7 ms·
Hue Light Hack
- byteknight 4y ago"...runs it through a BRIDGE RECTIFIER!"
- taneq 4y agoIs that bad? If you're turning AC into DC you're gonna have to rectify it somehow.
- methyl 4y agoIt might have been a reference to Electroboom [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5Ftm1-jik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5Ftm1-jik
- mindslight 4y agoI know his entire shtick is doing dumb stuff and getting hurt (or at least pretending to?) in the style of "Ow! My balls!", but he wouldn't have been able to touch across 170VDC without flinching (@ 1:55). I've felt ~48VDC in the summer with my hands a bit sweaty. And both those terminals were actually still bouncing between +/- 170V along with the AC supply. Then at 3:55 he gets shocked from touching those same terminals (as he should), with the circuit disconnected from the AC line, to segue into the need to discharge capacitors. This is what makes me question how much of his "getting hurt" is actually acting. (Also just in case anyone is watching those videos and thinks there's a distinction between his usual haphazard behavior and when he gives explicit "safety" advice - there isn't).
- taneq 4y agoThat 'hands a bit sweaty' affects the outcome way more than you'd think. I've had a seriously unpleasant nip from a mere 24VDC (while drenched in sweat) and only a mild tingle from 90VDC (in an air conditioned office). In this case I'd guess he's got some decent calluses and any leakage current isn't going through any nerves. Also he's only touching it lightly so won't be making very good contact.
- Nextgrid 4y agoI believe the parent was referring to the "full bridge rectifier" joke by a popular electronics content creator: https://electroboom.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Bridge_Rectifier https://electroboom.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Bridge_Rectifier.
- taneq 4y agoOhhhhh damn I've watched a bunch of his stuff in the past but not run across this particular one. He's great.
- iamflimflam1 4y agoShould have added a little clip of him to the video...
- davidy123 4y agoI wish there were a way, though maybe not at the hardware level, to get these bulbs to go dimmer. In many circumstances, especially at night when avoiding glare off windows, just enough light to prevent tripping over things post eye adjustment would be ideal. But the lowest setting is far brighter than that.
- jprete 4y agoI hve color Hue bulbs and they can get pretty low.
- danielbln 4y agoCan confirm, colour hues go really low, especially as you shift them into the red colour. I have that as a nightlight in the bathroom and bedroom on a motion trigger.
- wpm 4y agoI set my Hue Color bulbs to 25% and pure red at around 1AM every weeknight. It's dark but I can still see enough not to ram my toes into the coffee table.
- zmil 4y agoAlright, Satan.
- globalise83 4y agoAlso gives you that Hunt for the Red October feeling
- WorldMaker 4y agoSubmarines use red lights for the same reason that they make great night lights (and were used in old photography dark rooms): human night vision isn't disrupted by red light so red lights can be kept minimally dim and be more than enough to see by. Admittedly for submarines light pollution can be life-or-death (because you don't want an enemy submarine to spot you) and it's a little less critical in cities already full of light pollution at all hours.
- iamflimflam1 4y agoThe video is worth a watch - https://youtu.be/WCniHh2_F7s https://youtu.be/WCniHh2_F7s
- flerchin 4y agoFun hard hack. I appreciate the spirit of makerism here. I dunno if Mr Greening frequents Hacker news, but s/prize if off/pry it off/g
- jpitz 4y agoPrize is an accepted alternative spelling of prise, which makes it likely to me that the error here is simply a typo s/if/it/
- iamflimflam1 4y agoThat's how you know it's not AI generated :) Full of typos. Fixed now. Looks like “pry” was chosen.
- javawizard 4y agoFun story: "prise" or "prize" are more common in the UK, "pry" is more common in the US. I do wonder what those from other countries where other spellings are more common think when us Americans come in and correct them, as if our spelling is objectively more correct...
- jaywalk 4y agoIt's not "as if our spelling is objectively more correct" rather the fact that most people in the US probably have no idea that "prise"/"prize" is used in place of "pry" in the UK. I know I sure didn't.
- javawizard 4y agoThat's a good point. I think my original comment came out harsher than I meant it. I think it's interesting the sorts of things where we assume we know how something's said or done and then it turns out that's not a universal thing. On the one hand, best not to assume if one can help it. On the other hand, it's impractical to for example look up every word for cultural context before using it/voicing something based on an assumption around it.
- maxbaines 4y agoI have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.
- input_sh 4y agoYou missed the most important ones in my book: you don't need an account to use it and things work fine if you block its access outside your home network.
