24 ms·

The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing

• 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Old joke: How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? New joke: How many engineers does it take to enable a light bulb to turn on? I see we've made overall progress.. 120 years should do that.
• hn72774 3y ago
  I thought home automation would be fun but gave up years ago when a sub $10 light switch costs $50+ and breaks after 12 months. Analog light timer and fake TV for vacations are now the extent of my need for home automation.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• jjgreen 3y ago
  Could you not see this coming?
  • recursive 3y ago
    No. It was dark. Light switch was running firmware updates.
  • nh2 3y ago
    If only there was a person, maybe even an organisation, to preach [1] to people that proprietary software will respect their interests and freedoms temporarily at best... Maybe they could even come up with a "Respects Your Freedom" certification program for hardware that won't screw you over. This would achieve "freedom 4: The freedom to turn on the light". [1] (so that they don't have to arrive there by deduction and observation) -- Today, even my parents know that "you need an app to use this" is equivalent of "beware, you'll soon be screwed by this".
• hindsightbias 3y ago
  I'm waiting for mandated electronic doors.
  • h2odragon 3y ago
    plus mandated "smart" tvs. Have you been watching the minimum daily ration of "news", Citizen? Can't leave 'til you do...
    • maxerickson 3y ago
      There's nowhere even close to this sort of thing. Like the places that might do it can't afford it.
  • mlsu 3y ago
    The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
• _ea1k 3y ago
  "But they can't make money and be open"
• karlshea 3y ago
  > Javascript plus a "curl | sudo sh" attitude to life equals "yeah no, I am never touching this thing". I get why there are people that don’t like how some installers do this, but this trope is really turning into the “but I don’t even own a TV” of OSS commentary. Just use the Docker image if you don’t like it. Or get their appliance which actually supports ongoing development.
  • Cyph0n 3y ago
    Agreed. Another alternative: run HAOS in a VM.
    • seanp2k2 3y ago
      I don't like how HAOS is the only currently-supported way to use the SkyConnect to get Zigbee + Matter support currently, and messing with firmware on the SkyConnect was exactly the opposite reason why I got one in the first place. It doesn't "just work", even for just ZigBee, and now I've sunk hours into troubleshooting it without a working ZigBee setup in HA. Meanwhile, the Sonoff ZigBee bridge worked flawlessly the first time setting it up with my phone and their eWeLink app. Smart Home 2023Q3 status: still for hackers only if you want more than a few lightswitches that you can just toggle from your phone, and even if you do want that, stick to one vendor + system only.
      • jacquesm 3y ago
        After a few days with ZigBee I was ready for an extended vacation. Finally got rid of the whole thing and everything is on a dedicated WiFi network now that is an integral part of the house, in other words: if I sell this house that WiFi network + all HA stuff goes with it including a nice manual of how it all hangs together. Highly recommended: Shelly gear, it is easy to configure and seems to be rock solid, I've got a bunch of their remote control radiator valves, several remote control relays and a tri-phase consumption/production meter. It all worked flawlessly since installation. And instead of a regular Pi I got one that was built into a keyboard. It was mostly because I couldn't get a bare one but in the end I think this was the better option.
• kiwijamo 3y ago
  What are alternatives for things like light bulbs, switches, sockets, etc other? We are currently building a new house and I have requested non-smart wall switches/sockets etc. The default (as our build is off a standardised plan) is for 'smart' switches/sockets using some brand of Cloud-based service which I believe isn't an open protocol like Zigbee. It seems to me that no matter which ecosystem it's always attached to the cloud somehow. It is a shame Phillips Hue has gone down this path as I would have seriously considered their gear otherwise. Maybe I'm a luddite but I can't see any advantage installing with gear reliant on cloud access.
  • endisneigh 3y ago
    you can roll your own with matter devices and home assistant. that being said, ideology aside - life is short so I've opted to use smartthings which has been fine for me personally for several years now
  • candiddevmike 3y ago
    Aside from z-wave, which I already have and doesn't seem to be super reliable, I've been looking at some of the first gen matter stuff. I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time yet.
  • hippich 3y ago
    I recently started with home assistant. 80 bucks mini PC from Amazon, 25 bucks zigbee stick and bunch of different relays, modules, switches around the house. Easily setup HVAC fresh air ventilation (already had ducts in place but it was stupid x minutes per hour, now it is dependent on outside temperature), easily made my dumb switches smart where needed without them looking any different from the rest. In addition esphome on garage door opener motor with couple zigbee sensors on garage doors themselves to make my motors "smart"... Unfortunately, to get there most out of it you have to go to AliExpress to have a selection of modules, but I made it a journey, rather than a project
    • LeifCarrotson 3y ago
      You don't have to go AliExpress, but you can. HomeAssistant can run a stupid number of integrations: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#all https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#all ...including all the big names like Hue. Nest. Ring. Yale. Schlage. Ikea. HomeKit. Plex. Sonos. Alexa. Sure, you can integrate arbitrary digital/MQTT/Zigbee/BLE stuff you find on AliExpress for pennies, or you can buy the name-brand stuff from big box stores. You're not locked into just the Hue ecosystem just because you have their bulbs. I don't understand why HomeKit doesn't just talk to the bulbs instead of allowing Phillips to force you to go through their hub. This is on Apple for not supporting the lights directly.
• sixstringtheory 3y ago
  I haven’t fully jumped into home automation although I would like to and have thought about it for a while. I think I would only like to have things connected to an airgapped LAN that never connects to the internet. Maybe put it on my tailscale net. This is exactly why.
  • viraptor 3y ago
    You can also skip the LAN completely. Either ZigBee or zwave (or Matter if you're feeling futuristic) can be used entirely offline. There's lots of products that support those protocols for quite a while now.
    • dylan604 3y ago
      IF you have an app that allows that. All of the apps I've used required a WAN connection first. One app required an immediate firmware update for the bulbs to even work. I imagined it similar to game devs releasing shiny round discs. Just put something on the disc so that it can be sent to replication in time for street date, but have it immediately for a full "update" of the code that gave the devs 6 additional weeks. I'd be amazed if there was even game code on the disc at this point.
      • viraptor 3y ago
        With those devices, you shouldn't need a product-specific app. There will be edge cases and some interesting implementations which actually need the extra features of course, but in general, you should be able to connect them to a dedicated bridge device or a home-assistant server and that's it. Those can update the firmware of many devices if needed and should expose the available devices as switches / dials / colour selectors. I mean, ideally you buy a thing, connect it to your existing controller and never see anything with the company logo or their app.
• xattt 3y ago
  Another plug for Hubitat: https://hubitat.com/ https://hubitat.com/ Does Zwave and Zigbee with Matter on the way at some point. HomeKit integration is in beta right now. My fear is that Philips will do something stupid by pushing a firmware to the bulbs to lock folks into only using their hubs. Or maybe change colour reporting to some annoying method that won’t allow for accurate colour on a non-Hue hub. The enshittification continues.
  • pcdoodle 3y ago
    Priced decent. Where do you pair new stuff? In their interface or homekit?
    • xattt 3y ago
      Pairing is in Web UI. Has built-in drivers for most use cases with a bunch of other devices supported by their very welcoming community.
    • stevenhuang 3y ago
      Idk the hardware specs are pretty anemic for $150. OK I guess if you don't have any other device laying around. Zigbee USB adapters are $15 on Amazon
      • brainbag 3y ago
        Do you have a link or a brand/model? I'm just recently shopping for smart home equipment and the Hubitat seems quite full-featured and I'd like to compare.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • stevenhuang 3y ago
          It's perfectly suitable and it looks like one of the better out-of-the box solutions out there that respect user privacy. If I don't have any SBCs and just want something that works without fiddling, I'd likely go for Hubitat too. That said if you're up for fiddling, something like https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-VisionFive2-Processor-Integrated-4GB/dp/B0BRN9RP1N/ https://www.amazon.ca/Waveshare-VisionFive2-Processor-Integr... will provide much more oopmh (and it's RISC-V) with 4GB ram and m2 slot, at $100 CAD, with mainline kernel support (so any USB devices will just work). Grab a zigbee USB + SBC like that, and you'd be able to run much more on your hub that just a gateway for your devices.
• endisneigh 3y ago
  though I sympathize with the frustration - I've learned just to log-in and move on, life is short so unless you want to baby around home assistant I'd go with a managed solution. more productively, the author can go with home assistant if they want to DIY. (it's ironic they suggest homekit which requires you to have and be logged into an icloud account). the problem with home assistant is that it's easy enough to have a computer on and run the docker container. but then you have to either open ports in your firewall or use some sort of proxy in order to have outside network internet access, and then maybe your computer goes down for whatever reason. it's kind of a hassle unless you're already running a server for other things imo (and I say this as someone who runs my own surveillance with blue iris and poe cameras)
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  Some of these things had excuses, for instance the original version of SmartThings had a very stupid hub and made up for it with cloud services. That's not the case for Hue at all.
