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Many years ago (just after I left for college) my parents decided to build a brand new house. The plan was to include a computerized lighting system where every

Many years ago (just after I left for college) my parents decided to build a brand new house. The plan was to include a computerized lighting system where every light was individually addressable and all "light switches" were actually banks of 4 to 8 programmable buttons. The possibilities were endless! What could go wrong? I asked my parents to use a regular light switch in my room. You know the kind that I am talking about - it goes on and off, closing and opening an electrical circuit. It would have been less expensive and (in my opinion) more reliable since after all, it's just a few pieces of metal. I joked that "when everyone else's lights are flashing on and off at 3AM, I'd like to remain asleep". My father accused me (his resident technologist) of being a Luddite and they went on their merry way, finishing construction and installing a fully-computerized lighting system. A few months after they moved in, I got a phone call from my father that started something like this: "Please don't say 'I told you so' but I have to tell you what happened at 3AM last night..." (they flipped that house, and when they built their next one, it had regular light switches)

whoisjuan 9y ago
I totally get the spirit of what you're saying, but to be fair a good reliable automated light-system would have an analog fail-safe that allows you to operate the lights normally in case of a malfunction of the central system, meaning that you just turn off the central system, and all the lights keep operating as normal lights that are not connected to it. But also, centralized light systems are not new. Many corporate facilities have been using these for years and they rarely fail. Maybe the problem is that your father just picked the wrong vendor/system.
- tachyoff 9y ago
  I think the problem is that you don’t really need centralized lighting at home, and the solution is to use regular light switches. ;)
- Someone1234 9y ago
  That more or less describes how Philip's Hue works. If the hub died, the smart bulbs can still still be operated using the regular light switch. If the bulb is in standby (smart "off") just flip the switch twice to turn it on. Then it will act like a regular bulb until the hub returns. Hue only has one big defect with regards to this... If there's an electrical outage and the smart bulb is in standby, when power is restored the bulb will turn on. Meaning if power goes out and is restored in the middle of the night the lights could suddenly turn on full brightness. And as an aside, the nice thing about smartbulbs as a concept is that they require zero re-wiring or specialized wiring. So if the manufacturer of your bulbs went out of business or you wanted to change vendors, just replace the bulb and your work is done. Simple.
  - pfranz 9y ago
    I've seen televisions have that issue. They can come back on in the middle of the night. To me, this makes sense for a lightbulb. If your failsafe "backdoor" expects it to be wired to a switch, you would turn that switch off in the event of a power outage. What else would it do when the power comes back on? One thing I really like about "smart" things, when the power is out at home I can check my phone to see if power is restored. I guess that's similar to calling your home to see if the answering machine is back on.
  - aaronharnly 9y ago
    I have a couple dozen Hue lamps, and they regularly “reset” to full bright white, presumably after a flicker in power that is otherwise imperceptible. It happens on average once every couple of weeks, and is quite annoying! I wish the lamps had a nonvolatile memory so they’d return to their previous color and intensity... (I still love them and am happy I have them rather than regular LEDs though.)
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      This has been suggested many times and, as far as I can tell, Philips decided the current behaviour is best safety-wise (consider e.g. if your last preset had 1% intensity).
      - tjoff 9y ago
        Then reset it after three on/off cycles within 3 s, or something. But surely the controller iwll sort this out when it gets back online a minute later? So that everything comes on (annoying enough) but switched off within the minute? If not that is just outrageously bad and imo ruins the product completely.
        toss1 9y ago
        Three on-off cycles in rapid succession is exactly what you get in non-urban electrical systems when a tree falls against a wire. The local breaker detects the short to ground and cuts out, then resets after a few seconds on the chance that the tree has continued it's fall to the ground. If there's still a short, it repeats, and after the third or fourth short->cutout (depending on the local utility settings), stays off on the assumption that the tree is well and truly hung up on the line and will need a crew to fix it. It's pretty common occurrence in many locales where I've lived.
- kqr 9y ago
  It would be fairly natural to have a small three-way switch onto each light to select between "central control", "override on" and "manual override off", in that order. That way, you wouldn't have to shut down the entire system.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