- xxpor 4y agoIt also works find with other zigbee stuff (in both directions, you can pair MUCH cheaper Ikea bulbs to the Hue bridge, and pair Hue bulbs to other zigbee coordinators), even if they don't really advertise that.
- Operyl 4y agoThe only caveat with this is that they don't expose them over Homekit if you do this, you'll need to use Homebridge to get that going.
- xxpor 4y agoAh good to know. I personally only use the hue app itself, Home Assistant, and Alexa, and they all show up in all three by default.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 4y agoHomeAssistant also has a built-in HomeKit Bridge integration. Was a seamless setup experience for me.
- xp84 4y agoThis is a really annoying limitation that I genuinely don't understand the need for. It seems a really irritating place to throw up an arbitrary wall. If they're going to let me use the bulbs with their system in the first place, why cripple them by not bridging them to HomeKit with whatever level of functionality they already support them for? I bought two cheaper bulbs and won't buy any more of those because of this. So I guess if the reason is "money grab" i have to grudgingly admit it was successful.
- aardvarkr 4y ago@OP, what are your thoughts on Dubai bulbs/“ultra efficient” led bulbs? I was annoyed to learn that modern led bulbs are overclocked by design so that they fail quickly, and have been seeking a solution ever since the Dubai bulbs made it to the front page here.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoCouldn't you avoid that with these Hues just by running it dimmer than 100%?
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoThe Hue bulbs are on the dimmer side compared to a traditional bulb (LED or otherwise) so this would defeat the purpose for my use cases. The color bulbs in particular are horribly dim, but fun nonetheless. The only failure I've encountered in ~10 years is my original Hub started crash looping a few years ago and I ended up getting a new starter kit to replace it. The bulbs seem to really last, however.
- balfirevic 4y ago> The Hue bulbs are on the dimmer side compared to a traditional bulb What do you mean, do they not produce the advertised number of lumens? Just looking at specs, their highest output coloured bulb produces 1521 lumens at 4000K white colour temperature and 1055 lumens at 2700K [0]. That's very close to the brightest regular bulb I can find in stores (1600 lm). [0] - https://www.philips-hue.com/en-gb/p/hue-white-and-colour-ambiance-a67---e27-smart-bulb---1600/8719514288157 https://www.philips-hue.com/en-gb/p/hue-white-and-colour-amb...
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoIt looks like there are newer bulbs which are substantially better. Mine do 800 lumens @ 4000K which is fairly atrocious, even if I ran them at 4000K, which I would never do as it's horrible. I suppose I have to consider replacing everything now...
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> The MCU on the logic board is an Atmel SAM R21, a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ processor with a 2.4GHz ISM band transceiver for Zigbee communication. It has 256KB of Flash and 32KB of SRAM and runs at 48MHz. Excellent; we're getting to the point of lightbulbs having as much compute as computers used to:)
- tiborsaas 4y agoAs a fun exercise I'd encourage everyone to count the number of computers they have in their home, being in the walls, bulbs, coffee machines, scales, toothbrushes and eventually Macbooks should all count.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoHow many do we count laptops as? Do we just count the main cpu, or do we count one more for every hard drive controller, etc.?
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoYou would count by function, otherwise you don't make it past a BluRay player.
- ericzawo 4y agoI have about 10 hue bulbs throughout my apartment, which I've only purchased on Black Friday sales (they tend to go up to 50% off, I've found, which puts them more in line to what I feel is a reasonable price.) My biggest gripe is the unserious development of their iOS app, which has really been a hurdle to get them setup correctly. The app underwent a rebuild maybe 18 month ago, which forced users to allow for phone Widgets to ONLY be created via the Apple Shortcuts app. Shortcuts, to be clear, is a great app on the iPhone, but this introduces an extra step, requiring you to ALSO create the correct Scenes for your particular Rooms, with particular Lights, FIRST, ensure they're named / setup in a clear manner, THEN add them to Shortcuts, THEN create a Shortcuts, and export, add to your homescreen. The previous method, was Hue app itself was a Widget, independent of a second app. It honestly boggles the mind the Philips team went in this direction and speaks to how little user feedback they did. It has deliberately made using their product harder, and make life a little easier. It no joke took an entire day to get like 6 scenes setup properly. I know there are 3rd party apps that quickly solve this. But such a basic feature like "Make a button on my homescreen I can tap to instantly turn on/off all the lights in my home" a chore is ludicrous. I thought IoT was supposed to make life easier.
