :)

Defeats energy savings, reduced lifespan

[Khyber]

Great, so now you have a wifi transmitter and computer inside of an already-heated LED light. Which means as the whole enclosure gets warmer from the added electronics, LED efficiency drops, as well as the overall lifespan. To boot, these LED bulbs aren't even as efficient as cheap Chinese LEDs that can run from a single network-connected smart dimmer TO BEGIN WITH, so their efficiency becomes roughly that of CFL, totally negating any power savings benefit unless you run the LED bulb at less-than-optimal power.

This is about as pointless as the 'fluid source' LED on kickstarter, which has a pathetic 50 or so lumens per watt - not even as good as a CFL.

To all you LED people on Kickstarter - hire some real engineers that know what's going on; your guys don't have a clue and you're making our industry look bad.

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[Anonymous Coward]

I have several LEDS hanging over my head right now! Am I in some kind of danger? Anybody?!

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world's most energy-efficient LED light bulb at the moment is the Philips L-prize winner at 10W for 950 lumens of light. At such low wattages, even adding 1W of power cuts energy efficiency by 9% and I bet the WiFi and memory alone consume more than 1W. Why would you take something that's designed to eek out every last drop of efficiency and nullify that efficiency by powering useless crap with it?

Because, Fun

[Jhyrryl]

Blah blah blah, expensive. They're full spectrum and fully programmable; I'm going to be teaching my daughter how to hack with these things. Halloween is going to be awesome.

Blah blah blah, better ways to do it. If you're so much smarter, *you* go create a Kickstarter so successful that it has to be prematurely ended.

Blah blah blah, wifi pollution. Really? I'll take you seriously on that topic matter when you stop using microwaves to "cook" the vast majority of your meals.

I just can't wait for the malware!

[bitbucketeer]

I wonder what my electric bill will be like when my light bulbs are mining bitcoins for China?

God I feel for you clowns way back in 2013.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I predict in a few years, people will think back to the bad old days, you know, when you had to get up to flip the light switch on and off.

Much the same way we used to have to take a pillow off the sofa and lie in front of the TV in order to change the channel and surf during commercials. Seriously.

so lets add even MORE

[Anonymous Coward]

unrecycleable (or horribly inefficient and expensive to recycle) electronics to light bulbs. brilliant fucking idea.

incandescent isn't all bad, after all. just learn how to turn off your own friggin lights when you're not in the room.

NSA here we come!

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! When can we expect to see the embedded microphone and webcam? ;D

bah

[smash]

what would be even better would be if they made light bulbs that did ethernet over power and had a built in wireless AP.

scatter them around a few rooms in your house and you have an unobtrusive, well connected wireless network.

Re:bah

[drinkypoo]

what would be even better would be if they made light bulbs that did ethernet over power and had a built in wireless AP.

There's little benefit to doing that unless your walls are designed to block wireless signals. But that would be a slick way to add visible light networking capabilities to a house...

Power source

[Cinnaman]

I was hoping it would be powered directly by the Wi-Fi radio waves and use LEDs. That would be cool.

An interesting home theater use...

[MMC Monster]

How about if these lights were controlled by your home theater system or TV?

A couple possibilities:
1. Turning the TV on makes sure the lights are off.
2. Mood lighting that shifts based on the scene. (A couple TVs have these sort of lights on their borders already.)

What's the buzz on Insteon?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait for these things.

That's very good because you don't need to wait, or to pay at Kickstarter.

In the fine print:
"Important Note
When in use, INSTEON LED Bulb emits a subtle buzzing noise that is barely noticeable. However, when several bulbs are installed in a single location, the buzzing may become more apparent."

So my house will sound like a swarm of angry bulbs???

Classical Home Automation failed hard!

[Anonymous Coward]

While it is utterly stupid to put Wifi into a lightbulb, this is a clear consequence from dedicated Home-Automation protocols failing hard.
Its 2013 now. Where is the home automation protocol with the following features? I look at zigbee, because it had the most hopes on it for a long time.
* Openness/Vendor-neutrality : nearly all fail. even zigbee requires expensive licenses.
* Proper security, i.E. authentication and privacy: nearly all protocols failed here, even zigbee)
* Cost : 100€ for one "dumb" light switch? whereas one could have a fully capable wifi router for 20€? Where are the proportions here?

Some other ideas?
6lowpan? Looks nice, but this is not even standardized now and will not be available during the next 5 years

Then after the EMP comes

[JohnnyDoesLinux]

Even if you have old tech generator, you will have darkness.
Do people realize that the technology gap is trying to make the simple more complex by putting a micro in everything from toothbrushes to toasters? Ooops, already there.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to use low voltage lighting to begin with?

WHy

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Its a damned light bulb.

Timed lights/etc

[Anonymous Coward]

X10 was really good if you wanted to have your stuff come on/off on a timer. Often forget to turn on the porch light at night? Never again. On vacation? Lights and TV can come on and off automatically, in case someone is watching the house.

Was also good for apartments who always seemed to have the switch controlled plug in the wrong place. And its nice to be able to walk in with a bunch of grocery and have your lights come on in the room automatically..

Sure, it had its problems but it isn't total crap either.

