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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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 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

[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

[Monoman]

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

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.

[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.

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.

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

[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.

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: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.