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“Turn Touch is a perfect match with Philips Hue lights” - I must be missing something in this prominently highlighted scenario. Instead of walking over to the l

“Turn Touch is a perfect match with Philips Hue lights” - I must be missing something in this prominently highlighted scenario. Instead of walking over to the lamp and turning it on, you have to find the remote and press its button to turn on the same lamp. Where’s the value in this? I understand the advantage of voice control, but operating one physical object vs another sounds like a simple substitution.

conesus 9y ago
Don't just count the one lamp. A home will have dozen of bulbs. This remote lets you control all of the bulbs/lamps at once. Use Turn Touch to set scenes or interactively cycle through "random" scenes until you get the lighting you want. Typically when I get home I press a single button and I get a single color for my apartment. If I'm not feeling that color, I press the button again and switch to another color. The other buttons let me adjust brightness and hue. The remote then also lets me control music and smart power plugs. It's really amazing to have everything wired up and controllable with only four buttons.
- flyingcircus3 9y ago
  As an embedded developer that has done contracting for people with all of the capital, and none of the misunderstanding of electronics, I'd like to offer a thought experiment. I realize that Amazon has all sorts of guardrails in place, but I can control anything in my house with Alexa today, regardless of Amazon's prior approval, because I can make anything in my house appear to my Alexa as a Hue hub. The internet has already reverse engineered Alexa to make it a weapon, and unsavvy people like shiny things. So how long until an unsavvy wealthy person hires an embedded developer to integrate his entire house to work under the emulated hue model? Because the day its up and running, that unsavvy rich guy is going to throw a party. And that embedded developer might just show up and say "Hey alexa, set a timer for everyone's sleep monitors within your geofence. when they're all asleep, disarm the security system for 1 hour, turn up everyones binaural sleep aids for one hour, and hire me three ubers so I can make a clean getaway with the goldbars in the basement. Oh yeah, Alexa, unlock the vault.
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    I realize that Amazon has all sorts of guardrails in place, but I can control anything in my house with Alexa today, regardless of Amazon's prior approval, because I can make anything in my house appear to my Alexa as a Hue hub. That's not even remotely true without a significant amount of physical hacking and a substantial amount of software programming. Most appliances are not smart devices and do not provide simple control interfaces, let alone APIs that can integrate with Alexa, et al.
    - flyingcircus3 9y ago
      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=emulated+hue http://lmgtfy.com/?q=emulated+hue I wonder if the embedded world has been utilizing the same economies of scale that web developers "discovered" 20 years ago. There are significant amounts of hardware hacking going on in every engineers house as they try to invent a better lightswitch. There are opensource projects, such as HomeAssistant, and Domoticz, which allow anyone to stand on the shoulders of these giants.
nugi 9y ago
I too get up to change the volume on the tv every time, why is there this redudant control hardware shipped with every television? So wasteful! /s Snark aside, the illision of leisure/luxury/laziness is often valued as the real thing, effective or not. Could an app for your already omnipresent phone do this? Sure, but this is a sleek tactile button, no apps to futz with. I wouldn't buy one, but I get the appeal.
- flyingcircus3 9y ago
  What do we want? Change. When do we want it? As soon as we can be convinced we need it. The next evolution will be "you know the integrated home is great, but everyone's wifi still goes out every once in a while. wouldn't it be great if we could make that more robust with CAT5? What if we could do ethernet over your existing electical wiring? Then we could do Lights over Voice over IP over ethernet over AC. The best part is, we soft launched at hardware stores about 100 years ago". Welcome to the future!!!!!!
sp332 9y ago
I either take out my phone to change the color, or I pick up the remote to change the color. It's a little faster with the remote since I don't have to find the app first. (This is hypothetical since I don't own either device, but it definitely seems like something I would do.)
jeena 9y ago
I have a specific use case. When I go to sleep I don't have a laptop or my phone on me, but I want to tell my flat that I'm going to sleep now and it should shut down all the lights, the TV, the music and other things. And in the morning if I'm still asleep it should not tell me that my train is leaving in 7 minutes because I will not catch it anyway. In the morning my flat turns on the light in the sleeping room automatically to wake me up, but everything else is still switched off, untill I really wake up. Then I want to say to my flat that I'm awake and it should start brewing the coffe and tell me that I need to leave soon because the train is leaving, it also should start the radio so I can listen to the news while brushing my teeth. For that a button in the sleeping room would be awesome, I even build one myself for about $2 https://github.com/jeena/esp8266-button https://github.com/jeena/esp8266-button My flat shuts everything down which might use energy when I leave and it can't see my phone on bluetooth anymore. Then it also starts the CCTV cam so it can notify me if someone came into my flat while I'm away. When I come back it cuts the power to that CCTV.

