19 ms·

Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

561 points by cstuder 11y ago

xutopia 11y ago
So what would you recommend we use instead?
- pc86 11y ago
  Apparently Philips Hue bulbs.
- CrazedGeek 11y ago
  If the important part of the bulbs to you is the remote control (and not the color changing part), any generic ZigBee Light Link or Z-Wave light bulb paired with a home automation hub (like Wink or SmartThings) will work fine.
  - jevinskie 11y ago
    The Wink hub (at least the current generation), is permanently rootable thanks to a flash-ROM uboot glitching trick. I have one but haven't bothered to root it yet. My goal is to use it for ZigBee wardriving. :) DerbyCon presentation by Crypt0s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4PdLQW-8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4PdLQW-8I
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  I would strongly recommend that any home automation device you buy has a direct method that it can be interfaced with and programmed in a local way. If a device is only programmable by a web API, rule it out. You may also wish to consider looking for devices which are based on a switch, rather than a bulb. Controllable bulbs do not play nice with the state of physical light switches, and in the case of multi-bulb fixtures, bulb solutions may be excessively expensive. Meanwhile, a smart switch plays nice with physical users and can control as many bulbs as you want.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Any recommendations for your favorite smart switch? I installed a few INSTEONS in my house and got bit badly when they just stopped communicating. The most frustrating thing is that there's no diagnostic tool, so I can't tell if the switches are broken or if their signals are getting sent but aren't understood by intended recipients. Next time I get deeply into home automation, I'll make sure to use a kit that includes tools for sensing wifi signal and diagnosing bad connections.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      I am using INSTEON myself. The bite there is that they :are: proprietary, though the PLM is openly programmable (I'm writing my own INSTEON controller) and not reliant on a web API of any kind. They can't disable functionality on me. I haven't had a bad experience :yet:, but I'd jump on a good open protocol with the same type of functionality. (RF/powerline dual-band is a huge perk, IMHO, and I prefer the non-use of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.)
  - gregmac 11y ago
    I never understood the desire to control lights without using a wall switch. I say this having had X10 and later Insteon installations in 3 different houses over the past 10 years. Even today, I have the ability to control nearly all the lights on the main floor of my house with an app on my phone. I actually use this feature maybe once or twice a year, being generous. Even if my phone is on me and already unlocked (due to being in my house), I have to pull it out, swipe the screen, launch an app, wait for it to load, then find the lights I want and click to turn on. Or I can press the switch on the wall next to me. Or, even better, a timer/motion sensor has already turned on the light for me and I don't even have to think about it. This is what real home automation is all about.
    - wvenable 11y ago
      I bought some bulbs to create a light alarm -- automatic wake up by slowing increasing the light in the room (and nice soft coloring too). I actually use the wall switch to turn them off an on the rest of the time. I might get some more bulbs (mi.light) if I start finding more uses but for now it seems pretty niche.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  I personally use these: http://www.amazon.com/Mi-Light-Dual-Color-Dimmable-Light/dp/B00P4VFOQ0 http://www.amazon.com/Mi-Light-Dual-Color-Dimmable-Light/dp/... as they have an open api. I'd love to see a real open-source one though
- wvenable 11y ago
  I just bought some Milight compatible bulbs, hub, and remote. It's less advanced and plug-and-play as the Philips system but hacker friendly. I'm currently coding up my own light wake-up alarm system (which is the reason I bought it).
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Normal dumb lamps?
- mikeash 11y ago
  How about a cheap dumb bulb from Home Depot or similar?
- rosser 11y ago
  I recently bought a pile of these: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-most-affordable-wi-fi-smart-bulb/x/167775#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-most-affordable-w... They're much less expensive than Hue, support IFTTT integration, and seem to be much more open in spirit than Philips' offering.
  - odbol 11y ago
    It seems a little disingenuous to recommend a product that hasn't even shipped yet. You have no idea if they work, or if they'll even be built.
- rlpb 11y ago
  I've been looking into this but haven't committed to buying anything yet. Insteon doesn't seem well enough documented for third party controller implementations to me, although there are third party controllers available. Z-Wave (distinctively different from Zigbee) are the main contender for me right now. They seem to have the most interoperability but it is still a closed protocol in that documentation isn't freely available. But access higher up in the stack does seem easier. It looks like I'll be able to act as a controller, rather than being forced to talk to one. I like Insteon's dual signaling and bridging capability (between radio and signaling through the mains) but it has very limited security and it looks tricky for me to put a controller together myself (which as a developer is my test for openness). X10 (supported by Insteon devices) has no security and is quite limited, so I don't want to invest in that now.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    INSTEON documentation is actually somewhat decent. But fragmented. There's some great third party software, there's some great third party hardware. The thing that excited me into building my own INSTEON controller, is that you can directly control a light with about 20 lines of VB .NET code: http://madreporite.com/insteon/plm_basics.html http://madreporite.com/insteon/plm_basics.html Since I've been so unhappy with home automation software I've found, not doing exactly what I want, I've started building my own in VB .NET. The basics, plus what I specifically want it to do. X10 is outright terrible. It was designed before nearly as much signal interference existed on powerline, so now you need tons of phase couplers and filters to get a good signal. INSTEON's mesh network (and dual-band powerline/RF) jumps signal issues far better. INSTEON's newer devices also drop support for X10, FYI.
    - rlpb 11y ago
      > INSTEON documentation is actually somewhat decent. But fragmented. Any help, please? For example, let's say that I want to buy a USB interface (for a controller), a motion sensor, and a light switch (eg. a micro dimmer). I want to plug the USB interface into a modern Linux distribution and speak to it to read motion and the switch and control the light (and configure the switch to operate the light directly without the controller). Where do I find documentation on: * What drivers I'll need for the USB interface to get to something I can talk to from userspace, whether this is Free Software, whether I'll need external drivers or not and where I might get these. * The protocol to speak to the USB interface from userspace. * The protocol to speak to each of the devices over the interface. I've spent hours looking, and I only feel that I have half the answers. For example the dimmer is documented at http://www.insteon.com/developer/#devdocs http://www.insteon.com/developer/#devdocs but the motion sensor is not. And I still have no idea about the USB end.
- kels 11y ago
  I have 12 LIFX bulbs that I really love. No base station needed and it has a local and web API.
  - timothyb89 11y ago
    Same here, I love mine as well. As a plus, the company seems to be pretty open-source friendly, and they've published official APIs and full protocol documentation over the last few months.
- egypturnash 11y ago
  LIFX. $60/bulb, just like the Hues, but they connect via wi-fi so there's no hub needed. Better blues and greens than the Hues, as well. I've tried them and the Hues. I gave the Hues away to my ex. I've got eight LIFX bulbs in my apartment, and would happily buy more if I was in a bigger place that needed more lighting.
- on_and_off 11y ago
  I can only recommend you not to buy LIFX bulbs. I have one and it has been widely unreliable from day one. It does not default to on when you use the light switch, so you always have to use the app to interact with it. Half the time, the app fails to detect it. The rest of the time, it can take random amounts of time for it to respond. It also likes to randomly light up red in the middle of the night or to flicker very rapidly (absolutely unbearable). I have just removed it and replaced with a dumb light.
  - aktive0 11y ago
    I have LIFX bulbs and do not experience this issue at all. In fact, if I've turned the bulb off via software, I can flick the physical switch off, then on and the bulb comes on. Their app is amazing and they are constantly adding new features and have a great api to boot.
  - timothyb89 11y ago
    Bulb detection used to be a big frustration for me as well, but they've 100% resolved my issues with it in the latest firmware update (now a few months old). I'd previously had issues with detection after power-on since WiFi would take ages to connect, but now its down to a pretty impressive 5-6 seconds from cold start and is far more reliable. Random color changes or flickering sounds like a defective bulb, I'm sure they'd replace it for you if you contacted them.
    - on_and_off 11y ago
      maybe they have corrected it in an ulterior hardware/software revision, I have the Kickstarter version and judging from the comments at that time it was at least a widespread issue. I am not really willing to throw more money their way though.
- dnr 11y ago
  Another vote for Z-Wave. As others have said, the lack of being "open" means that stuff actually interoperates. I'm using a Razberry with an older Raspberry Pi as the controller, and Linear brand in-wall dimmers and lamp modules, plus a motorized drapery system from Somfy. The software that comes with the Razberry acts as a basic controller, but I wrote my own web front-end that talks to their controller over local http. It's all very customizable, and has been very reliable. (I don't know if there are Z-Wave colored lights, though, mine just dim.) http://razberry.z-wave.me/ http://razberry.z-wave.me/
  - gergles 11y ago
    Domoticz and OpenZWave are actually way more powerful than Razberry, and I'd highly recommend investigating that so that you don't need to keep updating your own controller. Domoticz also has a pretty good scripting (lua) support built-in, so you can automate stuff in a really simple way.