• pseudosavant 3y ago
  This is why I really try to buy devices that can run Tasmota. Any Tuya compatible device can be flashed to work with Tasmota. I have actually left some devices with the Tuya firmware on there - their app is pretty decent. But I know if I need to I can flash Tasmota and make it appear on my network like a legacy Phillips Hue or Belkin Wemo device that doesn't require an account. Buying hardware that can run open firmware is nice for future proofing in case the vendor goes sideways with their firmware. I do the same for routers with OpenWRT.
  • shermozle 3y ago
    > Any Tuya compatible device can be flashed to work with Tasmota. That's... not true. There are many items of the Tuya ecosystem resistant to flashing with another firmware.
    • pseudosavant 3y ago
      Maybe not 100%, but all the ones I have tried have worked with tuya-convert. https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tuya-Convert/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tuya-Convert/
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    > Any Tuya compatible device can be flashed to work with Tasmota. Hm, no not really. I have a bunch of remote controlled sockets that can't be reflashed with Tasmota and that require a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through to access including enabling 'developer mode' and access from a bunch of IPs in China. No thanks... really annoying because it was exactly one of those comments that caused me to buy them in the first place.
• kstrauser 3y ago
  Rachel nailed it, as usual. I was an early adapter and have a houseful of Hue stuff, but over the last year or so I've switched to buying Nanoleaf bulbs. Hue is a little nicer, but not enough to make their terrible app worth the hassle. I've seen a few recommendations now for the Ikea Dirigera hub, so fine. I've ordered one. Assuming it works as expected, I'll migrate everything next week. So long, Philips. I liked your stuff, but why'd you have to get greedy? Was being twice the price of your competition not enough?
  • seanp2k2 3y ago
    Govee are also very popular now, I haven't personally used any but I have a mix of Hue + a bunch of other stuff powered mostly through HA and it's always worked pretty flawlessly for me using their Hue bridge of course. Even the PC color sync works pretty well with not much latency considering it's a software implementation -> network -> bridge -> wireless to the lights. It's the most non-hacker-friendly "ambilight" setup I've ever used.
    • smogcutter 3y ago
      I have a Govee brand humidity sensor that works great. Bluetooth only (there are wifi models too iirc, Bluetooth was fine for my purpose), connects instantly & reliably, no account or other bs. I haven’t gone in much for home automation so can’t speak to how well it integrates with anything else, but this thing at least works great.
  • dylan604 3y ago
    I now have a couple of different app controllable LEDs. By far, the Hue app has been the best of the bunch. However, my app recently gave me the "Starting soon, you'll need to be signed in" notice. I am very unhappy with this, as everything I want my lights to do is working perfectly fine without even needing an account to be signed into. From the moment I first saw the notice, I started wondering if I'll have to find a new app. But because "soon" has not arrived, I just have been ignoring it. I hope when "soon" arrives it will be a weekend so I have plenty of time to deal with it.
• charcircuit 3y ago
  Signing in to an account takes 10 seconds.
  • ezconnect 3y ago
    Being locked out of your account because of something you don't expect and not able to use your device is an experience you will never forget.
  • pierat 3y ago
    And corporate control of your hardware lasts a lifetime.
  • izzydata 3y ago
    And never having account takes 0 seconds.
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  My family is always bitching me out for the slightest thing that goes wrong with my home automation. My wife would absolutely refuse to use any A/V gear that involves logging in: I mean, this has been normalized by streaming but you never have to log in to use a Blu-Ray player.
  • cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    That’s funny! As a single guy who’s always bitching at myself for my failing home automation, I understand your family’s pain of just wanting to do something simple like turn on a light but they can’t because dad wanted the “fAnCy LiGhTs”! lmao
    • bombcar 3y ago
      The AV forums used to call it the "wife acceptance factor" but it's a huge reality. https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/19/the-jim-saga.-part-one https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/19/the-jim-saga.-... And having it extend to have to piss by the light of your cell phone (just before you drop it in the toilet) because you're groggy and can't remember the right incantation to get lights on ...
  • callalex 3y ago
    You should probably listen to them. It’s great to have tinkering hobbies but please don’t subject others to your whims just because you are in a position of authority.
  • bananapub 3y ago
    > My family is always bitching me out for the slightest thing that goes wrong with my home automation. er...why are you whinging and being mean about them? it is you who has made their home annoying. you should fix it or get rid of all the things that are making their lives annoying.
• 1ncorrect 3y ago
  I want to see meaningful pushback on this indefensible move of forcing customers to establish and maintain a relationship with the manufacturer in order to use the products they sell. Other examples are: Wahoo, who locked the control of their products behind an account and login requirement for devices which had been working perfectly fine for years prior. Roche, who killed their blood glucose app at the start of 2023 and forced all their users to move to a third party app, developed by one of their subsidiaries, which requires you to accept a data exfiltration clause, if they wish to continue the automagic on-device logging.
  • spindle 3y ago
    And many car manufacturers, right?
    • heleninboodler 3y ago
      BMW now hides features behind signing into their absolutely atrocious online "app store." When I first got my car and was excited about exploring the features, I went through the incredible pain of logging into my account by typing my email and password with that little knob, and then one day it just logged me out and wanted me to do it all over again, and I can't be bothered so I just dismiss the dialog whenever I see it. So the upshot is they've created a set of features that aren't worth the trouble of the awful UX (and potential privacy issues), plus an occasional nag to remind me of that fact. You also can't get a software update without installing their terrible mobile app (and logging in), so I take it to the dealer and make them do it.
      • pmarreck 3y ago
        Tesla has none of these issues.
        • heleninboodler 3y ago
          Unfortunately I find Tesla's UX unbearable in other ways.
• favorited 3y ago
  I set up Home Assistant recently on a Raspberry Pi, and imported all of my Hue lights. So far so good, but I haven't managed to migrate completely off the Hue app + Bridge. I've purchased an HA-compatible Z-wave dongle, which will apparently let me manage all of my Hue hardware without an account or bridge, but haven't tried taking the plunge yet.
  • balloob 3y ago
    I hope you meant Zigbee dongle instead of Z-Wave. Hue devices use Zigbee and can be directly paired to Home Assistant using a Zigbee dongle, but not using a Z-Wave dongle.
    • favorited 3y ago
      Thanks, you're correct. It was the SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 dongle, which after a few minutes of Googling sounded like a well-supported choice for HA.
• triyambakam 3y ago
  Can someone explain to me what this ecosystem is and the appeal of it? I have nothing automated in my life, that I know of? I don't have a garage; the door to the house has a key; the lights I turn on with a switch; no Alexa, don't use Siri... I am not exactly opposed to automation, but I am hesitant to share even more demographic data to cloud services.
  • catiopatio 3y ago
    I like the idea of local home automation. “Siri, make the bathroom lights dark blue” Problem is, it comes with a ton of headaches. The cloud is a problem, as you noted, but also a bunch of fiddily, unreliable software, firmware updates that go haywire, and apps that are tied to iOS and will stop working with my physically installed home hardware if the manufacturer ever stops treading water and fails to update for the latest breaking iOS update. Home automation could be simple, reliable, and future-proof. It’s really not, though.
    • bdamm 3y ago
      I'm not so sure it can be simple, reliable, and future proof, at least not in the consumer space. Everyone is chasing the lowest price, and it has to compete with existing solutions that are cheap, like just putting a filter on a white bulb, or installing a dimmer switch. What these products are offering is convenience, but not fundamentally new life experiences. So they can't charge a lot. Meanwhile, they have to interact with an absolutely enourmous range of interfaces. The wi-fi router, the phone, the electric service itself, etc. And the user has high expectations for ease of use (after all, it is a light bulb, it should be simple!) while needing good security (it is your home after all, if you can't be safe in your home then where can you be safe?) A simple experience with a wide range of interfaces at low cost has almost never been successfully done. Even Apple can't do it; they offer ease of use, but in a limited ecosystem and at a premium price. So these products are fundamentally flawed and they probably can never be fixed. This industry is fundamentally not viable until someone comes along and solves the interface issue or until people accept paying a lot of money for these kinds of things, and even in that case it would probably be a reseller performing a home install then providing API access to these services, which is only one step away from home-as-a-service. And I personally do not think I could tolerate a home-as-a-service. But many young people or students might like that just fine.
• seanp2k2 3y ago
  Good lord, body { max-width: 600px; } why in 2023, not everyone is reading this on an iPhone, and even if some were, that's why @media exists.
  • kubrickslair 3y ago
    To quote pg, “The aim of web design is not to use all available screen space. It is legibility. Text is most legible with no more than 70 characters per line.”
    • bigstrat2003 3y ago
      1. pg is wrong. Text is perfectly legible to me even at 200 characters per line. Different people are different. 2. Since different people are different, it makes no sense to handicap everyone just because some people have a hard time reading text that is wider than a narrow column. Make the text fill most of the window, and that way people can have the window sized to whatever their comfort level is. This trend of super narrow columns of text is making the web worse. It needs to die.
      • bombcar 3y ago
        The "70 characters per line" stuff comes from books which almost by definition are long-term reading projects involving many pages and lines. The web ... is not that.