    It would, but it would also be expensive. Adding a switch changes the assembly process, requires extra firmware and testing, makes manufacture more complicated, demands localised labelling (unless you can work out a symbol system which maybe 50% of users won't get), and requires changes to the manual.
    - kqr 9y ago
      No doubt. This is why I think we need some sort of mandatory class-based reliability certification for a society of increasing IoT reliance. Not mandatory as in "you need to certify as at least class 3" but rather "you need to certify as some class of your choosing and clearly mark this on your packaging." The certification process should probably be cheap and flexible too. Maybe even let manufacturers self-certify the lower classes with heavy fines for abuse. That way, it would be more clear to the customer why the product with the physical stops and manual overrides is more expensive.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Our office has something like this: dimmable meeting room lights that are controlled by a single rocker switch. Since the only UI is "hold the switch down for longer or shorter periods, or press it repeatedly", and there are no written instructions and no discoverability, nobody can reliably work it and we routinely hold meetings in the dim half-light.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Same here, except sometimes lights will brighten and dim randomly during meetings. It's like living in Clamp Tower from Gremlins II.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Well that's your own damn fault for not RTFM! (Had that system at an office: it came with a manual of ~200 pages, but nobody wanted to learn the special variant of Morse code that the lights understood. Somehow we found the commands for "full on" and "full off", and the manual was abandoned. Seriously, 200 pages on operating a light? Technology making lives easier, riiiight there.)
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I once stayed at a nice hotel in Bangalore with a computerized lighting system controlled by a LCD with no switches. I just kept the lights off the whole time, I couldn’t figure it out and it was so cumbersome to use anyways. Light switches are an essential luxury!
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  The way things work in Bangalore, the best thing to do is to call the front desk every time you want to turn the light on or off.
esaym 9y ago
Heh, once upon a time (and this was back in 1996 or so) my parents built a house too. They opted to put an expensive "Hunter" branded ceiling fan in every room. There were no controls on the fan itself, but on the wall where a normal light switch would be, there was a plate with two small buttons. One was for the light on the fan, and one was for the fan. Each button could be in 4 states: hi, med, low, and off. To get from one state to the next, you had to hold the button for about a second or so. Simply holding the button an less of a time would automatically put the state in 'off' (which would drive you mad in it self). My parents were cheap and rarely used the A/C (in Texas!). I would normally leave the fan setting on medium over night. But that normally meant I would be awoken at 3am to the lights on the fan being fully on....
Torai 9y ago
So they sold their problem to another family without telling them about the problem? Tell your father from my part that he is a moron. Not you. You seem to have common sense. But your father should be less entrepreneurial and start doing things properly.
- always_good 9y ago
  You have no clue how that deal went down, and you had to jump to your own convenient conclusions to arrive at your judgement.
  - Torai 9y ago
    If you don't have any clue, how are you able to judge my judgement? He said his father flipped the house. He didn't said her father sold the house. Flipping a house involves the aim of making profit. So I assumed his father said nothing to the buyer. But he can answer me about what his father did if he wants. On the other hand, I can't see the point of your comment.
    - madez 9y ago
      I agree with your sentiment that not telling the full truth and not giving one owns full assessment is easily equivalent to lying, but the way you brought up that point is not okay. We don't know how the deal went down, so we shouldn't accuse them of wrondoing. The wording of "flipping the house" is not enough evidence. In the face of that, any accusations can be rejected by everybody, and many rejected your accusation by downvoting.
thearn4 9y ago
I definitely wouldn't use any kind of technology that doesn't gracefully fall back to working as an uncontrolled "dumb" device. Z-Wave switches are at least pretty good at this, disconnecting my hub turns them back into normal light switches.
perl4ever 9y ago
My pet peeve is an even lower level of technology - having multiple light switches for a single light, for "convenience" means that you sometimes click "up" to turn off a light, and sometimes "down" depending on which switch was used last. The logical state and the physical state didn't sync. I found that incredibly annoying and impossible to memorize.