    - dnr 11y ago
      I'm just using razberry as an api to send z-wave commands and occasionally get status updates. I'm writing all my own logic and scripting and stuff in my web front-end (using coffeescript on node). I'm sure I'm duplicating effort, and of course no one will ever reuse my code, but now that I've wrapped the basics of the razberry api, it's easier for me to just code more logic than to learn someone else's framework. (I'm also integrating a handful of devices I built myself from esp8266's, that communicate over basic http over wifi. I wonder if those could be integrated into one of those frameworks easily?)
endgame 11y ago
Defective by design.
- orionblastar 11y ago
  DRM is defective by design. I first saw the Hue lightbulbs on SyFy with the 12 Monkeys show. It syncs up lighting to your show. I knew I didn't need that and it would be trouble later on. Now I know the devices lock out third party bulbs.
  - josho 11y ago
    Let's start redefining DRM as what it truly is: Digital *Restrictions* Management
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      Defective Restrictions Module ;)
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      No need to redefine anything. DRM works as advertised (lame pun intended) - it manages rights to a product or service. The thing is, the default assumption that "I bought it = I own it" is often no longer the case. Most people just didn't notice. DRM makes it painfully obvious that you don't have the rights you thought you had.
    - endgame 11y ago
      It's about the only renaming that the FSF has ever got to catch on. It's more accurate than the original and doesn't sound like a playground taunt.
rythie 11y ago
Surely with the Pi Zero selling at $5 there has got to be way to do this without Philip's locked in, expensive system?
- JshWright 11y ago
  Even more relevant is the ESP8266 at $2. The Pi Zero doesn't have WiFi, and has _way_ more computing power than you would need to run a few RGB LEDs.
  - dheera 11y ago
    The Pi Zero might be able to do some additional interesting things through with that computing power, including transmitting information over those LEDs at imperceptible modulation frequencies and such. Perhaps it could even be a Ethernet-over-Power to Li-Fi bridge, with some additional circuitry. No Wi-Fi sucks though. And putting Wi-Fi into a Pi Zero requires a micro-USB to USB dongle and then another USB Wi-Fi dongle, thus the Pi Zero as big as a Pi after that cable and dongle mess. If it had on-board Wi-Fi it would be ten times more useful.
    - khedoros 11y ago
      I've seen some cool mods where someone took a USB hub or a wifi dongle out of its case and soldered the pins directly to the USB pins on the Pi itself. That gets around a lot of the mess.
      - dheera 11y ago
        I'd gladly pay another $2-3 extra for someone to do that for me with some automated manufacturing process, and sell me "Pi Zero with Wi-Fi" boards. Soldering mini-USB can be a bear, let alone doing it 10+ times to get a room full of mini-robots or drones or something else to do interesting things. The true value in a cheap computer is really that I can buy a huge number of them at a reasonable price. But a huge number of mini-PCs is terrible if you have to mod each board. If I only needed one, I'd be okay paying $100 for it. Even better if it's a "Pi Zero with USB Hub and Wi-Fi" for, say, $15, so that I can actually add something else useful besides Wi-Fi, such as a camera or sensor or something else. Sure, there are GPIO pins, but there are a lot of super-useful things out there that come in USB. I use an Arduino Yun for a lot of basic tasks such as having a sensor report values over Wi-Fi, or putting a couple servos on Wi-Fi with as little work as possible, but the price is steep at $60+ and not much computing power.
Someone1234 11y ago
I always wondered about smart bulbs... How much, per year, do they cost to run idle? Since they appear to use wireless to operate, so there must be at least the draw for that.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  the hue bulbs use zigbee, so way less than, say, wifi, but it looks like about .4W/bulb/day 2.8W for the starter kit (base has to be on as well) http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-philips-hue-bulbs-review/ http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-ph...
  - paulannesley 11y ago
    Watts already express energy over time, so the /day is redundant. The article you linked to gives a good comparison: > [three bulbs + bridge] is the equivalent of leaving a 60W bulb on for a little over an hour and seven minutes per day
    - jfoutz 11y ago
      Yeah, but it's billed in kilowatt hours, because you buy power. Power is energy supplied over a time. But, you're right, i should have used better units, and the x/y/z is right but confusing. your quote from the article is the right way to explain it.
djhworld 11y ago
Why have they done this? Is it because the 3rd party bulbs were cheaper?
- fixermark 11y ago
  I'd refrain from making assumptions until more is known. Another hypothetical possibility is that there is some corner case of the open standard that nobody realized was ambiguous until Philips changed an implementation detail that broke (non-compliant) third-party devices, and they're now stuck in the rock / hard-place situation of deciding whether to roll back their change and remove whatever functionality or fix just got added or to apply pressure to third parties to be more compliant with the standard. (That's the charitable interpretation that assumes their software quality process is solid enough that they can even know such nuances and subtleties as "What change did we make that broke third-party devices that aren't physically in our testing bullpen?")
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    Thanks for the charitable interpretation. It certainly is possible, IIRC the first Hue bridge was on the cutting edge of ZigBee and it is possible to imagine that it didn't quite get the standard exactly correct. Whatever the reason, this is an interesting hiccup in the Internet of Things.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Official Reason: "The lamp that cannot be added may be a lamp from another brand. Philips does not test and cannot guarantee the behavior of all bulbs from other brands connected to the Philips Hue system. To guarantee the quality of consumer experience only Philips Hue and Friends of Hue lamps can be added using the the Philips Hue [Hub]." [1] Real Reason: We invested money into our hub and building out our partnerships w/ Zigbee and "Friends of Hue" partners. We need to make up that money on hardware ($60 per bulb [2]) that 3rd parties could manufacture and sell for a fraction of the price. Why would we let 3rd party hardware companies leech off our investment? [1] https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-hue-3rd-party/mirror.png https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-hue-3r... [2] https://www.store.meethue.com/us https://www.store.meethue.com/us
kefka 11y ago
I've ranted about this and the IoT and how we've came to it. IoT is awesome, and super, as long as you don't buy products that require to beg for your data from some website API. What makes more sense? Local device ->Internet ->Someone else's server(cloud) ->API ->Your cell/computer -or- Local Device ->Local controller I extensively use Node-Red and Apache NiFi both. Node-Red is built on Node.js and is a graphical flowchart programming in the browser. It makes chaining together complex interactions easy and also makes many things no-code at all. I use Node-Red for my home automation. It's open source, it works, and just makes sense. Now, what should you use for the light bulbs? Unfortunately not Phillips Hue. This however opens up the market for others to come in and snipe business away. And that's a good thing. And whatever takes away the power of "other peoples' servers" cloud-crap, the better. It's just used as a way to control and extract more money.
- femto113 11y ago
  Hue's hub works both ways, locally Smartphone -> Hub over WiFi (via a shared LAN connection, the Hub isn't it's own WAP), or remotely Smartphone -> Hue.com -> Hub over the internet. The remote mode has profoundly more lag, but also means you can turn on your lights from anywhere. The connection from Hub to the bulbs is always Zigbee. Unless/until Zigbee is built into smartphones this seems like a nearly ideal set up.
  - kefka 11y ago
    Zigbee isn't hard to implement within a Node-Red network. You can use an Arduino-Zigbee bridge to talk on that network, and then control the lights however you wish. In that case, it opens up using all the lights you choose from the cheaper_than_phillips category. I also use Node-red on a Raspberry Pi. It's slim and as small as a base station. I also have Bluetooth, wifi, and nRF24L01+ boards on it, talking all those protocols. No reason for Zigbee, but it would be doable for $15 (I assume the price). I've found the "from anywhere", at least for Node-Red is to use a static IP. If you dont have that, a dynamic one will work. If that doesn't work, a ToR hidden service works well. My control over my hardware is always advantageous over control by a 3rd party entity.
llamataboot 11y ago
Damn. I just bought my first Hues a week ago - a little spendy but worth every penny to have a super easy install into my living room lamps and be able to be controlling my lights from a ruby script in 5 minutes. Hopefully, someone will release a crack sometime soon.
- tomlongson 11y ago
  Consider returning it and writing a bad review if you bought it from a platform like Amazon. Maybe they aren't doing anything illegal, but you can still rate them if the product is different from what you expected.
jcromartie 11y ago
Are there grounds for a lawsuit when a manufacturer pushes out an update to a product that intentionally degrades its feature set like this? This is no longer the same product that these users bought, it's effectively damaged by the update.
- bitwize 11y ago
  No, technically the third-party manufacturers were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal offense with penalties up to five years in prison. From Philips' perspective, refusing to cooperate with those criminally infringing their IP is a feature, not a bug.
  - chc 11y ago
    That's an interesting accusation. What part of the DMCA were they violating?
  - jhall1468 11y ago
    I call BS. This is using the Zigbee standard which Phillips doesn't own. They added a proprietary layer after the fact, which blocked non-Phillips products. Unless you care to share evidence of a DMCA violation, this sounds like you are just making this up as you go.
  - detaro 11y ago