    • seanp2k2 3y ago
      I wonder why, then, HN comments don't adhere to that: .comment { max-width:1215px } in news.css here on my system, which feels very readable and reasonable at around 200 chr per line at 100% scaling. I also disagree with the 70 chr recommendation: with this article, literally the entire body is limited to a very small max width which takes up between a quarter to a third of the screen on two different computers I use at home. It's a distractingly bad experience to read, so much so that I went in and modified that CSS rule just to get through it. 1200 felt right and made it a much more visually pleasing square, rather than a thin column in a sea of stark gray. There are actual standards for this, but they're more like recommendations, and ironically https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-cont... recommends "Width is no more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK)." while the first line of the paragraph explaining why is 112 characters wide and looks pretty much fine / comfortable to read on my screens. While there are psychological reasons to use shorter line lengths, as this SO answer details the whole 80 column width thing goes all the way back to punchcards in 1928 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/148677/why-is-80-characters-the-standard-limit-for-code-width/148729#148729 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1486... Edit: here's what HN comments would look like with 65-70chr per line: https://i.imgur.com/yeMF6IY.png https://i.imgur.com/yeMF6IY.png vs default with 1215px per the news.css rule: https://i.imgur.com/IXNyhfL.png https://i.imgur.com/IXNyhfL.png .
• esc861 3y ago
  In my experience, enforcing log-in for for this kind of consumer product done for the sake of security, rather than user hostility. Internet connected hardware on a home network is a very attractive attack vector, especially if commands are unauthenticated.
  • samtho 3y ago
    This logic breaks down for hardware vendors don’t allow access to an underlying Linux system the IoT device is running on. The malware looks for easy targets to get root on - not so much turning on and off lights.
  • theshackleford 3y ago
    In my experience, my consumer products are significantly MORE secure when not requiring a log-in or in fact anything that requires any level of external network access to be facilitated or that mandates a requirement for personal or authentication related services to be hosted outside of my network, and that includes their applications. A potential avenue for security related incidents is now being forced upon users where previously it did not exist. Phillips can't leak my data due to incompetence when they don't have it, only now, they will. "security" indeed.
• lightedman 3y ago
  I quit trusting Philips when they sold one of my customers 40W LED grow bars that weren't even close to 40w. They were 15W, as measured by Kill-A-Watt directly-connected. Philips is a lying corporation as far as I can tell.
  • samtho 3y ago
    Aren’t most light sources (unintuitively) measured by the light output of an equivalent incandescent light source? I certainly don’t expect a light labeled as a “40 watt” using anything close to that.
    • alright2565 3y ago
      Grow lights are by actual power draw & generally also come with efficiency specs.
      • lightedman 3y ago
        Grow lights usually draw half of their advertised power, and try to justify it by saying 'equivalent' somewhere on the box next to an asterisk. Very few grow lights that have ever hit my hands came close to their advertised power rating. One company sold me a 50w, 135w, and 300w light set. the 50w was 45 at the wall, 135 was 75, 300 was 150. And that's because their thermal designs are utter garbage. They can't run at full power. Most UFO lights are literally bolted to a plate, no fins of any sort, and a fan set blows down on it to cool the LEDs. If you get a rectangular panel, odds are you might get one undersized heat sink that doesn't cover the entire LED array (just the array, not the whole panel) Most efficiency specs are garbage, too, measured with non-calibrated COTS light meters. I can toss most lights in my integrated sphere and I'll see way different from what is claimed. Very few companies can actually be trusted. I have yet to find one with 100% honesty.
• parl_match 3y ago
  For what it's worth, I use zigbee for my smart home, with a hubitat. It's connected to homekit, and it's been painless (except for the part where you have to manually add things to homekit from the hubitat). Thread/matter promise to put this garbage to sleep, finally. The smart-home offerings from the major vendors allow all devices, without vendorlock (so far).
  • bombcar 3y ago
    I wish they had chosen a name easier to search. Thread and matter are like, basic building blocks and really hard to search, even HomeKit is better, Zigbee and friends was perfect.
• pcdoodle 3y ago
  Insteon is still alive for those that want something that is about device relationships first and LAN/WAN is secondary. I removed my hub years ago and still love the quality of life improvements. They've been around since 2006.
  • desro 3y ago
    What are you using to configure or manage Insteon devices without the hub? did you grab one of their modems or plms?
    • pcdoodle 3y ago
      No Hub, they talk to each other EG: kitchen lights when turned on also turn on a few floor lamps and living room lights to 50%. If i double tap the switch 100% or 0% on all.
• robswc 3y ago
  Not to high-jack but I too would like to lament (and hopefully humor HN) about "smart home" gadgets and the companies behind them. I bought a "Cync" bulb from GE and had to reset it, I couldn't for the life of me. This is their official video on how to do it: https://youtu.be/1BB6wj6RyKo https://youtu.be/1BB6wj6RyKo You have to repeat a sequence with near perfect timing, that takes about a minute straight. Since we moved, I had to do this for 4 lights and wanted to tear my hair out, lol. I've found that for whatever reason, "smart home" stuff is some of the worst designed and managed products out there.
  • cooper_ganglia 3y ago
    Smart home, dumb manufacturers
  • kristjansson 3y ago
    What in the bowels of unholy hell We recommend counting with Mississippi (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc.). Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds. 1. Turn on for 8 seconds 2. Turn off for 2 seconds 3. Turn on for 8 seconds 4. Turn off for 2 seconds 5. Turn on for 8 seconds 6. Turn off for 2 seconds 7. Turn on for 8 seconds 8. Turn off for 2 seconds 9. Turn on for 8 seconds 10. Turn off for 2 seconds If the factory reset above was unsuccessful, you might have an older version of the C by GE bulb. Please follow the instructions below to reset. Bulb Reset Sequence – for firmware version 2.7 or earlier: We recommend counting with Mississippi (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, etc.). Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds. 1. Turn on for 8 seconds 2. Turn off for 2 seconds 3. Turn on for 2 seconds 4. Power off for 2 seconds 5. Turn on for 2 seconds 6. Power off for 2 seconds 7. Turn on for 2 seconds 8. Power off for 2 seconds 9. Turn on for 8 seconds 10. Power off for 2 seconds 11. Turn on for 8 seconds 12. Power off for 2 seconds
    • aquova 3y ago
      I like how this implies that after firmware release 2.7, they decided that 12 different power cycling patterns was too many, so they lowered it to 10. Wouldn't want some unsuspecting user to reset their bulbs by accidentally following an exact pattern up to 9 times.
• nerdjon 3y ago
  This is quickly becoming a problem with a lot of Home Automation. Too many companies are finally realizing that thanks to matter their products are basically going to become commodities. No longer is there an advantage to sticking within a single platform to avoid hubs (ok so maybe "no longer" is jumping forward a few years but still, the steps are happening now). The part that really frustrates me, my Hue devices are the most reliable devices in my home automation behind my HomePods. On a fairly regular basis my other home automation devices will just randomly not work, loose connection, or just generally have issues. I am not exactly itching move away from that reliability and I feel like Phillips Hue likely knows this. This includes Ikea when I tried their smart tech just a couple years ago. It was incredibly unreliable and I do question actually recommending it (that being said, maybe they have gotten better and I would love for someone here to tell me has... it seems kind against Ikea for them to go down a locking down approach?)
  • bombcar 3y ago
    The main thing for reliability for me is ... is there wired ethernet to the device or hub, and NOT wifi or bluetooth to the final switch/bulb. "real" protocols like Zigbee and friends seem to work well.
    • nerdjon 3y ago
      Hmm, I hadn't thought about it before but I do wonder if that is part why it is as reliable as it is. I believe the Hue hub is ethernet only while my other hubs are all wifi. However I think the Ikea hub I had was ethernet only so not sure if that's the entire answer.
  • kristofferR 3y ago
    Ikea has gotten quite a bit better. Most of their devices are Zigbee 3.0 now, and work fine.
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    > This includes Ikea when I tried their smart tech just a couple years ago. It was incredibly unreliable and I do question actually recommending it (that being said, maybe they have gotten better and I would love for someone here to tell me has... I have had IKEA bulbs and outlets for over two years (adding to it over that time) and have great experiences and high reliability.
• wildekek 3y ago
  Running your own Zigbee network is not that hard. I am a Home Assistant fanboy, but you can just use it to bridge your Zigbee network to Homekit without having to know how it works.
• rmccue 3y ago
  Annoyingly, the alarm app I use (Sleep Cycle) only supports Hue for some of the advanced features (sunrise lights). Despite supporting HomeKit for some stuff, the ecosystem lock-in persists.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    Can't HomeKit do the sunrise stuff itself via automation? But maybe I just triggered something in Hue for those ...
    • rmccue 3y ago
      You can preprogram that sort of stuff in, but if you set alarms to irregular times, you really want the integration rather than having to manually readjust daily. (I have a Lifx Day and Dusk in the bedroom lamp, not a Hue.)