conesus 9y ago

Don't just count the one lamp. A home will have dozen of bulbs. This remote lets you control all of the bulbs/lamps at once. Use Turn Touch to set scenes or interactively cycle through "random" scenes until you get the lighting you want. Typically when I get home I press a single button and I get a single color for my apartment. If I'm not feeling that color, I press the button again and switch to another color. The other buttons let me adjust brightness and hue. The remote then also lets me control music and smart power plugs. It's really amazing to have everything wired up and controllable with only four buttons.

flyingcircus3 9y ago
As an embedded developer that has done contracting for people with all of the capital, and none of the misunderstanding of electronics, I'd like to offer a thought experiment. I realize that Amazon has all sorts of guardrails in place, but I can control anything in my house with Alexa today, regardless of Amazon's prior approval, because I can make anything in my house appear to my Alexa as a Hue hub. The internet has already reverse engineered Alexa to make it a weapon, and unsavvy people like shiny things. So how long until an unsavvy wealthy person hires an embedded developer to integrate his entire house to work under the emulated hue model? Because the day its up and running, that unsavvy rich guy is going to throw a party. And that embedded developer might just show up and say "Hey alexa, set a timer for everyone's sleep monitors within your geofence. when they're all asleep, disarm the security system for 1 hour, turn up everyones binaural sleep aids for one hour, and hire me three ubers so I can make a clean getaway with the goldbars in the basement. Oh yeah, Alexa, unlock the vault.
- gamblor956 9y ago
  I realize that Amazon has all sorts of guardrails in place, but I can control anything in my house with Alexa today, regardless of Amazon's prior approval, because I can make anything in my house appear to my Alexa as a Hue hub. That's not even remotely true without a significant amount of physical hacking and a substantial amount of software programming. Most appliances are not smart devices and do not provide simple control interfaces, let alone APIs that can integrate with Alexa, et al.
  - flyingcircus3 9y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=emulated+hue http://lmgtfy.com/?q=emulated+hue I wonder if the embedded world has been utilizing the same economies of scale that web developers "discovered" 20 years ago. There are significant amounts of hardware hacking going on in every engineers house as they try to invent a better lightswitch. There are opensource projects, such as HomeAssistant, and Domoticz, which allow anyone to stand on the shoulders of these giants.

nugi 9y ago

I too get up to change the volume on the tv every time, why is there this redudant control hardware shipped with every television? So wasteful! /s Snark aside, the illision of leisure/luxury/laziness is often valued as the real thing, effective or not. Could an app for your already omnipresent phone do this? Sure, but this is a sleek tactile button, no apps to futz with. I wouldn't buy one, but I get the appeal.

flyingcircus3 9y ago
What do we want? Change. When do we want it? As soon as we can be convinced we need it. The next evolution will be "you know the integrated home is great, but everyone's wifi still goes out every once in a while. wouldn't it be great if we could make that more robust with CAT5? What if we could do ethernet over your existing electical wiring? Then we could do Lights over Voice over IP over ethernet over AC. The best part is, we soft launched at hardware stores about 100 years ago". Welcome to the future!!!!!!

sp332 9y ago

I either take out my phone to change the color, or I pick up the remote to change the color. It's a little faster with the remote since I don't have to find the app first. (This is hypothetical since I don't own either device, but it definitely seems like something I would do.)

jeena 9y ago

I have a specific use case. When I go to sleep I don't have a laptop or my phone on me, but I want to tell my flat that I'm going to sleep now and it should shut down all the lights, the TV, the music and other things. And in the morning if I'm still asleep it should not tell me that my train is leaving in 7 minutes because I will not catch it anyway. In the morning my flat turns on the light in the sleeping room automatically to wake me up, but everything else is still switched off, untill I really wake up. Then I want to say to my flat that I'm awake and it should start brewing the coffe and tell me that I need to leave soon because the train is leaving, it also should start the radio so I can listen to the news while brushing my teeth. For that a button in the sleeping room would be awesome, I even build one myself for about $2 https://github.com/jeena/esp8266-button https://github.com/jeena/esp8266-button My flat shuts everything down which might use energy when I leave and it can't see my phone on bluetooth anymore. Then it also starts the CCTV cam so it can notify me if someone came into my flat while I'm away. When I come back it cuts the power to that CCTV.