    Given that the protocol is a standard by the Zigbee Alliance (Light Link), I doubt that implementing it causes a DMCA violation. Unless you are claiming all companies making compliant products stole Philips code to do so?
  - bjt 11y ago
    This is wrong on a couple levels. 1. The protocol is open. It's not Philips' IP. 2. Even if the protocol were closed, and Philips put some DRM on it to lock out 3rd parties from reverse engineering the protocol to make compatible bulbs, the third parties still wouldn't be in violation of the DMCA, even if they had to include small copy/pasted bits of the Philips code that are necessary for interoperability. This was the holding in the Lexmark case back in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v._Static_Control_Components,_Inc.#The_appellate_ruling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v....
gregmac 11y ago
This is the Philips controller software (app) that is refusing to talk to or control 3rd party light bulbs. I don't really see this as being a problem. It's not the nicest thing, perhaps, but neither is 3rd party companies building bulbs (presumably by ripping off the design and protocol of Philip's bulbs), and then relying on Philips to build the software so they can actually be used. In other words, Philips is refusing to build software, for free, to control their competitors' and/or counterfeit products. Do the Philips bulbs (still?) work without the Philips Hue software/app? If so, non-issue: you just have to use 3rd party software to control everything. If not, well, that's why you shouldn't buy into closed, walled-garden products.
- wvenable 11y ago
  The slippery slope of "intellectual property" is so steep that even building interface-compatible products is now considered ripping something off. We've come a long way from the age of IBM compatibles and the PC revolution.
  - et2o 11y ago
    Except that at the time IBM tried to prevent people from making compatible PCs.
    - izacus 11y ago
      And we hugely benefited from their spectacular failure.
  - chkuendig 11y ago
    On the other hand you could argue that while the pc revolution fueled on DOS licensing and IBM compatible BIOS was a a massive leap for the economy overall, it wasnt the best move for IBM in either the short nor the long term. Now they do the no-scales business of services and consulting...
    - enjo 11y ago
Roritharr 11y ago
What a horrible bait and switch. Sadly I'm too lazy to go through the hassle of asking for my money back. :(
- tomlongson 11y ago
  Consider writing a review if you bought it from a site like Amazon.
mdip 11y ago
I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products since they're already invested in the existing system". The first argument is out the door because now they'll just get a lot of support questions around many more products that don't work. The second might happen for existing customers, but I'm now going to avoid this product as a future customer because compatibility is a feature, and for me, and I'd think anyone who is looking to purchase a tool that manages lighting/small electrics around the home, compatibility is easily the #1 or #2 feature. If there were a choice between a lightswitch that worked with a wide array of lightbulbs, and one that worked with only one company's bulbs, guess which one I'm buying?
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Having been involved in a couple of these discussions, I'd say it is more like "Shouldn't we control this? Are other people doing stuff with our products that we don't control? That's bad isn't it? Let's stop them." I.e. it's more about paranoid control than actual reasons.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    I have heard similar discussions, mostly around support. Which is to say when a third party bulb doesn't work, who gets the support call? When you compute the cost and margin of a consumer device you have to include the cost of support as a burden on overall profit margin. If support costs eliminate profit margin then you start losing money and that sucks. What is worse, if you raise your prices to cover the support cost, the 3rd party bulbs look that much better and that just increases your cost. Sort of a catch 22
  - bborud 11y ago
    Actually, earlier today I wrote some MCU code to control my HUE lights, and I figured "hey, why not build a controller to make my christmas lights controlled by the HUE hub". Guess this news answers that. Seen together with the Phillips Hue bulbs I have being noisy as hell, hue just became a lot less interesting. I hope there will be an open source system and manufacturers whose bulbs can easily be integrated. Hopefully some that don't make a lot of noise.
throwaway420 11y ago
I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other options. Good timing on your part hue. Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and others?
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  Me too. Hue gear is absurdly expensive, but I was sold right up until this. To make matters worse, it looks like the apps I wanted to use the bulbs with (sleep as android, f.lux) only work with the Phillips hub. I hope the developers of those apps use this as an opportunity to learn about the dangers of vendor lock-in. This is just the FTDI debacle all over again.
  - odbol 11y ago
    If only there was other bridge hardware that could communicate in a more open manner. Unfortunately, Hue is one of the only companies that even OFFERS an SDK—most other systems are completely closed down.
    - bufferout 11y ago
      https://github.com/LIFX https://github.com/LIFX
      - digitalsushi 11y ago
        I didn't research smart bulbs at all before walking into best buy and purchasing a pair of LIFX 1000 color bulbs using the light intensity as the only metric between brand selection. Getting home, I realized that LIFX doesn't really plug and play with the other technologies. Their cloud service is not very reliable, and so it was a very bad experience upon arrival. Then I discovered the lightsd package, which is a service daemon that runs on anything with python. It exposes a json api on the network that any client can easily send programming commands to your lights. You can tag each bulb, so you can target any subset you can come up with. I made my own ruby client in a single night, and I barely code. Lightsd turned the LIFX bulbs from an obvious store return into something I am willing to keep. Barely.
someotheracct7 11y ago
This is odd, but not catastrophic. If I understand right, Zigbee is open, so what's to stop the bulbs working with a third-party controller hub? Say, a Raspberry Pi with a Zigbee interface? Wonder if this is still relevant? http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-hue-to-join-my-coordinator-and-related-zigbee-questions http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-hue-t... That thread suggests it's possible to have Hue bulbs join third-party ZigBee networks.
- steven2012 11y ago
  It's the other way around. People want to use their non-Hue lights with the Hue bridge, which is no longer possible. Now it means having to buy another bridge that supports both.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  Yes, you can do this. And for the most part you can control your lights from your own software. I was looking at the protocol using a HackRF One to see how easy or hard it would be to build a replacement hub controller. I don't know if there are any patent issues however, that would be something that you couldn't really code around.
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    It's an open standard, which Philips hypocritically helped write, so there shouldn't be any patent issues other than the normal ones. You can even get it online from http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-developers/applicationstandards/zigbee-light-link/ http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-developers/applicationstand... . It's clickwrapped, but rather extant.
    - ChuckMcM 11y ago
      The same Phillips that sent out C&D letters to people who wrote software i2c implementations [1]. Their reputation precedes them. [1[ http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+COPYRIGHTS%3F%3F%3F&w=body&author=Tim+Hamel&tgt=top http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+...
bottled_poe 11y ago
I'm not convinced this was a hostile decision by Philips. It would be reasonable for the company to want to advance their own technology which would often entail a changing interface. If the third-party products are implementing an older interface, how is that the fault of Philips? The moral thing to do would be to standardise and publicise the interface...perhaps this is the situation already...?
kevindeasis 11y ago
Keurig is that you?
mmaunder 11y ago
They're going for vendor lock-in. Someone peered over Apple's garden wall and liked what they saw.
dperfect 11y ago
This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best interest (and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse). Perhaps the problem is more related to the ZigBee standard, or more specifically, what ZigBee doesn't cover. As I understand it, the fact that Hue products conform to the ZigBee standard only applies to the protocol between the hub and lights; it says nothing about communication between control interfaces and the hub. With that in mind, I feel that anyone who expected to use the Hue hub for controlling anything other than Hue lights had incorrect expectations. I certainly don't remember seeing Philips advertising any kind of third-party interoperability with the product. Of course, it would be awesome for consumers if Philips did make that guarantee of interoperability, but from a business standpoint, once you start going down that road, you effectively have to support everyone else's products (whether or not they conform to the spec), and any failing of another product then reflects poorly on Philips' brand - even if they aren't the ones at fault. So maybe if we put more pressure on these companies to adopt a common home automation control standard (not Apple's, not Google's, but something vendor-neutral), then we might start to see home automation interoperability in a consumer-friendly way.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  > and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse The idea used to be that companies served the consumer interest, and then billed some money in exchange. When was it that companies become some self sustaining beings, with their own interest to be served? (Yeah, surely when they discovered they could take their clients as hostage. The question was rhetorical.)
  - dperfect 11y ago
    That was true at least as far back as the 1790's when James Wilson described a corporation as "a person in a political capacity created by the law, to endure in perpetual succession." To "endure in perpetual succession," companies by definition must operate under a fundamental premise of self-interest.