  • ValentineC 3y ago
    +1. Sleep Cycle was the main reason I got into the Hue ecosystem. It seems like they now support HomeKit scenes for waking up and going to bed, but full use of scene automations (like getting lights to fade in) requires setting up a Home Hub via something like an Apple TV or HomePod.
• perryizgr8 3y ago
  When you consider the fact that Hue devices are extremely overpriced compared to everything else in the market, it's even more confusing why they would feel the need to monetize user data.
• anymouse123456 3y ago
  I bought a Samsung Smart Things hub and many hundreds of dollars worth of $90 Lutron ZWave switches and dimmers about 5 years ago. Within 6 months, Samsung discontinued support for my hub and remotely bricked it for me. At the time, other main brand hubs didn't want to do ZWave. I stopped following the dumpster fire after that and now I just turn my lights on and off like a plebe with my fingers.
  • katbyte 3y ago
    I’m still using 9 year old hue bulbs, none have failed. The hub finally did, or rather the bricked it with an update and then trying to fix it lost all my config this year so I switched to home assistant finally Couldn’t be happier and my nearly decade old hue bulbs will continue to work
    • anymouse123456 3y ago
      Nice. I've been creepily learing at Home Assistant from the run down apartment across the street for some years now...
• Mistletoe 3y ago
  I just put a dimmer in the wall if I need to dim lights, it’s really not that hard and works on electrical principles that won’t change when some manufacturer decides to trash the whole ecosystem. I’ve never found the need to change color temperature of lights beyond just changing the bulb.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    If I really want different color temperatures in the future I think I'm just going to double the number of fixtures instead. The fancy bulbs are too complicated and (in my experience) die too regularly.
• psyclobe 3y ago
  "What can you do about it? Before you say "Home Assistant", let me stop you right there." No let me stop you right there. All the good Hue stuff works with Zigbee so you can (and should) totally just run your own hub and bypass all of this; yes with home assistant! That's really the best solution. You can just control the lights directly how you see fit without even talking to Phillips.
  • aquova 3y ago
    Can you? A relative was cleaning out some of their stuff and gave me some Philips Hue lightbulbs, but no hub. I have a Home Assistant setup with a number of Zigbee devices, but I had never found anyway to pair them direction via Zigbee, everything I saw required the hub. If there is a way, I'd like to hear it, I've just been using them as regular lightbulbs...
    • vorpalhex 3y ago
      Power off the bulb. Turn your zigbee hub into pairing mode (it may always be in pairing mode). Turn on bulb. Should autopair in 30 secs or less. My hue bulbs pair so aggressively to my zigbee hub that I have to block pairing on it to get new ones on the hue hub! They may already be paired and you just never realized.
      • Izkata 3y ago
        Side comment, I have some ZWave bulbs and they pair the same way.
      • juahan 3y ago
        I have no experience from Hue lights, but at least Ikea bulbs need to go to pairing mode if they were previously paired to something. Without it they cannot pair to new hub. With Ikea lights you get them into pairing mode by flicking the lights on and off 10 times.
      • swizzler 3y ago
        I've had to force my Hue bulb into zigbee pairing mode by holding a Hue dimmer switch very close, then pressing and holding the on and off buttons until the light starts to flash and stops flashing, then releasing the on/off buttons.
• qwertox 3y ago
  > Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. Maybe it's good news? To me it sounds as illegal as a car manufacturer requiring you to use Shell vpower in order for you to not void the warranty, and doing so after you bought the car. Maybe the EU could then deal with this and ask the important question: Are they even allowed to link the functionality of IoT devices to an online account? My reason for buying all Phillips was that their system was relatively open, that the gateway could be accessed and controlled via HTTP and put behind a firewall without access to and from the internet. And the ability to use 3rd party apps. I've moved over to using Zigbee2MQTT together with a Zigbee USB 3.0 Dongle and all controlled from a custom Python based server on a Raspberry Pi, which made me lose all the access via the apps (I'm not into Home Assistant), but it's now all automated and controllable via dimmers and other events so that in my case the Phillips gateway has become obsolete. But it was a great entry into the ecosystem, just because it was simply usable via HTTP, which allowed the best of both worlds: the apps and the ability to tinker with it all. The only thing which was missing was the real-time access to events. Sad to see that they are turning their back on us, but let's hope that the EU notices and creates some new laws, even if it's in 10 years.
  • LeafItAlone 3y ago
    > Zigbee USB 3.0 Dongle Which one do you use?
    • Unknown-911 3y ago
      Same one
    • cricalix 3y ago
      Not the GP, but I've been tinkering with HA on a Pi4 and use a Sonoff one on a long USB cable (per the manufacturer's recommendation to avoid interference from the Pi). It's the EZSP based one, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0B6P22YJC https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0B6P22YJC They do another one on a different chipset too; the EZSP one is the newer hotness, and so far unlike the older model, there's no firmware update to flash.
    • 3y ago
• wkjagt 3y ago
  I still turn my lights on with a switch on the wall. I always wondered why people wanted to turn on their lights with an app, but maybe there's some life quality thing I'm totally missing out on?
  • briHass 3y ago
    My personal use case is an older (1979) house with insufficient or poorly placed switch/switched outlet locations and my general dislike of can/LED puck lighting in living spaces. My kitchen, for example, has 4 separate light circuits for tasks: under cabinet lights, 2 cans with spotlight LEDs over the sink, multiple can lights around the perimeter, and 3 over the kitchen table. They're all on Kasa switches and hooked to Alexa for voice control. So, you can turn on the sink lights to wash dishes without touching anything and lights can be turned on/off in groups no matter where you are standing. Other living areas use a combo of table and floor lamps at multiple locations/outlets, so it's nice to be able to turn everything on together by room with a voice command. These rooms have a switched outlet, but that's a single location, and in one room, the switch is not positioned well.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • sp332 3y ago
    My bed has 4 or 5 light fixtures that can shine on it, and only one is easily reachable from the bed.
  • MAGZine 3y ago
    my lights turn themselves on gradually, with the sunset. They also turn themselves off if they're still on late at night, or when I leave the house.
  • sunnybeetroot 3y ago
    You’re missing out on not needing to think about turning on your lights. Come home at 6pm every night after work; lights come on at 5:55pm. Come home at different times of the night; set up a motion sensor to trigger the lights when the door opens or per room. Don’t want to set up a motion sensor? Geofence your house. Seasons changing mean sunset is later; have logic that only turns on lights after sunset. Kids are only allowed to watch tv until 8pm; automate the tv turning off at 8pm. Its limitless what you can do. This is all very easy to do using something like HomeKit. Each day adds minutes back in your life; span that across a lifetime and it makes a difference.
• nerdix 3y ago
  I really don't understand smart home hardware companies forcing communication through the cloud over local control. Do they think that they can get you hooked on the cloud and then charge you a monthly fee to turn on your lights? Plus, they just pushed a Matter update which I think allows for local control. This seems like a good way to get people to sign in to setup matter and then never open the Hue app again.
  • heatmiser 3y ago
    Wink tried this and with little success.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    It's exactly that. they think they can become a Lightbulb-as-a-Service company. Insane.
  • callalex 3y ago
    Knowing how many people are home, when they are home, and what rooms they occupy is data that can be sold and is sold for several dollars a month. The point is to stalk you and manipulate you.
  • darksensei 3y ago
    The Matter update is only for the hub to expose the devices connected to it over Matter, the bulbs themselves are still zigbee only. Better than nothing still.
• briHass 3y ago
  I've been pretty happy with the Kasa switches and bulbs. They have a cloud component, but you don't have to use it to control them. The protocol has been figured out and is a simple socket payload (I wrote a command line app to prove it to myself), and of course they are controllable by HA. They're 2.4G Wifi, but I can't get too bothered about that. I've optimized my coverage with multiple, decent APs, so it seems silly not to use it. I'm jaded on Z-Wave after I had multiple GE Z-Wave switches just burn out on me after a couple years. I've also retired my Samsung Smartthings and Hue hub, and I don't want to buy another hub for a few lights. I also can't see paying $30+ for a light switch; the Kasa units are frequently on sale for a reasonable $10.
  • callalex 3y ago
    If they rely on a central server, what guarantee do you have that it won’t all go to shit with no warning? You certainly can’t rely on the economics of the situation, so what’s left is relying on some nebulous concept of “reputation” and that has been proven over and over again by the largest and smallest companies to be worthless…
    • briHass 3y ago
      They need the central server/phone app to be initially provisioned, but they can be controlled entirely locally after that. No phone app needed. I'd prefer completely open, but I haven't found anything as well made and inexpensive that's also open.
• unpopularopp 3y ago
  Quite literally a first world problem. Dose anyone else just feel embarrassed reading articles like this (especially on the top of HN)? We really are having the best of times in 2023 when not able to changing the colors of light bulbs w/o logging in is a, seemingly, big deal. Or it really is just the end game before the collapse.