whoisjuan 9y ago

I totally get the spirit of what you're saying, but to be fair a good reliable automated light-system would have an analog fail-safe that allows you to operate the lights normally in case of a malfunction of the central system, meaning that you just turn off the central system, and all the lights keep operating as normal lights that are not connected to it. But also, centralized light systems are not new. Many corporate facilities have been using these for years and they rarely fail. Maybe the problem is that your father just picked the wrong vendor/system.

tachyoff 9y ago
I think the problem is that you don’t really need centralized lighting at home, and the solution is to use regular light switches. ;)
Someone1234 9y ago
That more or less describes how Philip's Hue works. If the hub died, the smart bulbs can still still be operated using the regular light switch. If the bulb is in standby (smart "off") just flip the switch twice to turn it on. Then it will act like a regular bulb until the hub returns. Hue only has one big defect with regards to this... If there's an electrical outage and the smart bulb is in standby, when power is restored the bulb will turn on. Meaning if power goes out and is restored in the middle of the night the lights could suddenly turn on full brightness. And as an aside, the nice thing about smartbulbs as a concept is that they require zero re-wiring or specialized wiring. So if the manufacturer of your bulbs went out of business or you wanted to change vendors, just replace the bulb and your work is done. Simple.
- pfranz 9y ago
  I've seen televisions have that issue. They can come back on in the middle of the night. To me, this makes sense for a lightbulb. If your failsafe "backdoor" expects it to be wired to a switch, you would turn that switch off in the event of a power outage. What else would it do when the power comes back on? One thing I really like about "smart" things, when the power is out at home I can check my phone to see if power is restored. I guess that's similar to calling your home to see if the answering machine is back on.
- aaronharnly 9y ago
  I have a couple dozen Hue lamps, and they regularly “reset” to full bright white, presumably after a flicker in power that is otherwise imperceptible. It happens on average once every couple of weeks, and is quite annoying! I wish the lamps had a nonvolatile memory so they’d return to their previous color and intensity... (I still love them and am happy I have them rather than regular LEDs though.)
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    This has been suggested many times and, as far as I can tell, Philips decided the current behaviour is best safety-wise (consider e.g. if your last preset had 1% intensity).
    - tjoff 9y ago
      Then reset it after three on/off cycles within 3 s, or something. But surely the controller iwll sort this out when it gets back online a minute later? So that everything comes on (annoying enough) but switched off within the minute? If not that is just outrageously bad and imo ruins the product completely.
      - toss1 9y ago
        Three on-off cycles in rapid succession is exactly what you get in non-urban electrical systems when a tree falls against a wire. The local breaker detects the short to ground and cuts out, then resets after a few seconds on the chance that the tree has continued it's fall to the ground. If there's still a short, it repeats, and after the third or fourth short->cutout (depending on the local utility settings), stays off on the assumption that the tree is well and truly hung up on the line and will need a crew to fix it. It's pretty common occurrence in many locales where I've lived.
kqr 9y ago
It would be fairly natural to have a small three-way switch onto each light to select between "central control", "override on" and "manual override off", in that order. That way, you wouldn't have to shut down the entire system.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  It would, but it would also be expensive. Adding a switch changes the assembly process, requires extra firmware and testing, makes manufacture more complicated, demands localised labelling (unless you can work out a symbol system which maybe 50% of users won't get), and requires changes to the manual.
  - kqr 9y ago
    No doubt. This is why I think we need some sort of mandatory class-based reliability certification for a society of increasing IoT reliance. Not mandatory as in "you need to certify as at least class 3" but rather "you need to certify as some class of your choosing and clearly mark this on your packaging." The certification process should probably be cheap and flexible too. Maybe even let manufacturers self-certify the lower classes with heavy fines for abuse. That way, it would be more clear to the customer why the product with the physical stops and manual overrides is more expensive.
pjc50 9y ago
Our office has something like this: dimmable meeting room lights that are controlled by a single rocker switch. Since the only UI is "hold the switch down for longer or shorter periods, or press it repeatedly", and there are no written instructions and no discoverability, nobody can reliably work it and we routinely hold meetings in the dim half-light.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Same here, except sometimes lights will brighten and dim randomly during meetings. It's like living in Clamp Tower from Gremlins II.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Well that's your own damn fault for not RTFM! (Had that system at an office: it came with a manual of ~200 pages, but nobody wanted to learn the special variant of Morse code that the lights understood. Somehow we found the commands for "full on" and "full off", and the manual was abandoned. Seriously, 200 pages on operating a light? Technology making lives easier, riiiight there.)

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

I once stayed at a nice hotel in Bangalore with a computerized lighting system controlled by a LCD with no switches. I just kept the lights off the whole time, I couldn’t figure it out and it was so cumbersome to use anyways. Light switches are an essential luxury!

gwbas1c 9y ago
The way things work in Bangalore, the best thing to do is to call the front desk every time you want to turn the light on or off.

esaym 9y ago

Heh, once upon a time (and this was back in 1996 or so) my parents built a house too. They opted to put an expensive "Hunter" branded ceiling fan in every room. There were no controls on the fan itself, but on the wall where a normal light switch would be, there was a plate with two small buttons. One was for the light on the fan, and one was for the fan. Each button could be in 4 states: hi, med, low, and off. To get from one state to the next, you had to hold the button for about a second or so. Simply holding the button an less of a time would automatically put the state in 'off' (which would drive you mad in it self). My parents were cheap and rarely used the A/C (in Texas!). I would normally leave the fan setting on medium over night. But that normally meant I would be awoken at 3am to the lights on the fan being fully on....

Torai 9y ago

So they sold their problem to another family without telling them about the problem? Tell your father from my part that he is a moron. Not you. You seem to have common sense. But your father should be less entrepreneurial and start doing things properly.

always_good 9y ago
You have no clue how that deal went down, and you had to jump to your own convenient conclusions to arrive at your judgement.
- Torai 9y ago
  If you don't have any clue, how are you able to judge my judgement? He said his father flipped the house. He didn't said her father sold the house. Flipping a house involves the aim of making profit. So I assumed his father said nothing to the buyer. But he can answer me about what his father did if he wants. On the other hand, I can't see the point of your comment.
  - madez 9y ago
    I agree with your sentiment that not telling the full truth and not giving one owns full assessment is easily equivalent to lying, but the way you brought up that point is not okay. We don't know how the deal went down, so we shouldn't accuse them of wrondoing. The wording of "flipping the house" is not enough evidence. In the face of that, any accusations can be rejected by everybody, and many rejected your accusation by downvoting.

thearn4 9y ago

I definitely wouldn't use any kind of technology that doesn't gracefully fall back to working as an uncontrolled "dumb" device. Z-Wave switches are at least pretty good at this, disconnecting my hub turns them back into normal light switches.

perl4ever 9y ago

My pet peeve is an even lower level of technology - having multiple light switches for a single light, for "convenience" means that you sometimes click "up" to turn off a light, and sometimes "down" depending on which switch was used last. The logical state and the physical state didn't sync. I found that incredibly annoying and impossible to memorize.