mschuster91 11y ago
Having had the pleasure of developing ZigBee stuff (NDA, so cannot name specifics), I can understand Philips' position of blocking 3rd party stuff. Zigbee is nasty enough to develop for even if you HAVE all the relevant docs and everything, without adding stuff developed by others into the mix. The only thing why this crap ended upon users is because it's less power hungry than WiFi will be and has a bigger range than Bluetooth.
reiichiroh 11y ago
I didn't even know there were 3rd party lights compatible with the Hue ecosystem. Can someone point me to some brands and models?
Animats 11y ago
Can you dump Hue and use Wink? Wink can supposedly control both GE and Phillips bulbs.[1] GE uses Wink as their main control system, and GE is big enough to argue with Phillips. [1] http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-starter-kit/#faq http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-start...
- sitharus 11y ago
  From a casual look it seems that Wink just controls your existing Hue bridge, which exposes a REST API to do all the control actions. I don't use the Hue app myself, I call the API from my automation system. Works well.
dmritard96 11y ago
We are building some related home control products and have forgone radio level integrations instead favoring integrating with anyone over http, providing an open api, and shortly after launch an sdk. Radio integrations in theory are fine but in practice it's a matter of picking sides, allowing third party devices to dictate your access to the Internet and interop, for a few features, offline (local http should be an option with any hub, nest etc but isnt) and lower latency operation as probably the biggest features. Not controlling your own products' access to the Internet is a scary proposition not to mention range/interference issues with 2.4ghz if you don't have aa critical mass. Building IoTs right now is as much an alignment excercise as a technical one and while it's a bummer that they have chosen to remove/prevent compatibility, consumers aren't really choosing subscription models for devices and cloud backed services hence the economics of customer acquisition, support, margins etc aren't realities that can be wished away.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  This is a device using an open standard though. Philips could conceivably do the same thing over http by checking MAC addresses.
ultimoo 11y ago
I have been consistently disappointed by Philips Hue ever since I purchased the $200 starter kit a year and a half ago. Numerous iOS app updates have rendered the system useless (lack of basic QA), slow to adopt HomeKit and price gouging for it (they want users to buy an entirely new Hub for $60).
- 05 11y ago
  Only because Apple requires HomeKit accessories to be MFi-certified, which requires a DRM chip. Can't add a chip via firmware update..
cubano 11y ago
Creating a new compatible hub now sounds like an ideal Kickstarter project, no? Also, I can't help but wonder if UL issues may have influenced the decision too...just look at the current hoverboard fire issues with cheap Chinese manufacturing and I can at least speculate that they might be.
- odbol 11y ago
  Or just wait for Google to release Weave and Brillo. Those are both open platforms for communicating with IoT devices. Which is the exact opposite strategy as Apple's, who is SO CLOSED DOWN you actually need to buy a physical chip from Apple and incorporate it into your hardware for your hardware to be controlled by Siri.
bradyd 11y ago
Philips statement about the block: http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-...
spdustin 11y ago
I have three neighbors, all of whom are non-technical, that use Hue lights in their home. I asked them if they used any other "smart bulbs" with their Hue bridge. The universal reply, averaged out to a representative quote: "I didn't even think that was a thing, I only use Hue bulbs with the Hue bridge."
SEJeff 11y ago
In slightly related news, the open source project, Home Assistant, that this blog post references, is an excellent open source "hub" for controlling the smart things.
underbluewaters 11y ago
I've been a hue user for the past year. 1) Their lights/bridge are by far the most reliable IoT product I've used. A 9/10 where other products (Wink, GE, Lutron) are at best 3/10. 2) While 3rd party bulbs were sort of supported, it wasn't advertised. I've never seen it described as a interoperable Zigbee Light Link device. 3) My attempts at getting a GE bulb working were inconsistent, and even when it did work the brightness range and responsiveness were worse than the hue bulbs. I had constant disconnections where I had to re-add the bulb as well. I imagine many people blamed philips when in fact the problem was with the cheap 15.00 bulb. This is probably the reason for discontinuing unofficial support. I don't like the fact that there's not a thriving range of interoperable, cheap, and high quality zigbee light link devices out there. I'm happy the Philips is focused on delivering a product that actually works, however. All of my other home automation purchases have ended with many wasted hours and eventual returns.
- funkyy 11y ago
  If people blamed Phillips for this, then there is quite easy solution. Allow people to activate the 3rd party access, but do it Android way. Hide the option from plain sight, force users to read quick warning message about 3rd party bulbs can affect or damage system. This way only people that did their homework will be able to reactivate it.
  - zorpner 11y ago
    As relevant today as when it was written: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=43043 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=... People will blindly follow a tutorial online that tells them how to activate this option, and continue to contact Philips for support. I've worked on products that have these unsupported/advanced modes, and customer queries on them are constant and time-consuming, even to simply dismiss (and, of course, those customers then go on to leave bad reviews, et cetera).
    - hcf 11y ago
      The Chromebook method (to disable write protect) requires you to open the device and remove a specific screw, it's beyond just blindly following instructions.
daveguy 11y ago
Here is the amazon product page for the hue starter pack with the reviews listed -- most recent first. Even if you haven't purchased this yet you can let everyone know these new reviews rolling in about the product are helpful: http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1 http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_...
KerrickStaley 11y ago
What are good Hue alternatives I should check out?
PinguTS 11y ago
When I read this statement[1] from Philips, that third party that is assigned will continue to work and only commissioning is blocked, then the reason for that seems to be as simple as the Master Key for commissioning got released[2]. So, Philips just started to issue a new Master key that now has to be implemented in all those third party devices. But Philips will issue that Master key probably only under very strict NDA with selling your first child and such things. [1] http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753
josteink 11y ago
Worth quoting in this context is Doctorow's law: "Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_other_writings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_o...
746F7475 11y ago
Am I only one who doesn't see a problem here? Sure it would be nice if company X allowed me to use cheaper Chinese knock-offs with their product, but to me, they are well within their rights to decide: "hey, we don't want competitors to benefit from our product(s)" In essense Phillips put money into R&D and marketing and if you are to believe the linked article into making smart lightbulbs mainstream. That shit is not cheap so why would they give money for their competitors? This move forces others to build their own base system and what not, which is fair. I am sure you can find open{source|hardware} alternative if you don't wish to support Phillips anymore.
- justin_vanw 11y ago
  You might be the only one. What if you bought a car, and after you bought it, the manufacturer of the car announced that they have remotely flashed the car's computer and now you can only drive to work, and if you want to drive anywhere else you have to buy 'tickets' for $5 per trip, or the car will refuse to run. The point is that when you buy a thing, it is yours. When you own a thing, you are within your rights to do whatever you want with it, so long is it is legal. If makers of things can retroactively impose restrictions on the thing's use, then you have no rights whatsoever and anything that you own is yours to use only so long as whoever manufactured it feels like your use is maximizing it's profits.
  - 746F7475 11y ago
    Your car metaphor is completely off. It's not like Philips updated your lights to only light up in specific location. But cars are a good example, say your automatic shifter breaks. There are no real third party options, you've pretty much got to buy a new one from the manufacturer or by used one. You can still do all normal car things with it you just can't use third party pieces. Same with the lights, they still work, they shine light and do everything that they did before now you JUST can't use third party bulbs with the system. If you want to go with other shitty analogies say you made a game, something like an MMO that has monthly fees. You sank a lot of money developing the game, the box price isn't high because you know you'll make your money from the monthly fees. You also use money from the monthly fees to improve the game, fix bugs, add content. Now your subscription model is a little strange, it works by players entering a code on your website. They buy it from your online store, get it in their email and use it to get play time. Now let's imagine that your security isn't absolute and some third party figures out how your keycode generator works and they start selling codes for half the price. Now your paying subscriber count is shrinking. What do you do? Do you A) fix the problem which results into many users losing money since they already bought several months worth of play time from this company? or B) leave the system as it is because openness or something like that?
squar1sm 11y ago
I've been using neopixels to great success in combination with particle.io chips. They have cloud events and you can send whatever data to them. I'm sending a payload like `{ "color":"blue" }` and then all listening LEDs change. Plus they are individually addressable and are reusable for other projects. It's not the same level of brightness I'm guessing. Adafruit has a 24 neopixel ring with a particle slot. It's like $45 for everything for one. No hub.