  • nisa 3y ago
    First it's about precedent. HTTP or something else using TCP/IP is eating the world and while reading that article I remembered that this blood pressure measurement device I bought with Bluetooth also forces me to login in the their shitty cloud to sync the data with their app. You're whole existence will look like that at this point I already gave up on the privacy aspect of it which is also not okay but that shit is just unusable, broken and won't work in 5 years. Fucking planet is heating it's not okay fucking lightbulb remote control and blood pressure measurement should be local and easy. It's about how we do digitalization. Having said that - I also think I don't need that stuff and I don't have it so it's a first world problem. The display shows the blood pressure - Bluetooth is not needed and I've already thought led lightbulbs are to expensive and I'm far too poor to buy some internet connected expensive stuff. I'm embarrassed at that cheap take at home assistant which seems to be some kind of free open-source version? On the other hand it's a rant I really can't blame the article it's good at what it does and doesn't want to solve the world's problems. It's just pure frustration about a product that used to work without some shitty cloud and we should collectively fight that we can use and buy stuff without any shitty cloud. It's important. Because it will be everywhere - or already is. And sure there is an imperialist war going , people don't get healthcare and are still enslaved. It's very first world middle class or even upper middle class privileged problem.
  • incrudible 3y ago
    Yes, everything involving smart tech is a first world problem, but that does not mean we should be silent about it. This move is bullshit. If you are comfortable with corporations pushing more and more bullshit into their products even after the fact, fine. I am not, because a lot of my quality of life, for better and worse, depends on their products.
  • 3y ago
• marricks 3y ago
  Technology has moved so quickly we literally can't have anything nice for more than 5 years before they start innovating on revenue streams. I used to be a massive technophile but now I have the dumbest home of all my family and friends and I wouldn't change it for the world.
• mtreis86 3y ago
  Shelly products are (mostly) esp32 based with very open architecture. I figure in 20 years, they will either be dead or still working, no middle ground of "manufacturer went under" because the toolchain is open.
• dzogchen 3y ago
  I really can't feel sorry for people that think it's a good idea to depend on proprietary software for their light bulbs.
  • bombcar 3y ago
    Remember when "I need to reboot my phone" was a punchline for jokes about smartphones? Now please wait whilst I reboot my lightbulbs and apply a firmware update to my toilet.
• alufers 3y ago
  Why is the proposed solution HomeKit? It requires an Apple device to control it and an iCloud Account. Are account requirements from some companies better than other?
  • LeoPanthera 3y ago
    If you already have an iCloud account, the additional requirements for HomeKit are zero. "Hue" accounts have no other purpose, so zero people already have one.
• pawelduda 3y ago
  I switched hue bulbs to zigbee2mqtt adapter few days ago, the whole thing took 30 mins, mostly because I had to factory reset all bulbs and go through dashboards and automations and replace old hue integration entities with new ones. Zigbee2mqtt adapter picked them up right away, I tossed the hue bridge, and got rid of few cables. Amazing that it just worked. Just didn't get the hue remote to work yet because I'm lazy, worst case I can literally program anything else to interact with the lights now through HA I'm using SONOFF Zigbee USB Dongle Plus with Z-Stack 3.x.0 Coordinator Firmware that plugs directly into RPI
• erulabs 3y ago
  I’d rather install open source JavaScript code via curl and sudo than install closed source binaries via an iOS app. This is for something with a permanent place on your home network. Rachel is usually spot on, but dogma won the day today. Home assistant is great, and I’ll go one step further: I don’t care a bit what language a tool is written in. Plenty of insecure and malicious C in the world.
  • tills13 3y ago
    You can audit what you're installing as it's open source. Such an odd hill to die on.
    • c0pium 3y ago
      Congratulations, you’ve now signed up to audit a genuine morass of a code base. It’s full of terribly written JavaScript hacked together by people who more or less know how to write a class. But hey, at least you can read the code.
      • hnbad 3y ago
        If you're so violently allergic to JavaScript just use OpenHAB, which is written in good old Java.
        • c0pium 3y ago
          As I made clear in my post it’s the quality of the code, not the language.
      • tills13 3y ago
        You, and 60k other people who have starred it or 80ish people that have recently committed.
        • c0pium 3y ago
          OpenSSL would like a word.
• sradu 3y ago
  I've had Govee floor lamps for a while now, they seem to have feature parity with Philips Hue for 1/3rd of the price. One of them broke, and there was a button in the app to report it. I kid you not, a replacement arrived the second day, free of charge.
  • throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    That's Amazon Seller customer service. You sell a product with a 5x markup, so when your crap build quality and nonexistent QA end up shipping bricked devices or they die prematurely, you replace it for free no questions asked. People are so surprised by it that they leave glowing reviews, and that sells more product.
• 0xbadc0de5 3y ago
  Going to ignore the author and say: yes, HomeAssistant is indeed a viable and reasonably secure (if self-hosted) alternative. Whenever buying a "smart" light/switch/outlet, I always make sure it can be flashed to Tasmota so I can keep my home automation as self-hosted as possible. Hue's descent was inevitable and lights/switches/outlets have long life spans. Don't trust your smart devices to corporate whims.
• brianaker 3y ago
  Just stop for a moment and ask yourself "could the author of this post be wrong." Philips just introduced Matter support which requires local access, and continues to support Apple Home as well. There are dozens of apps which can manage their hubs. ( FWIW I use iConnectHue. ) Philips also just introduced cameras, which did require them to update their EULA.
  • wlesieutre 3y ago
    I left an App Store review expressing my disappointment and got this explanation in a response from the “developer” (relevant sentence clipped for brevity): > To keep your accounts and products secure and ensure you get the most out of your system, you’ll need to create a Philips Hue account soon. To make sure my account is secure, I’ll be required to have an account. Cool.
    • brianaker 3y ago
      There are no announcements by Hue to developers that the CLIP API is going away, so I suspect there is a lot over speculation based on a clueless Twitter post made by some droid that most likely doesn't even understand the questions they were asked.
      • wlesieutre 3y ago
        Lacking any believable reason for suddenly deciding my lightbulbs need an online account connected to Hue's servers, I think it's fair to assume they're eventually going to do something shitty with their online system that I could have avoided otherwise. It's happened with so many IoT platforms. They won't announce it today, and any bad press they get this week will be long forgotten, but someday they'll come back around with some bright executive saying "You know, we could extract more value out of these lightbulb users, they've invested hundreds of dollars in our ecosystem, what're they going to do throw them all out instead of paying us $5/month?"
  • hnbad 3y ago
    In all communication so far Philips/Signify has suggested that going forward 1) You will need to sign in with your Hue account even when using the app locally and 2) This will store (a copy of) all metadata in their cloud to enable you to use remote access. Arguably this is moot if you're already using remote access but it means the Hue app and bridge will be unusuable for anyone who chose Hue because it does not store your data in the cloud. I also believe this is an attempt at consolidation to make it easier for them to support cloud-storage cameras as part of the same platform. It's still understandable why some users might object to this, especially if they have no interest in using any of the cloud features or new devices that will require it. Amazon Echo requires local access too but that doesn't mean you can opt out of Amazon storing your (meta)data in the cloud if you want to use your Echo to control Zigbee devices.
• sacnoradhq 3y ago
  I don't think about them because mine still work fine (with a bridge connected to Ethernet) with Alexa for several years without major problems. I have 90+ total of strips, light bulbs, and such. I'm at about the limit for what one bridge can support. The HDMI audio Sync box is a PITA that doesn't work well and doesn't support many lights. It's a $300 paperweight. There was a periodic bug where lights would turn back on after commanded to turn off, and wouldn't stay off. That happened maybe 1% of the time but hasn't happened lately. I also have no-brand, BT-based I2C silicone ARGB "rope" that requires an I2C fan-out repeater because only about 12 feet / 4 m could be powered serially.
  • timc3 3y ago
    You might actually need two hubs, which is why the sync box doesn’t work very well. I don’t have the sync box but I noticed the hub struggling with automations on about 60 something lights. I now have two hue hubs, and a zigbee 3.0 controller with over 120 devices. Easily run 8m of the best (high density, super bright which is actually too bright) RGB CCT rope light from a single zigbee controller. Perhaps its the controller and power supply you are using?
• zamalek 3y ago
  This is the counter-intuitive issue with the open protocol, Zigbee. Manufacturers are free to implement it however they want, which will always result in enshittification. Counter-intuitively, the closed standard, Z-Wave, operates more like an open ecosystem. My Z-Wave Thermostat (ACD-2000, nearly the only Z-Wave thermostat that doesn't look like it hails from the 90s) swears that it requires the Alarm.com ecosystem on the store page - but the simple truth is that it wouldn't be Z-Wave compliant (and therefore couldn't be sold) if it didn't work with any hub (Aoetec in my setup - they are particularly friendly with the HA community). Compare this with an Ecobee: a Zigbee device which requires their hub (and other Zigbee devices are unlikely to work with the Ecobee hub, so I'm sure you get the idea). Hue bulbs are one firmware update away from the same situation, even though Philips have "promised" not to. I'm not sure what the situation is with Matter/Thread - my Google fu isn't strong enough to determine whether it will go the way of Zigbee (which it's based on, but merely as a channel) or Z-Wave. As for LEDs and the rest? ESPHome. I do have some Hues, but that hub will go in the trash once all the bulbs burn out.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  I do not understand the people who buy garbage products they don't need and then complain when they inevitably decompose and attract flies. You literally purchased a light bulb with software. You did this to yourself. It's like setting your yard on fire instead of mowing and then complaining that the yard looks bad. I deal with shitty technology products every day. Bugs out the ass, terrible UX. When I report the bugs or point out how horrible they are to use, I'm either ignored, or told it's my problem. Do I complain? No, because I've learned that a horrible experience is what I should expect from technology. A shit experience is par for the course. I should really be happy that my phone has not killed me yet. Though seeing as cars are increasingly becoming very large smartphones, that might not last long... If you only knew how horrifying the software for chargers is, you wouldn't walk near one.
