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Because smart bulbs are the cheapest and best option for making the following possible: * Wake timers. I can wake up with light shining in my face even with t
by qball 7y ago
Because smart bulbs are the cheapest and best option for making the following possible:
* Wake timers. I can wake up with light shining in my face even with the curtains drawn, which makes it easier for my body to sense that it's time to wake up and harder for it to fall back to sleep. Bonus points if it's green or blue on a grey day, which the more expensive bulbs allow you to choose.
* Security and timing. Lights can be programmed to turn on and off at semi-random times to simulate the appearance of someone being home, and normal wall timers only control lamps, not ceiling fixtures. Those timers are also a terrible programming experience compared to a good smartphone app, and they flat out disable the light when off (smart lights on a timer can be overridden by cycling the fixture's power, which cheap wall timers don't detect).
* On-the-fly color shifting. Certain colors of light help me focus when I'm up late at night wrangling code; others help sleep. A dim red light at night means you can easily find your way to the bathroom around possible obstacles without fully waking yourself up.
* Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness.
The only thing that smart lights don't do is come in 100W-equivalent models- at least, not Hue bulbs, which make the colors and maximum light output dimmer than might be desired.
That said, the GE thing is clearly a "feature" that some engineer was either forced to implement (or worse, thought it was a good idea) because they didn't want to shell out the 5 cents per unit for the reset button. Which is a valid point, but the fact you have to do that in the first place betrays larger and more fundamental problems with their product.
- pdkl95 7y ago> the cheapest and best option My father and I implemented all of those features trivially and cheaply in the late 1980s with X10 switches/outlets/fixture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_%28industry_standard%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_%28industry_standard%29 X10 devices also featured: * No internet (or other network) access. It worked as long as the mains power was on. * Putting the control in the outlet or fixture allowed any type of light or device to be controlled. (My father used this to remotely control a CCTV camera) * Plugging a X10-enabled dimmer lamp into a standard outlet (like any other lamp) allowed remote dimming without the need for any modifications to the existing electric outlets/etc. (full-range color LED lights didn't exist yet, but controlling color could have easily used a similar protocol). This type of feature doesn't need and shouldn't be implemented with a "smart" controller. If the design includes a "reset" procedure, it's overengineered and overcomplicated for basic automation of simple devices like lights. If the design requires internet access, it's a broken design that unnecessarily introduces an external dependency and risk of remote attack.
- vinaypai 7y agoYes I wonder why they didn't use an industry-standard wireless protocol. Possibly one named after a Norse king and built into basically every phone made in the last decade or so.
- perl4ever 7y agoThat protocol has been around so long, I wonder why connecting to things is so chancy and slow and frustrating.
- def- 7y ago> * Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness. For me that's the only "smart" feature I wanted and I discovered that there are some light bulbs with an integrated dimmer like Philips SceneSwitch or Osram Duo Click Dim.