561 points by cstuder 11y ago

xutopia 11y ago

So what would you recommend we use instead?

pc86 11y ago
Apparently Philips Hue bulbs.
CrazedGeek 11y ago
If the important part of the bulbs to you is the remote control (and not the color changing part), any generic ZigBee Light Link or Z-Wave light bulb paired with a home automation hub (like Wink or SmartThings) will work fine.
- jevinskie 11y ago
  The Wink hub (at least the current generation), is permanently rootable thanks to a flash-ROM uboot glitching trick. I have one but haven't bothered to root it yet. My goal is to use it for ZigBee wardriving. :) DerbyCon presentation by Crypt0s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4PdLQW-8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4PdLQW-8I
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I would strongly recommend that any home automation device you buy has a direct method that it can be interfaced with and programmed in a local way. If a device is only programmable by a web API, rule it out. You may also wish to consider looking for devices which are based on a switch, rather than a bulb. Controllable bulbs do not play nice with the state of physical light switches, and in the case of multi-bulb fixtures, bulb solutions may be excessively expensive. Meanwhile, a smart switch plays nice with physical users and can control as many bulbs as you want.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Any recommendations for your favorite smart switch? I installed a few INSTEONS in my house and got bit badly when they just stopped communicating. The most frustrating thing is that there's no diagnostic tool, so I can't tell if the switches are broken or if their signals are getting sent but aren't understood by intended recipients. Next time I get deeply into home automation, I'll make sure to use a kit that includes tools for sensing wifi signal and diagnosing bad connections.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    I am using INSTEON myself. The bite there is that they :are: proprietary, though the PLM is openly programmable (I'm writing my own INSTEON controller) and not reliant on a web API of any kind. They can't disable functionality on me. I haven't had a bad experience :yet:, but I'd jump on a good open protocol with the same type of functionality. (RF/powerline dual-band is a huge perk, IMHO, and I prefer the non-use of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.)
- gregmac 11y ago
  I never understood the desire to control lights without using a wall switch. I say this having had X10 and later Insteon installations in 3 different houses over the past 10 years. Even today, I have the ability to control nearly all the lights on the main floor of my house with an app on my phone. I actually use this feature maybe once or twice a year, being generous. Even if my phone is on me and already unlocked (due to being in my house), I have to pull it out, swipe the screen, launch an app, wait for it to load, then find the lights I want and click to turn on. Or I can press the switch on the wall next to me. Or, even better, a timer/motion sensor has already turned on the light for me and I don't even have to think about it. This is what real home automation is all about.
  - wvenable 11y ago
    I bought some bulbs to create a light alarm -- automatic wake up by slowing increasing the light in the room (and nice soft coloring too). I actually use the wall switch to turn them off an on the rest of the time. I might get some more bulbs (mi.light) if I start finding more uses but for now it seems pretty niche.
CaptSpify 11y ago
I personally use these: http://www.amazon.com/Mi-Light-Dual-Color-Dimmable-Light/dp/B00P4VFOQ0 http://www.amazon.com/Mi-Light-Dual-Color-Dimmable-Light/dp/... as they have an open api. I'd love to see a real open-source one though
wvenable 11y ago
I just bought some Milight compatible bulbs, hub, and remote. It's less advanced and plug-and-play as the Philips system but hacker friendly. I'm currently coding up my own light wake-up alarm system (which is the reason I bought it).
pjmlp 11y ago
Normal dumb lamps?
mikeash 11y ago
How about a cheap dumb bulb from Home Depot or similar?
rosser 11y ago
I recently bought a pile of these: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-most-affordable-wi-fi-smart-bulb/x/167775#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-most-affordable-w... They're much less expensive than Hue, support IFTTT integration, and seem to be much more open in spirit than Philips' offering.
- odbol 11y ago
  It seems a little disingenuous to recommend a product that hasn't even shipped yet. You have no idea if they work, or if they'll even be built.
rlpb 11y ago
I've been looking into this but haven't committed to buying anything yet. Insteon doesn't seem well enough documented for third party controller implementations to me, although there are third party controllers available. Z-Wave (distinctively different from Zigbee) are the main contender for me right now. They seem to have the most interoperability but it is still a closed protocol in that documentation isn't freely available. But access higher up in the stack does seem easier. It looks like I'll be able to act as a controller, rather than being forced to talk to one. I like Insteon's dual signaling and bridging capability (between radio and signaling through the mains) but it has very limited security and it looks tricky for me to put a controller together myself (which as a developer is my test for openness). X10 (supported by Insteon devices) has no security and is quite limited, so I don't want to invest in that now.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  INSTEON documentation is actually somewhat decent. But fragmented. There's some great third party software, there's some great third party hardware. The thing that excited me into building my own INSTEON controller, is that you can directly control a light with about 20 lines of VB .NET code: http://madreporite.com/insteon/plm_basics.html http://madreporite.com/insteon/plm_basics.html Since I've been so unhappy with home automation software I've found, not doing exactly what I want, I've started building my own in VB .NET. The basics, plus what I specifically want it to do. X10 is outright terrible. It was designed before nearly as much signal interference existed on powerline, so now you need tons of phase couplers and filters to get a good signal. INSTEON's mesh network (and dual-band powerline/RF) jumps signal issues far better. INSTEON's newer devices also drop support for X10, FYI.
  - rlpb 11y ago
    > INSTEON documentation is actually somewhat decent. But fragmented. Any help, please? For example, let's say that I want to buy a USB interface (for a controller), a motion sensor, and a light switch (eg. a micro dimmer). I want to plug the USB interface into a modern Linux distribution and speak to it to read motion and the switch and control the light (and configure the switch to operate the light directly without the controller). Where do I find documentation on: * What drivers I'll need for the USB interface to get to something I can talk to from userspace, whether this is Free Software, whether I'll need external drivers or not and where I might get these. * The protocol to speak to the USB interface from userspace. * The protocol to speak to each of the devices over the interface. I've spent hours looking, and I only feel that I have half the answers. For example the dimmer is documented at http://www.insteon.com/developer/#devdocs http://www.insteon.com/developer/#devdocs but the motion sensor is not. And I still have no idea about the USB end.
kels 11y ago
I have 12 LIFX bulbs that I really love. No base station needed and it has a local and web API.
- timothyb89 11y ago
  Same here, I love mine as well. As a plus, the company seems to be pretty open-source friendly, and they've published official APIs and full protocol documentation over the last few months.
egypturnash 11y ago
LIFX. $60/bulb, just like the Hues, but they connect via wi-fi so there's no hub needed. Better blues and greens than the Hues, as well. I've tried them and the Hues. I gave the Hues away to my ex. I've got eight LIFX bulbs in my apartment, and would happily buy more if I was in a bigger place that needed more lighting.
on_and_off 11y ago
I can only recommend you not to buy LIFX bulbs. I have one and it has been widely unreliable from day one. It does not default to on when you use the light switch, so you always have to use the app to interact with it. Half the time, the app fails to detect it. The rest of the time, it can take random amounts of time for it to respond. It also likes to randomly light up red in the middle of the night or to flicker very rapidly (absolutely unbearable). I have just removed it and replaced with a dumb light.
- aktive0 11y ago
  I have LIFX bulbs and do not experience this issue at all. In fact, if I've turned the bulb off via software, I can flick the physical switch off, then on and the bulb comes on. Their app is amazing and they are constantly adding new features and have a great api to boot.
- timothyb89 11y ago
  Bulb detection used to be a big frustration for me as well, but they've 100% resolved my issues with it in the latest firmware update (now a few months old). I'd previously had issues with detection after power-on since WiFi would take ages to connect, but now its down to a pretty impressive 5-6 seconds from cold start and is far more reliable. Random color changes or flickering sounds like a defective bulb, I'm sure they'd replace it for you if you contacted them.
  - on_and_off 11y ago
    maybe they have corrected it in an ulterior hardware/software revision, I have the Kickstarter version and judging from the comments at that time it was at least a widespread issue. I am not really willing to throw more money their way though.
dnr 11y ago
Another vote for Z-Wave. As others have said, the lack of being "open" means that stuff actually interoperates. I'm using a Razberry with an older Raspberry Pi as the controller, and Linear brand in-wall dimmers and lamp modules, plus a motorized drapery system from Somfy. The software that comes with the Razberry acts as a basic controller, but I wrote my own web front-end that talks to their controller over local http. It's all very customizable, and has been very reliable. (I don't know if there are Z-Wave colored lights, though, mine just dim.) http://razberry.z-wave.me/ http://razberry.z-wave.me/
- gergles 11y ago
  Domoticz and OpenZWave are actually way more powerful than Razberry, and I'd highly recommend investigating that so that you don't need to keep updating your own controller. Domoticz also has a pretty good scripting (lua) support built-in, so you can automate stuff in a really simple way.
  - dnr 11y ago
    I'm just using razberry as an api to send z-wave commands and occasionally get status updates. I'm writing all my own logic and scripting and stuff in my web front-end (using coffeescript on node). I'm sure I'm duplicating effort, and of course no one will ever reuse my code, but now that I've wrapped the basics of the razberry api, it's easier for me to just code more logic than to learn someone else's framework. (I'm also integrating a handful of devices I built myself from esp8266's, that communicate over basic http over wifi. I wonder if those could be integrated into one of those frameworks easily?)