  • function_seven 3y ago
    There's nothing inevitable about this stuff if you avoid The Cloud from the beginning. Hue used to be about that, with the app locally controlling everything and the cloud as just an option. Because of that, all of my Hue bulbs will continue to work just fine. I never used their app in the first place. Keep that same mindset with any whizbang tech, and you'll mostly be alright. Cheap build quality is something else to watch out for, but that infects "dumb" devices just as much.
• phire 3y ago
  > If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that's what's going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists I think it's unhelpful to think about the management of these companies this way. In my experience, assigning the most evil possible motivation to someone else is dangerous as it blinds us to the possibility that even non-evil motivations can lead to undesirable results.
  • notpachet 3y ago
    "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
  • whoIsYou 3y ago
    true, but these people ARE evil
• TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  This enshittifcation is endemic. Corporations cannot just release a good product and support it. The better the product is and the larger the customer base becomes, the higher the likelihood that some business planner is going to see dollar signs and try to squeeze the product for everything it’s worth. And every time this ruins the product. And we’re here with a proprietary phone OS and proprietary apps. Proprietary firmwares on proprietary hardware. And we are completely at the whim of these companies. And the option is what, buy a Zigbee dongle and a raspberry pi run some code written by unpaid enthusiasts? 3D print a case for it and mount it on the wall, running updates and fixing it ever few months when some package update breaks it? I like the concept of lights that run from an app. I don’t have any of the physical Hue switches for my system and it’s fine. But I do not want an app that abuses me, and I do not want to maintain some fragile project made from slapped together code. I want robust open hardware with open source software. I’m convinced that we can achieve this, but it won’t be with the current model of business and engineering we have today.
  • redox99 3y ago
    The problem is investors. Investors don't care about a sustainable business. They want infinite growth, and sucking dry both the the customers and the business itself.
    • tlrobinson 3y ago
      The problem is also your fellow consumers, most of whom don’t actually care about the things us nerds care about.
      • autoexec 3y ago
        They do care about getting screwed over. In my experience though they forget about it pretty fast and/or just feel overwhelmed and powerless about the situation. Maybe they'll avoid a specific brand after a bad experience, but they won't be checking over specs or considering requirements for the next thing they buy that rips them off.
• 8note 3y ago
  There's an ecosystem? All they do is turn off and on on command, and change colour.
• brucethemoose2 3y ago
  What does this look like from Philips' side? Are they losing sales? Making money from the login somehow? Is whoever made this decision getting patted on the back, even though its tanking sales? I think that's probably the case, otherwise they would have rolled it back some.
• egberts1 3y ago
  for my next brand-new car, one which manufacturer can make without asking privacy questions nor EULA, GETS MY MONEY!
• jedberg 3y ago
  Sadly there is no money in home automation unless you can force them into your SaaS service. Making a good product and selling it once just doesn't get Wall Street excited anymore. Honestly, I'd blame Wall Street here more than the tech companies, but it's really everyone's fault. Tech compensates people with stock, so everyone is incentivized to make the stock go up. That's not always doing what's best for the customer. But also running a hardware business where every customer buys something once is a tough low margin business. New players don't want to get into the game and old players have to placate Wall Street. Even Apple is shifting more and more into services, but they can vertically integrate and are already "upscale". No one can pull of being an upscale light switch. Honestly I think open source is the only thing that will save us here, but sadly there isn't a lot of money in that either.
  • com2kid 3y ago
    > Sadly there is no money in home automation unless you can force them into your SaaS service. Making a good product and selling it once just doesn't get Wall Street excited anymore. Cloud servers cost money to run. Security updates cost money. Firmware updates cost money. Mobile apps have ongoing costs, you can't just release an app into the stores and have it keep working, Google and Apple keep demanding updates. One time fees on low margin consumer electronics is not a sustainable model.
    • exodust 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure the margin is not low on Hue lights and switches. They are not cheap. And surely an app can keep working with minimal updates, I don't see that as a huge expense for Hue.
      • com2kid 3y ago
        I had friends who worked on a very popular consumer electric device before who revealed the ugly economics of it to me. Cost to build, around $7. Retail price, over $30. Profit for the company, around $3. Distributors and retailers took the remaining. Selling stuff in physical stores is a nasty business. I remember these numbers whenever I see people complain about app stores taking a 30% cut.
• mtalantikite 3y ago
  Somewhat off topic, but I bought a Philips Hue system for my house in August since the incandescent ban has made it difficult to find light bulbs. I spent some time getting the colors close to matching my incandescents with a light meter, set up some automations, etc. I could definitely tell they were LEDs (I think their R9 values are low), but they seemed... ok? I don't know, I still wasn't really loving it, but they were better than some other LEDs I had tried in the past. And some of the automations seemed legitimately useful. Well, I got 4 ocular migraines in less than 3 days. Packed them all up and sent them back. If anyone has recommendations for LEDs that don't trigger migraines let me know. Or else I guess I'm buying a lifetime supply of incandescents and a storage unit for lightbulbs /s. Honestly, the whole thing sort of seems like focusing on the wrong things. I've never owned a car, am vegetarian, have never lived in more than 1000 sq ft as an adult, and walk/take public transit in NYC daily. Not sure the 2 incandescent lightbulbs I use in my living room are really causing climate change.
  • dml2135 3y ago
    > the incandescent ban has made it difficult to find light bulbs. Where do you shop for light bulbs? I don’t think I’ve seen an incandescent on a store shelf for the better part of a decade now.
    • mtalantikite 3y ago
      The Duane Reade near me always had them. Bodegas. Smaller grocery stores. I don't know, they never were hard to find here in NYC until a few months ago.
      • rashkov 3y ago
        Try searching for “rough service bulbs”, I think those are still on sale
  • smartbit 3y ago
    A few years ago read a review that stated IKEA led lamps (at that time) had more red (R9). You’d have to do more research to confirm. I did buy a large supply of incandescents some 15years ago, now running out of them and starting to consider alternatives.
• Gazoche 3y ago
  Call me an old man yelling at the cloud, but I just don't understand the hype of connected lightbulbs. In absolute, would I like to be able to turn off the lights from my smartphone? Well, sure, if there was absolutely no cost to it. But the negatives of being tied to Yet Another Cloud Service potentially subject to data breaches, of installing an app on my phone that's going to require space, updates, and an online account, of depending on a piece of electronics with a shitty firmware that's eventually going to break or go end-of-life, just vastly outweigh the positives. In a vacuum, having more features is good. But simplicity itself is a feature. Simple things don't break as often, it's easier to fix when they do, and they're more predictable, meaning it's easier to plan your life around them.
  • solarmist 3y ago
    It’s having color changing lightbulbs that was the feature for me. Most basic is shifting from 5000k white to 3500k white in the evening. Color scenes are nice too.
    • lolinder 3y ago
      Phillips sells dimmable bulbs that become redder as they dim. Those plus a few dimmer switches are all I've needed to create that effect, no network access needed.
      • solarmist 3y ago
        Neat, but that's only one piece. Plus, I LIKE HomeKit.
    • jowea 3y ago
      I would also add voice control.
  • stickfigure 3y ago
    I have various lights outside. It's quite nice to be able to say "hey google, turn on the pool lights" when I want to see, or turn them off if someone left them on. When it's hot, I put a window fan in my bedroom in the evenings. I have it plugged into a smart switch. The google routine turns it off around 2am automatically. I sometimes adjust the time depending on season. I haven't rewired the light switches in the house because it's not that important to me, but it would be nice to be able to say "hey google, turn off all the lights" when I go out instead of running around flipping switches. I honestly don't care if someone in China knows if my lights are on.
• solarmist 3y ago
  Doesn’t Apple require that HomeKit devices can be operated without company specific apps? Specifically to avoid this kind of situation. Is there any effect if you aren’t using the Hue app? Or reason not to drop it (the hue app) for HomeKit?