- altec3 4y agoIf you add all your bulbs to Homekit you can control them all from there. I have all my Hue bulbs in Homekit and haven't touched the Hue app for years, it's also accessible from the iOS Control Center.
- chiefgeek 4y agoI have a bunch (15+) Hue bulbs and can't stand using them with HomeKit. I can't figure out how to get the color temp to be consistent. It seems to just do whatever it wants.
- marcellus23 4y agoTheir reasoning was probably that most people just use HomeKit.
- 4y ago
- cloudripper 4y agoTangential to this great post, I am reminded of the need to upgrade my lighting. For anyone that missed the recent rabbithole of commentary on LED quality last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35371750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35371750 (35 days ago - 942 comments)
- humanistbot 4y agoI got a chill of terror when I saw this at #1 on the front page, thinking it was the other meaning of "hack" and that it was some massive vulnerability that is going to ruin my morning while I take my bridge and bulbs offline and make me regret ever buying into it. I know this is Hacker News, but the classic hackers lost that linguistic battle or at least achieved stalemate decades ago. If you're going to use the word "hack" in a post about something internet-connected, in a way where either meaning of the word is equally plausible, please use a more descriptive title. I note the author of this post did that for their YouTube video linked at the bottom: "Hacking a Philips Hue Light - Teardown and Reuse"
- stagger87 4y agoIf a somewhat vague title gave you a "chill of terror" then I suggest you go back to normal light bulbs. You should assume there is some undisclosed vulnerability. In fact, if you search "Hue light bulb hack" you will find several articles that actually imply what you were scared of... chills of terror
- skhm 4y agomore than a decade ago the running joke in our house was to set the bathroom light to bright red just as someone had snuck off to take a shit. not a hack but still, hilarious. got even funnier at house parties where people on various psychedelics did not know what had just happened.
- Arrath 4y ago>where people on various psychedelics did not know what had just happened. Oh that is just devious.
- mananaysiempre 4y ago> [T]he classic hackers lost that linguistic battle or at least achieved stalemate decades ago. The classic hackers weren't above breaking computer or even physical security where they felt it was in the way of their work or curiosity, either, so in relation to pre-extortionist hacking it's probably less like a battle Stallman and others branded it as and more like a messy civil war. Of course, once less-than-technical reporters get into it, everybody else might as well give up (witness "dark web"). I did have the same misunderstanding as you, to be fair :)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago[dead]
- skhm 4y agoWhen I say "Hey Google, turn off all the lights" and it says "Okay, turning 55 lights off" I always recoil. No significant regrets, though. The app was awful a few years ago but they took the feedback in stride and made something responsive and usable (lots of headroom for improvement but I can't overstate how bad the app was on launch).
- bavila 4y agoHeh, that's awesome. And I thought my 20 was bad. I love these lights so much.
- Karawebnetwork 4y agoSame, but I also have ones that are turned off due to switches or outright not plugged in but still configured. So every night when I ask it to turn everything off it goes "Ok, turning off 15 lights and the 4 lights are not available" which is quite the mouthful. I've been waiting to try to configure Hue scenes via keywords using IFTT thinking this might bypass this but I never made it that far.
- angst_ridden 4y agoBack when I was learning to wire up a Z-80 to make my own first primitive 4kb RAM computer, I really didn't think I'd live to see the day when there were 32-bit CPUs with 32kb RAM in lightbulbs.
- worldmerge 4y agoThat’s so cool! I love that you could tap into rgba data lines and reuse them.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoThree fiberglass circuit boards, one aluminum LED circut board, plastic covers and coatings, epoxies and coating compounds, capacitors, chips and transistors with heavy metals, at least 100 unique components, aluminum heatsink housing... That'll only sit in a landfill for 10,000 years or so and took materials from all around the world to create. Remember when lightbulbs were thin glass with a bit of wire? At least the new LEDs are better, hiding their electronics in the screw base and the LEDs are placed on a strip.
- ilyt 4y agoI think the actual problem is that most of them are not made up to the possible LED reliability standard; they either overheat LEDs, cutting usable lifetime to fraction, or have controller/power supply failure before that. LED light bulb might be less ecological but having to produce 40x as much (including packing, shipping, storing etc) incandescent on top of higher energy production required ought to compensate enough for that. But if random LEDs customers buy burn out after few years for bad design reasons that's not great...
- euroderf 4y agoHas anyone tried similar hacking with Wiz lamps - a brand related to Philips.