endgame 11y ago

Defective by design.

orionblastar 11y ago
DRM is defective by design. I first saw the Hue lightbulbs on SyFy with the 12 Monkeys show. It syncs up lighting to your show. I knew I didn't need that and it would be trouble later on. Now I know the devices lock out third party bulbs.
- josho 11y ago
  Let's start redefining DRM as what it truly is: Digital *Restrictions* Management
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    Defective Restrictions Module ;)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    No need to redefine anything. DRM works as advertised (lame pun intended) - it manages rights to a product or service. The thing is, the default assumption that "I bought it = I own it" is often no longer the case. Most people just didn't notice. DRM makes it painfully obvious that you don't have the rights you thought you had.
  - endgame 11y ago
    It's about the only renaming that the FSF has ever got to catch on. It's more accurate than the original and doesn't sound like a playground taunt.

rythie 11y ago

Surely with the Pi Zero selling at $5 there has got to be way to do this without Philip's locked in, expensive system?

JshWright 11y ago
Even more relevant is the ESP8266 at $2. The Pi Zero doesn't have WiFi, and has _way_ more computing power than you would need to run a few RGB LEDs.
- dheera 11y ago
  The Pi Zero might be able to do some additional interesting things through with that computing power, including transmitting information over those LEDs at imperceptible modulation frequencies and such. Perhaps it could even be a Ethernet-over-Power to Li-Fi bridge, with some additional circuitry. No Wi-Fi sucks though. And putting Wi-Fi into a Pi Zero requires a micro-USB to USB dongle and then another USB Wi-Fi dongle, thus the Pi Zero as big as a Pi after that cable and dongle mess. If it had on-board Wi-Fi it would be ten times more useful.
  - khedoros 11y ago
    I've seen some cool mods where someone took a USB hub or a wifi dongle out of its case and soldered the pins directly to the USB pins on the Pi itself. That gets around a lot of the mess.
    - dheera 11y ago
      I'd gladly pay another $2-3 extra for someone to do that for me with some automated manufacturing process, and sell me "Pi Zero with Wi-Fi" boards. Soldering mini-USB can be a bear, let alone doing it 10+ times to get a room full of mini-robots or drones or something else to do interesting things. The true value in a cheap computer is really that I can buy a huge number of them at a reasonable price. But a huge number of mini-PCs is terrible if you have to mod each board. If I only needed one, I'd be okay paying $100 for it. Even better if it's a "Pi Zero with USB Hub and Wi-Fi" for, say, $15, so that I can actually add something else useful besides Wi-Fi, such as a camera or sensor or something else. Sure, there are GPIO pins, but there are a lot of super-useful things out there that come in USB. I use an Arduino Yun for a lot of basic tasks such as having a sensor report values over Wi-Fi, or putting a couple servos on Wi-Fi with as little work as possible, but the price is steep at $60+ and not much computing power.

Someone1234 11y ago

I always wondered about smart bulbs... How much, per year, do they cost to run idle? Since they appear to use wireless to operate, so there must be at least the draw for that.

jfoutz 11y ago
the hue bulbs use zigbee, so way less than, say, wifi, but it looks like about .4W/bulb/day 2.8W for the starter kit (base has to be on as well) http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-philips-hue-bulbs-review/ http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-ph...
- paulannesley 11y ago
  Watts already express energy over time, so the /day is redundant. The article you linked to gives a good comparison: > [three bulbs + bridge] is the equivalent of leaving a 60W bulb on for a little over an hour and seven minutes per day
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    Yeah, but it's billed in kilowatt hours, because you buy power. Power is energy supplied over a time. But, you're right, i should have used better units, and the x/y/z is right but confusing. your quote from the article is the right way to explain it.

djhworld 11y ago

Why have they done this? Is it because the 3rd party bulbs were cheaper?

fixermark 11y ago
I'd refrain from making assumptions until more is known. Another hypothetical possibility is that there is some corner case of the open standard that nobody realized was ambiguous until Philips changed an implementation detail that broke (non-compliant) third-party devices, and they're now stuck in the rock / hard-place situation of deciding whether to roll back their change and remove whatever functionality or fix just got added or to apply pressure to third parties to be more compliant with the standard. (That's the charitable interpretation that assumes their software quality process is solid enough that they can even know such nuances and subtleties as "What change did we make that broke third-party devices that aren't physically in our testing bullpen?")
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  Thanks for the charitable interpretation. It certainly is possible, IIRC the first Hue bridge was on the cutting edge of ZigBee and it is possible to imagine that it didn't quite get the standard exactly correct. Whatever the reason, this is an interesting hiccup in the Internet of Things.
roymurdock 11y ago
Official Reason: "The lamp that cannot be added may be a lamp from another brand. Philips does not test and cannot guarantee the behavior of all bulbs from other brands connected to the Philips Hue system. To guarantee the quality of consumer experience only Philips Hue and Friends of Hue lamps can be added using the the Philips Hue [Hub]." [1] Real Reason: We invested money into our hub and building out our partnerships w/ Zigbee and "Friends of Hue" partners. We need to make up that money on hardware ($60 per bulb [2]) that 3rd parties could manufacture and sell for a fraction of the price. Why would we let 3rd party hardware companies leech off our investment? [1] https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-hue-3rd-party/mirror.png https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-hue-3r... [2] https://www.store.meethue.com/us https://www.store.meethue.com/us

kefka 11y ago

I've ranted about this and the IoT and how we've came to it. IoT is awesome, and super, as long as you don't buy products that require to beg for your data from some website API. What makes more sense? Local device ->Internet ->Someone else's server(cloud) ->API ->Your cell/computer -or- Local Device ->Local controller I extensively use Node-Red and Apache NiFi both. Node-Red is built on Node.js and is a graphical flowchart programming in the browser. It makes chaining together complex interactions easy and also makes many things no-code at all. I use Node-Red for my home automation. It's open source, it works, and just makes sense. Now, what should you use for the light bulbs? Unfortunately not Phillips Hue. This however opens up the market for others to come in and snipe business away. And that's a good thing. And whatever takes away the power of "other peoples' servers" cloud-crap, the better. It's just used as a way to control and extract more money.

femto113 11y ago
Hue's hub works both ways, locally Smartphone -> Hub over WiFi (via a shared LAN connection, the Hub isn't it's own WAP), or remotely Smartphone -> Hue.com -> Hub over the internet. The remote mode has profoundly more lag, but also means you can turn on your lights from anywhere. The connection from Hub to the bulbs is always Zigbee. Unless/until Zigbee is built into smartphones this seems like a nearly ideal set up.
- kefka 11y ago
  Zigbee isn't hard to implement within a Node-Red network. You can use an Arduino-Zigbee bridge to talk on that network, and then control the lights however you wish. In that case, it opens up using all the lights you choose from the cheaper_than_phillips category. I also use Node-red on a Raspberry Pi. It's slim and as small as a base station. I also have Bluetooth, wifi, and nRF24L01+ boards on it, talking all those protocols. No reason for Zigbee, but it would be doable for $15 (I assume the price). I've found the "from anywhere", at least for Node-Red is to use a static IP. If you dont have that, a dynamic one will work. If that doesn't work, a ToR hidden service works well. My control over my hardware is always advantageous over control by a 3rd party entity.

llamataboot 11y ago

Damn. I just bought my first Hues a week ago - a little spendy but worth every penny to have a super easy install into my living room lamps and be able to be controlling my lights from a ruby script in 5 minutes. Hopefully, someone will release a crack sometime soon.

tomlongson 11y ago
Consider returning it and writing a bad review if you bought it from a platform like Amazon. Maybe they aren't doing anything illegal, but you can still rate them if the product is different from what you expected.

jcromartie 11y ago

Are there grounds for a lawsuit when a manufacturer pushes out an update to a product that intentionally degrades its feature set like this? This is no longer the same product that these users bought, it's effectively damaged by the update.