• nunez 3y ago
  > What can you do about it? Before you say "Home Assistant", let me stop you right there. Javascript plus a "curl | sudo sh" attitude to life equals "yeah no, I am never touching this thing". Not sure what the author is playing at here. You can run HA as a Docker container, and I'm pretty sure Hue is a built-in integration. All of the integrations are open source, so if someone flicking your lights on and off while you're baking cookies or something is a concern, others would have spotted it. I thought HA was difficult since that's the vibe it gets. It was crazy easy to get going with. Took me a few hours to get all 30+ of my bulbs (different vendors too), locks, cameras, etc. baked in and working with HomeKit. Ring took a little longer because Amazon, but I got it done.
  • acidburnNSA 3y ago
    I have run Home Assistant for ~9 years. I've done so with the core system in a virtual environment all along, and it's been great. I run my own local mosquitto server for MQTT in its own systemd service, bridged with one on my web server for remote stuff. You can do all this without any `curl | sudo sh` using excellent open source documentation.
    • nunez 3y ago
      mosquitto is pretty great
• flybrand 3y ago
  I ran copper wires to convenient locations in my house and then hard mounted manual switches to control lighting that is far away.
  • acidburnNSA 3y ago
    How do you turn them orange though on halloween?
  • princeb 3y ago
    how do you turn them on through local network? the typical solution using wifi connected arduino servos seems like overkill.
• sashk 3y ago
  Never liked the Hue ecosystem. At some point I needed a motion sensor compatible with HomeKit. So went and got myself pretty cheap hue bridge and hue motion sensor only to find out (well, I should have done research probably) that motion sensor won't be able to paired with the bridge until at least one bulb is paired, so had to purchase cheapest bulb to get things working. it was still cheaper at the time comparing to other HomeKit only motion sensors. I never got home assistant working, so got myself Hubitat hub (C7), which supports both Zigbee and Zwave radios and now exports them as HomeKit devices. So cheap sensors easy to pickup now are exposed to my HomeKit setup. That Hue motion sensor now directly connected to the the Hubitat and Hue bridge is somewhere in the box. But at the time of setup, I was surprised that Hue Bridge didn't have an account. Didn't think about this until recent articles saying that account is now going to be mandatory.
• jimbobimbo 3y ago
  I have the same issue with BlackVue dashcams. One day you launch the auto-updated app - bam! Please sign in to view your recordings. The home automation that requires one to sign in is next level, of course.
• daft_pink 3y ago
  Hue is so weird. They launched a rival product line and compete with themselves. Hue is only a good product, because of the Lutron Aurora switches that I added on. I'm convinced it's more practical over the long term to rip out all of my hue products and replace them with Lutron physical switches and normal lighting. Then your light fixtures don't have to adapt to hue, all your lighting controls work on a single platform, and Lutron is a great company that always has made great products.
• perfmode 3y ago
  A few years ago, the Hue app was redesigned. I never did figure out how to use it.
• ryukoposting 3y ago
  This is inevitable with most "smart home" crap. Wireless-enabled appliances don't sell well unless they can (sort of-) compete with their "dumb" counterparts on price. How do you sell a complicated piece of technology at the price of a simpler device? You banish quality control and slurp up personal data. That's not a new concept to Philips or any other consumer IoT company. They're just getting better at doing it.
• haunter 3y ago
  Am I missing something? Isn’t the whole point of HomeKit that you don’t need a 3rd party app? I have some cameras and they work like that, scanned the QR code and Apple does the job never downloaded the manufacturer’s app. Is it different with Philips Hue?
  • yeskia 3y ago
    I feel like everything I have that supports HomeKit requires the manufacturer's app installed so that HomeKit can interface with the accessory through the app. Which always felt like it defeated the purpose to me.
    • haunter 3y ago
      Well I have some Aqara/Xiaomi cameras and never ever installed their app and I only control them through the iOS Home.app (Apple TV being the hub)
  • callalex 3y ago
    Yes it was a serious flaw in the protocol design and made the whole ecosystem worthless from the day it was launched because some short-sighted product designer prioritized quarterly growth over making something actually useful.
• User23 3y ago
  IoT is a giant enshittification. Sadly personal transportation, ie cars, are now IoT.
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  I would like to order a subscription to green lights please!
• mardifoufs 3y ago
  Would installing an old version of the app work? Like an APK that dates from before the time the notice started appearing or ever earlier than that.
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  Mechanical light switches, for the win. Every time. Or if you are disabled, maybe PIR sensors like they had in the 90s. But what we need is stronger consumer law. You should be able to buy something from a hardware store and trust it works and won't fuck with you. Talk of running Docker in other comments is like saying "yeah you need to chemically test that cement you purchased, or go to the mine yourself, because some outlets are dodgy and the is the way it is"
• cmsonger 3y ago
  I gotta admit, I like lightbulbs that are just lightbulbs.
• SamuelAdams 3y ago
  > Instead, I have a simpler workaround, assuming you just have lights and "smart outlets" in your life. Get a hold of an Ikea Dirigera hub. Then delete the units from the Hue Hub and add them to the Ikea side of things. It'll run them just fine, and will also export them to HomeKit so that much will keep working as well. I have a simpler solution. Take all this home automation stuff and throw it out. Replace it with non tech equivalents. Observe your stress and care melt away. Spend your energy on endeavors that matter, like family, friends, and Nintendo Switch emulators.
  • Phrodo_00 3y ago
    But then I have to get off bed to turn off the ceiling light D:
• hnreport 3y ago
  I need a SteelSeeries account to use my mouse in any meaningful way. The war is over, and the Allies didn’t win.
• lolinder 3y ago
  I'm gonna be honest, I've never understood the appeal of a smart bulb. I installed dimmer switches in each room of my house and bought LED bulbs that get redder when dimmed (like incandescent bulbs naturally do). I turn on the lights when I walk into a room, turn them down when it gets dark outside, and turn them off when I leave or go to sleep. To those who do find value in WiFi-connected bulbs: what makes them worth it to you? I'm genuinely curious, because if Home Depot's lightbulb aisle is any indication I'm the odd one.
  • redundantly 3y ago
    I use zigbee devices, not WiFi, but the principle is the same. Some of my smart bulbs support multiple colors. I can use the Daylight setting during the day, Sunset setting in the evening (for a warmer light) and Red for late night so I don't kill my night vision. Also it's just fun to play with the colors. As for the rest of my lights it's nice to be able to turn everything off and on all at once. Sometimes my kids leave lights on when they go to bed, I don't have to wander around turning them off (no, I'm not going to wake them up to do it). I can turn on my outside lights and scare off any skunks really quickly when one of my dogs needs to go out at night. So on and so forth.
    • lolinder 3y ago
      Thanks for sharing! Zigbee is way more interesting to me than WiFi-based. I can see the appeal of being able to turn all the lights off at once—do you use an app for that, or is it a physical device somewhere?
      • timc3 3y ago
        Can do it with a physical switch, an automation or voice. I have all 3 enabled.
      • redundantly 3y ago
        At the moment, using an Amazon Echo that has a zigbee controller in it. It directly controls all devices. "Alexa turn off all lights"
• jmuguy 3y ago
  Can someone explain the Home Assistant anecdote regarding JS and curl | sudo sh? Does the author mean Home Assistant isn't secure? Or that there's some issue with the front end of it? Or something else? Because imo... that is the answer. We have seen so many stupid closed ecosystems of home automation stuff come and go, I dunno why you'd mess with anything else at this point. In fact I just got another email reminder that Google is turning off the old Works with Nest stack. Remember Nest? Yeah...
  • syndicatedjelly 3y ago
    This right here is like a second-order or third-order effect of the layoffs last year. Tech companies are shuttering useful consumer products because their profit margins just aren't high enough for today's high interest environment
    • mindslight 3y ago
      Current interest rates are moderate, and hopefully are the new normal if our society is to have any future. The past two decades have been extremely low rates. High is like 10-15%.
      • syndicatedjelly 3y ago
        It’s high for any business that has been coasting through the cheap money era of the last 10 years
  • Beinglis23 3y ago
    I'm also curious about the Home Assistant anecdote. It seems like there might be some security or reliability concerns, but I'd like more information to understand the context better.
    • dugite-code 3y ago
      It's confusing because the OP is referring to a pipe to bash method as if it's a recommended install method, which I can't seem to find anywhere on the HA installation page. Yes there are security concerns with any home automation system, but if you run HA locally and only access it via a VPN like Tailscale you're probably safer than if you used any of the big name cloud first smart home providers. Even if you access it over the Nabu Casa site, because everything is ostensibly Local first your attack surface is always going to be quite minimal.
• syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  > Javascript plus a "curl | sudo sh" attitude to life equals "yeah no, I am never touching this thing". I want to understand this reference but I just don't. Can someone help me out here?
  • tiborsaas 3y ago
    Just plain old snobbery of disliking anything written in an "inferior" language.