Re:Timed lights/etc

[dasunt]

X10 was really good if you wanted to have your stuff come on/off on a timer. Often forget to turn on the porch light at night? Never again. On vacation? Lights and TV can come on and off automatically, in case someone is watching the house.

Was also good for apartments who always seemed to have the switch controlled plug in the wrong place. And its nice to be able to walk in with a bunch of grocery and have your lights come on in the room automatically..

Sure, it had its problems but it isn't total crap either.

My experience was similar. Cheap enough. But it worked for me. I wouldn't trust it with something that could burn the house down if it accidentally turned on, or something that would result in the pipes freezing if it accidentally turned off, but it was good at controlling lights and other simple on/off electrical devices.

Phillips

[Anonymous Coward]

is selling them already. There is even an IFFFT channel and you can change the light color with a tweet

Similar to Philips Bulbs.

[Anonymous Coward]

This project is very similair of what it already exist with Philips and there product "Philips Hue". We get an show 2 weeks ago in Belgium and it was quite amazing considering the fact that Hue App is very very on with colour dimer, program light, an external apps name "Disco..." that switch your light into a light discotek but first of all, the app can be fixed with your GPS location and turn on the light at a specified circle.

Never enter into the darkness of your garage, when you arrive at 800m is switch on the lights.

The price is a little expensive (200€ for a kit of 3 lamp and the transmitter but the app is really really users friendly.

see scope we had here : http://www.planet-sansfil.com/philips-hue/

Where did you get that BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethernet over powerline doesn't require anything but the power cables already installed.

I love how ignorant people come out to say the biggest BS lies to justify their stupidity.

Re:Where did you get that BS

[Anonymous Coward]

so how would it work then dipshit? where would you put the pass-through devices?

if you actually try to answer this (not expecting you to) you might (probably not though) come to realize how ignorant you are

the power line is only part of the system that carries the signal between the power source and the switching device (pass-through). unless all your light switches for the whole house are located in the same place as your router, you need ethernet cable to bring the control signals to the router.

fucking morons

The LED should be an AP

[MajVariola]

The LED light could be modulated to carry data, completely separate from its dimmability.

Already patented

[Anonymous Coward]

Philips owns a few dozen patents on wireless mesh networks for lighting control. I hope they did their research before taking a million in funding.

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[jrmcferren]

Adjustable desk lamps can't take the weight of LED bulbs due to the heat sink. They always droop over from weight of the bulb.

Great surveillance possibilities too.

[yusing]

WiFi light bulbs could be turned into a really great network to do WiFi surveillance everywhere all the time. No more pesky difficulties caused by those low-level signals ... everything could be vacuumed up. Might even fit a little mini-cam in there as well!

Re:Great surveillance possibilities too.

[ikaruga]

Given the amount of unsecured network cameras I can easily find with a simple google search, this idea will be a all I can eat buffet. I hope this product is popular between hot chicks.

'internet it'

[globaljustin]

hilariously, I think that 'they' (investors, entrepreneurs, other moneymen) don't let the thought get past their lizard brain...

let's add some complexity to the system. It'll raise the price and increase the failure rate!

IMHO, at this point certain types literally operate on a philosophy of 'innovation means connecting it to the internet'

they will fund anything that puts internet into the technology that's in front of their face at that moment...light bulb...internet!....window...internet!...shoes...internet!

and call it 'innovation' haha

srsly don't get me started on my conspiracy theory about groups wanting to make a skynet on purpose for Nazi-like nefarious purposes...i'm looking at you blekko...

Re:Shitty ASS LEDS????

[tibit]

I've recently bought some 70W-equivalent LEDs and they weren't very heavy. Our desktop lamp didn't complain.

Joke time

[DodoNFred]

Wow whole new vein for the "how many whatever does is take a change a light bulb" jokes...

Wow

[MooseMiester]

Just about everything that could be said on this topic has already been said, in some cases eloquently, in others... not so much.

The only thing that hasn't been covered here is:

You KNOW the Safety-Crats will insist on a backup switch for every socket - This will benefit the Electrical Workers Union too :-) As we won't be trusted to change a light bulb in a "dangerous, hot socket".

What I want to know... and I mean really want to know... is where are the idiots who threw hard earned money at this idea on KickStarter? Over a million dollars... for this? Where are these fools with money, I want to retire early and am not counting on SS, ya know?

Yay! More WiFi Congestion!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what the world needed!!!!!

Carajo! Not a single session wo GLITCHES

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single Wi FI session without glitches everywhere, the icon mismatching connection state, bytes going out while pages dont download, FACEBOOK mismatching GOOGLE email notifications, different laptops, w/w/o adapter, login session giving 401s, literal name unfindable in ANY search engine, I do not even know if my daughter is still alive or some IMBECILE IT IDIOT is **emulating** her/them in a facebook page, no reply even from automatic replies, missing emails from sent items, hotspots going in and out... and you want to wifi lightbulbs so one of those IMBECILES can even leave you in the darkness? Can you do something if some IMBECILE CRETIN SCHIZOPHRENIC does not even let me use my name without INTERFERING? - Make the wifi pluggable or your lightbulb will be just another A-freak-an waste.

I'm guessing you never heard

[Kalriath]

... of putting your damn comment in the comment box, not the subject field where it doesn't belong.