bitwize 11y ago
No, technically the third-party manufacturers were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal offense with penalties up to five years in prison. From Philips' perspective, refusing to cooperate with those criminally infringing their IP is a feature, not a bug.
- chc 11y ago
  That's an interesting accusation. What part of the DMCA were they violating?
- jhall1468 11y ago
  I call BS. This is using the Zigbee standard which Phillips doesn't own. They added a proprietary layer after the fact, which blocked non-Phillips products. Unless you care to share evidence of a DMCA violation, this sounds like you are just making this up as you go.
- detaro 11y ago
  Given that the protocol is a standard by the Zigbee Alliance (Light Link), I doubt that implementing it causes a DMCA violation. Unless you are claiming all companies making compliant products stole Philips code to do so?
- bjt 11y ago
  This is wrong on a couple levels. 1. The protocol is open. It's not Philips' IP. 2. Even if the protocol were closed, and Philips put some DRM on it to lock out 3rd parties from reverse engineering the protocol to make compatible bulbs, the third parties still wouldn't be in violation of the DMCA, even if they had to include small copy/pasted bits of the Philips code that are necessary for interoperability. This was the holding in the Lexmark case back in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v._Static_Control_Components,_Inc.#The_appellate_ruling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v....

gregmac 11y ago

This is the Philips controller software (app) that is refusing to talk to or control 3rd party light bulbs. I don't really see this as being a problem. It's not the nicest thing, perhaps, but neither is 3rd party companies building bulbs (presumably by ripping off the design and protocol of Philip's bulbs), and then relying on Philips to build the software so they can actually be used. In other words, Philips is refusing to build software, for free, to control their competitors' and/or counterfeit products. Do the Philips bulbs (still?) work without the Philips Hue software/app? If so, non-issue: you just have to use 3rd party software to control everything. If not, well, that's why you shouldn't buy into closed, walled-garden products.

wvenable 11y ago
The slippery slope of "intellectual property" is so steep that even building interface-compatible products is now considered ripping something off. We've come a long way from the age of IBM compatibles and the PC revolution.
- et2o 11y ago
  Except that at the time IBM tried to prevent people from making compatible PCs.
  - izacus 11y ago
    And we hugely benefited from their spectacular failure.
- chkuendig 11y ago
  On the other hand you could argue that while the pc revolution fueled on DOS licensing and IBM compatible BIOS was a a massive leap for the economy overall, it wasnt the best move for IBM in either the short nor the long term. Now they do the no-scales business of services and consulting...
  - enjo 11y ago

Roritharr 11y ago

What a horrible bait and switch. Sadly I'm too lazy to go through the hassle of asking for my money back. :(

tomlongson 11y ago
Consider writing a review if you bought it from a site like Amazon.

mdip 11y ago

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products since they're already invested in the existing system". The first argument is out the door because now they'll just get a lot of support questions around many more products that don't work. The second might happen for existing customers, but I'm now going to avoid this product as a future customer because compatibility is a feature, and for me, and I'd think anyone who is looking to purchase a tool that manages lighting/small electrics around the home, compatibility is easily the #1 or #2 feature. If there were a choice between a lightswitch that worked with a wide array of lightbulbs, and one that worked with only one company's bulbs, guess which one I'm buying?

IshKebab 11y ago
Having been involved in a couple of these discussions, I'd say it is more like "Shouldn't we control this? Are other people doing stuff with our products that we don't control? That's bad isn't it? Let's stop them." I.e. it's more about paranoid control than actual reasons.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  I have heard similar discussions, mostly around support. Which is to say when a third party bulb doesn't work, who gets the support call? When you compute the cost and margin of a consumer device you have to include the cost of support as a burden on overall profit margin. If support costs eliminate profit margin then you start losing money and that sucks. What is worse, if you raise your prices to cover the support cost, the 3rd party bulbs look that much better and that just increases your cost. Sort of a catch 22
- bborud 11y ago
  Actually, earlier today I wrote some MCU code to control my HUE lights, and I figured "hey, why not build a controller to make my christmas lights controlled by the HUE hub". Guess this news answers that. Seen together with the Phillips Hue bulbs I have being noisy as hell, hue just became a lot less interesting. I hope there will be an open source system and manufacturers whose bulbs can easily be integrated. Hopefully some that don't make a lot of noise.

throwaway420 11y ago

I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other options. Good timing on your part hue. Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and others?

thescriptkiddie 11y ago
Me too. Hue gear is absurdly expensive, but I was sold right up until this. To make matters worse, it looks like the apps I wanted to use the bulbs with (sleep as android, f.lux) only work with the Phillips hub. I hope the developers of those apps use this as an opportunity to learn about the dangers of vendor lock-in. This is just the FTDI debacle all over again.
- odbol 11y ago
  If only there was other bridge hardware that could communicate in a more open manner. Unfortunately, Hue is one of the only companies that even OFFERS an SDK—most other systems are completely closed down.
  - bufferout 11y ago
    https://github.com/LIFX https://github.com/LIFX
    - digitalsushi 11y ago
      I didn't research smart bulbs at all before walking into best buy and purchasing a pair of LIFX 1000 color bulbs using the light intensity as the only metric between brand selection. Getting home, I realized that LIFX doesn't really plug and play with the other technologies. Their cloud service is not very reliable, and so it was a very bad experience upon arrival. Then I discovered the lightsd package, which is a service daemon that runs on anything with python. It exposes a json api on the network that any client can easily send programming commands to your lights. You can tag each bulb, so you can target any subset you can come up with. I made my own ruby client in a single night, and I barely code. Lightsd turned the LIFX bulbs from an obvious store return into something I am willing to keep. Barely.

someotheracct7 11y ago

This is odd, but not catastrophic. If I understand right, Zigbee is open, so what's to stop the bulbs working with a third-party controller hub? Say, a Raspberry Pi with a Zigbee interface? Wonder if this is still relevant? http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-hue-to-join-my-coordinator-and-related-zigbee-questions http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-hue-t... That thread suggests it's possible to have Hue bulbs join third-party ZigBee networks.

steven2012 11y ago
It's the other way around. People want to use their non-Hue lights with the Hue bridge, which is no longer possible. Now it means having to buy another bridge that supports both.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Yes, you can do this. And for the most part you can control your lights from your own software. I was looking at the protocol using a HackRF One to see how easy or hard it would be to build a replacement hub controller. I don't know if there are any patent issues however, that would be something that you couldn't really code around.
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  It's an open standard, which Philips hypocritically helped write, so there shouldn't be any patent issues other than the normal ones. You can even get it online from http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-developers/applicationstandards/zigbee-light-link/ http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-developers/applicationstand... . It's clickwrapped, but rather extant.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    The same Phillips that sent out C&D letters to people who wrote software i2c implementations [1]. Their reputation precedes them. [1[ http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+COPYRIGHTS%3F%3F%3F&w=body&author=Tim+Hamel&tgt=top http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+...

bottled_poe 11y ago

I'm not convinced this was a hostile decision by Philips. It would be reasonable for the company to want to advance their own technology which would often entail a changing interface. If the third-party products are implementing an older interface, how is that the fault of Philips? The moral thing to do would be to standardise and publicise the interface...perhaps this is the situation already...?

kevindeasis 11y ago

Keurig is that you?

mmaunder 11y ago

They're going for vendor lock-in. Someone peered over Apple's garden wall and liked what they saw.

dperfect 11y ago

This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best interest (and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse). Perhaps the problem is more related to the ZigBee standard, or more specifically, what ZigBee doesn't cover. As I understand it, the fact that Hue products conform to the ZigBee standard only applies to the protocol between the hub and lights; it says nothing about communication between control interfaces and the hub. With that in mind, I feel that anyone who expected to use the Hue hub for controlling anything other than Hue lights had incorrect expectations. I certainly don't remember seeing Philips advertising any kind of third-party interoperability with the product. Of course, it would be awesome for consumers if Philips did make that guarantee of interoperability, but from a business standpoint, once you start going down that road, you effectively have to support everyone else's products (whether or not they conform to the spec), and any failing of another product then reflects poorly on Philips' brand - even if they aren't the ones at fault. So maybe if we put more pressure on these companies to adopt a common home automation control standard (not Apple's, not Google's, but something vendor-neutral), then we might start to see home automation interoperability in a consumer-friendly way.

marcosdumay 11y ago
> and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse The idea used to be that companies served the consumer interest, and then billed some money in exchange. When was it that companies become some self sustaining beings, with their own interest to be served? (Yeah, surely when they discovered they could take their clients as hostage. The question was rhetorical.)
- dperfect 11y ago
  That was true at least as far back as the 1790's when James Wilson described a corporation as "a person in a political capacity created by the law, to endure in perpetual succession." To "endure in perpetual succession," companies by definition must operate under a fundamental premise of self-interest.

mschuster91 11y ago

Having had the pleasure of developing ZigBee stuff (NDA, so cannot name specifics), I can understand Philips' position of blocking 3rd party stuff. Zigbee is nasty enough to develop for even if you HAVE all the relevant docs and everything, without adding stuff developed by others into the mix. The only thing why this crap ended upon users is because it's less power hungry than WiFi will be and has a bigger range than Bluetooth.

reiichiroh 11y ago

I didn't even know there were 3rd party lights compatible with the Hue ecosystem. Can someone point me to some brands and models?