  • hnbad 3y ago
    "curl | sudo sh" refers to the installation instructions found in many projects these days that try to make installation easier by telling users to download a setup script (curl) and then run it with elevated privileges (sudo sh). This foregoes the usual packaging systems and makes interoperability easier but some people rightly point out that this is very unsafe as it teaches users to execute arbitrary code from the web with full access to their machine. The real-world threat scenarios this actually presents are of course debatable (e.g. most of them also apply to downloadable installers in general). The mention of JavaScript is just the usual programming language elitism. JavaScript started as a language for web programming (technically it was first used for server-side scripting before being implemented in browsers) so it's "not a real programming language" and therefore "not used by real programmers" so software using it is bad. Of course there are alternatives to Home Assistant, like OpenHAB, which is written in Java and comes with all the UX typically associated with Java projects. It's not necessarily worse but most people would probably prefer HA's auto-discovery over OpenHAB's approach of granularly defining every single property
• fbnbr 3y ago
  I have a few of them and it’s really sad to see how Philips is making those harder and harder to use over the years
• mdekkers 3y ago
  Signify, the makers of the product, are slowly but surely moving towards a subscription model, and requiring a login at all times is a first step to that. They are starting with their (stupidly expensive) security products where some functionality needs to be paid for, but they are bound to start moving other functionality behind a subscription model. I am genuinely upset, as up until now, their lighting products have been excellent, easily better quality over alternatives in terms of physical build and capabilities. I have been a staunch Hue supporter since I first bought one of their products. Some of the better functionality, such as the ease-in and ease-out instead of a hard on/off as well as the gradual dimming —> off for motion-sensor controlled lamps are really hard, if not impossible, to manage with the various 3rd party tools. Node-red can do a mostly-decent job, but that requires a level of work that few people are willing to invest, for results that are still not that great. It is a real pity, but i’ll be looking for alternatives now.
• gpshead 3y ago
  Lutron Caseta has a telnet interface via an Ethernet port. Read as much into that statement as you want.
  • thenewwazoo 3y ago
    That used to be true. Now it speaks something called LEAP, which is a kind of JSON-based quasi-HTTP protocol over TLS. There is a python implementation (pylutron-caseta) and a javascript implementation (lutron-leap-js, which I wrote).
• thescriptkiddie 3y ago
  damn, hue was the only smart home thing that wasn't total bullshit and now they've changed the deal
• neycoda 3y ago
  Seems like Phillips's plan was to hook in the tech enthusiasts with prime usability, then when it became popular enough, ramp into locking things down with cloud subscriptions. This is effectively enshittification.
• indus 3y ago
  But they can't beat Sonos. Sonos is the eiptome of enshittification. Pretty good hardware screwed over by bad software, growth marketing, and middle-finger to UX. I have half-a-dozen devices at my home--almost 10 years old. I do not use the app, I do not do updates. My hack: Use them with Echo dot. Apparently the backdoor Sonos team has overlooked so far.
• jondwillis 3y ago
  For my fellow unfortunate HomeKit users, there’s always Homebridge, I guess. (Is siri better yet? i haven’t been home since ios17 has been out)
• blindriver 3y ago
  The exact same problem occurs with Nest. It's a big shithole of abandonment.
• demondemidi 3y ago
  This was the plan all along. Build an ecosystem, not for value or utility, but to extract as many dollars over as many years as possible. The trillion dollar IoT market at work.
• PaywallBuster 3y ago
  is this where aliexpress comes in hand? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004718007133.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004718007133.html One of many products speaking both protocols for just 10/20$
• demondemidi 3y ago
  The saddest part about this article is the end: forget Hue, just buy IKEA. Did OP even read what they wrote? OP is collapsing into stupidity along with the IoT market. No, don't buy Ikea smart lights: just buy a mechanical light switch from the 1920's and drop the whole idea of smart automation of every goddamn thing.
  • hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
    Why not ditch electricity in favour or oil lanterns, or cut to the chase and move into a cave and maintain a campfire 24/365 like our ancestors? Don’t like it don’t buy it isn’t a good attitude to have anymore, otherwise we as consumers will lose more and more rights to privacy infringing companies with infinite resources and market reach.
    • demondemidi 3y ago
      Wow, you're good a fallacious reasoning, Here's another one: why question if something is actually "progress", when change is progress and progress is always good so change is good.
• stonecharioteer 3y ago
  I imported the Hue Bar and the hub, and have never regretted a device more. It is a piece of shit, utterly stupid. You can't pair it if you forget to record the serial number. Whose design choice was that? The Alexa API cannot change colors or set themes. Smart home choices are really, really bad. I wish we could do better. Open Standards, unified interfaces, and not one app per vendor. Some of them are just reskinned. It's terrible.
• Bud 3y ago
  [dead]
• FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Personally I'm very happy with my ConBee II for Zigbee control. Just stick it in a RPi and put it with your router.
• dang 3y ago
  Recent and related: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37594377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37594377 - Sept 2023 (314 comments)
• rcarmo 3y ago
  This is why I went the zigbee2mqtt + Node-RED + homebridge route. But I run them under https://github.com/piku https://github.com/piku with pinned versions from NPM, so that there’s no weird install scripts. (although to be fair I would ditch everything written in JavaScript if there were suitable replacements - alas, there aren’t) Other than that, I’ve been very careful to only pick ZigBee devices that would work with an OSS coordinator and that would either bridge automatically to HomeKit or that I could translate events for via Node-RED (over the years Node-RED has become more of a dashboard than a translator, which is great).
• ay 3y ago
  FWIW, I had similar experiences twice: First with IKEA when they changed the lights on-power-up behavior on upgrade. This resulted in a hub becoming a 25 euro cc2531 stick on raspberry pi + Zigbee2mqtt and HomeBridge for integration with HomeKit. And the past February Apple decided my Apple TV 3 was not good enough for being a home hub, and botched the entire home in the process, while I was away. So now the whole HomeKit nonsense is out and instead there is a lightweight Rust app with a simple text file config doing both the orchestration and providing the light html UI. https://github.com/ayourtch/homegui https://github.com/ayourtch/homegui - in case anybody finds it useful. As a bonus the users in the household praise the new system being much more responsive.. I am missing “turn all the lights off when last person leaves”, and full editing the colors via GUI, but not enough to bother to implement it :-)
• junon 3y ago
  LiFX has nicer lights in my opinion and has a mostly open protocol, by the way.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mdrzn 3y ago
  Thank God I bought LIFX instead of Hue.
• sizzle 3y ago
  Is the Wyze ecosystem any good? I love their cameras and see they have a ton of cheap products like bulbs and what not.
• iteratethis 3y ago
  I sympathize with the general paranoia regarding home automation dependencies but pretty much nothing about this article is accurate. The so-called "forced" update on the Bridge is to upgrade older Bridges that are as old as 2011 or 2015. The upgrade allows this ancient hardware to leverage features of the newer generations of bulbs. So it's a compatibility update for old hardware. So that you can buy any generation of bulb and use it with any Bridge. If anything, it shows commitment to longevity, customer convenience and the prevention of waste. But if you're not into that, the update is triggered by means of the official Hue app, which is the sole reliable touch point by which the company can enforce/communicate anything because they have no other way of reaching you. Use any of the 100+ other apps and they will not force you to update the Bridge. And if even that isn't solid enough for you, disconnect the Bridge from the internet. Everything you own works and keeps working. As for the upcoming update triggering you to create an account: this is because too many people have shitty network setups, connect their Bridge to the internet and then complain that their lights are hacked. Whilst this account is created online, that interaction is one-time only. What it does is to create a username and cryptographic key on the Bridge after which that authentication is fully local. Which is the exact same mechanism in use by 3rd party Hue apps for over a decade now. Many people already are using an account because this is needed for some advanced use cases like syncing with Spotify or with your TV. Not to mention that it prevents "funny" house guests from messing with your lights. The idea that your hardware is unsafe and might be rendered useless in the future is completely unwarranted and pure misinformation. Any Bridge, any bulb, no matter how old, will keep working until the hardware itself fails. This system is a shining example of longevity. 12 years of full compatibility, an open API, hundreds of 3rd party apps, ground level Zigbee compatibility, meaningful security updates, if this is a "collapse", what would you call other systems? And no, I do not work for Philips or Signify. But I did build software on top of their system. What is especially interesting is how a poorly researched article has an entire community nodding along. Immediate consensus on something blatantly false.
• gck1 3y ago
  I wish I could eavesdrop on Philips' bigwigs making Hue decisions. I've got 10 bulbs bought over 6 years, each one a special snowflake with its own quirks. The latest ones need a 5-second power cut to turn on via a dumb switch. Older bulbs? Flip the switch, boom, light. Now I've got to count to five like I'm in timeout just to light up my room. Now the account requirement. Hue was honestly the best range of IoT devices I owned for some time, until they started being weird.
• hyperbolejoe 3y ago
  Part of the reason I won't use any of these connected products. Whatever convenience they provide is a wash for getting sucked into some bizarre future where I can't turn off my lights because an app isn't working or my internet is down.
• SimplGy 3y ago
  Very happy to be with hubitat. It’s OSS and not user friendly, but it mostly works with most devices and once it’s running I don’t have to maintain it except to restart (twice in about 3 years) I also like that if I did want functionality enough (Eg: graph of temperature) I could probably figure out how to write a plugin.