Animats 11y ago

Can you dump Hue and use Wink? Wink can supposedly control both GE and Phillips bulbs.[1] GE uses Wink as their main control system, and GE is big enough to argue with Phillips. [1] http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-starter-kit/#faq http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-start...

sitharus 11y ago
From a casual look it seems that Wink just controls your existing Hue bridge, which exposes a REST API to do all the control actions. I don't use the Hue app myself, I call the API from my automation system. Works well.

dmritard96 11y ago

We are building some related home control products and have forgone radio level integrations instead favoring integrating with anyone over http, providing an open api, and shortly after launch an sdk. Radio integrations in theory are fine but in practice it's a matter of picking sides, allowing third party devices to dictate your access to the Internet and interop, for a few features, offline (local http should be an option with any hub, nest etc but isnt) and lower latency operation as probably the biggest features. Not controlling your own products' access to the Internet is a scary proposition not to mention range/interference issues with 2.4ghz if you don't have aa critical mass. Building IoTs right now is as much an alignment excercise as a technical one and while it's a bummer that they have chosen to remove/prevent compatibility, consumers aren't really choosing subscription models for devices and cloud backed services hence the economics of customer acquisition, support, margins etc aren't realities that can be wished away.

Sanddancer 11y ago
This is a device using an open standard though. Philips could conceivably do the same thing over http by checking MAC addresses.

ultimoo 11y ago

I have been consistently disappointed by Philips Hue ever since I purchased the $200 starter kit a year and a half ago. Numerous iOS app updates have rendered the system useless (lack of basic QA), slow to adopt HomeKit and price gouging for it (they want users to buy an entirely new Hub for $60).

05 11y ago
Only because Apple requires HomeKit accessories to be MFi-certified, which requires a DRM chip. Can't add a chip via firmware update..

cubano 11y ago

Creating a new compatible hub now sounds like an ideal Kickstarter project, no? Also, I can't help but wonder if UL issues may have influenced the decision too...just look at the current hoverboard fire issues with cheap Chinese manufacturing and I can at least speculate that they might be.

odbol 11y ago
Or just wait for Google to release Weave and Brillo. Those are both open platforms for communicating with IoT devices. Which is the exact opposite strategy as Apple's, who is SO CLOSED DOWN you actually need to buy a physical chip from Apple and incorporate it into your hardware for your hardware to be controlled by Siri.

bradyd 11y ago

Philips statement about the block: http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-...

spdustin 11y ago

I have three neighbors, all of whom are non-technical, that use Hue lights in their home. I asked them if they used any other "smart bulbs" with their Hue bridge. The universal reply, averaged out to a representative quote: "I didn't even think that was a thing, I only use Hue bulbs with the Hue bridge."

SEJeff 11y ago

In slightly related news, the open source project, Home Assistant, that this blog post references, is an excellent open source "hub" for controlling the smart things.

underbluewaters 11y ago

I've been a hue user for the past year. 1) Their lights/bridge are by far the most reliable IoT product I've used. A 9/10 where other products (Wink, GE, Lutron) are at best 3/10. 2) While 3rd party bulbs were sort of supported, it wasn't advertised. I've never seen it described as a interoperable Zigbee Light Link device. 3) My attempts at getting a GE bulb working were inconsistent, and even when it did work the brightness range and responsiveness were worse than the hue bulbs. I had constant disconnections where I had to re-add the bulb as well. I imagine many people blamed philips when in fact the problem was with the cheap 15.00 bulb. This is probably the reason for discontinuing unofficial support. I don't like the fact that there's not a thriving range of interoperable, cheap, and high quality zigbee light link devices out there. I'm happy the Philips is focused on delivering a product that actually works, however. All of my other home automation purchases have ended with many wasted hours and eventual returns.

funkyy 11y ago
If people blamed Phillips for this, then there is quite easy solution. Allow people to activate the 3rd party access, but do it Android way. Hide the option from plain sight, force users to read quick warning message about 3rd party bulbs can affect or damage system. This way only people that did their homework will be able to reactivate it.
- zorpner 11y ago
  As relevant today as when it was written: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=43043 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=... People will blindly follow a tutorial online that tells them how to activate this option, and continue to contact Philips for support. I've worked on products that have these unsupported/advanced modes, and customer queries on them are constant and time-consuming, even to simply dismiss (and, of course, those customers then go on to leave bad reviews, et cetera).
  - hcf 11y ago
    The Chromebook method (to disable write protect) requires you to open the device and remove a specific screw, it's beyond just blindly following instructions.

daveguy 11y ago

Here is the amazon product page for the hue starter pack with the reviews listed -- most recent first. Even if you haven't purchased this yet you can let everyone know these new reviews rolling in about the product are helpful: http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1 http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_...

KerrickStaley 11y ago

What are good Hue alternatives I should check out?

PinguTS 11y ago

When I read this statement[1] from Philips, that third party that is assigned will continue to work and only commissioning is blocked, then the reason for that seems to be as simple as the Master Key for commissioning got released[2]. So, Philips just started to issue a new Master key that now has to be implemented in all those third party devices. But Philips will issue that Master key probably only under very strict NDA with selling your first child and such things. [1] http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753

josteink 11y ago

Worth quoting in this context is Doctorow's law: "Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_other_writings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_o...

746F7475 11y ago

Am I only one who doesn't see a problem here? Sure it would be nice if company X allowed me to use cheaper Chinese knock-offs with their product, but to me, they are well within their rights to decide: "hey, we don't want competitors to benefit from our product(s)" In essense Phillips put money into R&D and marketing and if you are to believe the linked article into making smart lightbulbs mainstream. That shit is not cheap so why would they give money for their competitors? This move forces others to build their own base system and what not, which is fair. I am sure you can find open{source|hardware} alternative if you don't wish to support Phillips anymore.

justin_vanw 11y ago
You might be the only one. What if you bought a car, and after you bought it, the manufacturer of the car announced that they have remotely flashed the car's computer and now you can only drive to work, and if you want to drive anywhere else you have to buy 'tickets' for $5 per trip, or the car will refuse to run. The point is that when you buy a thing, it is yours. When you own a thing, you are within your rights to do whatever you want with it, so long is it is legal. If makers of things can retroactively impose restrictions on the thing's use, then you have no rights whatsoever and anything that you own is yours to use only so long as whoever manufactured it feels like your use is maximizing it's profits.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  Your car metaphor is completely off. It's not like Philips updated your lights to only light up in specific location. But cars are a good example, say your automatic shifter breaks. There are no real third party options, you've pretty much got to buy a new one from the manufacturer or by used one. You can still do all normal car things with it you just can't use third party pieces. Same with the lights, they still work, they shine light and do everything that they did before now you JUST can't use third party bulbs with the system. If you want to go with other shitty analogies say you made a game, something like an MMO that has monthly fees. You sank a lot of money developing the game, the box price isn't high because you know you'll make your money from the monthly fees. You also use money from the monthly fees to improve the game, fix bugs, add content. Now your subscription model is a little strange, it works by players entering a code on your website. They buy it from your online store, get it in their email and use it to get play time. Now let's imagine that your security isn't absolute and some third party figures out how your keycode generator works and they start selling codes for half the price. Now your paying subscriber count is shrinking. What do you do? Do you A) fix the problem which results into many users losing money since they already bought several months worth of play time from this company? or B) leave the system as it is because openness or something like that?

squar1sm 11y ago

I've been using neopixels to great success in combination with particle.io chips. They have cloud events and you can send whatever data to them. I'm sending a payload like `{ "color":"blue" }` and then all listening LEDs change. Plus they are individually addressable and are reusable for other projects. It's not the same level of brightness I'm guessing. Adafruit has a 24 neopixel ring with a particle slot. It's like $45 for everything for one. No hub.