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Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. First off its not going to go bad like

Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. First off its not going to go bad like a bulb which will be replaced eventually; even LEDs which still die too soon. Really, who came up with this light bulb idea...its just daft. Security motion detectors can be used to double effect here as well, you would naturally have them facing doors so they could activate wireless or through signals across existing wires. All sorts of options.

tonylemesmer 12y ago
At the very least they could have separated the intelligence and the bulb so the bulb could be replaced independently. But yes the intelligence should really go in the circuit.
viccuad 12y ago
that being said, the intelligent light bulb approach has its advantages: I can take a handful of lightbulbs with me to other room/apartment in a heartbeat. And the problem of getting dimmable LEDs out of an AC source is not easy, you are going to end with electronics in each led bulb anyways.
joosters 12y ago
Well it's all definitely overkill. But on the plus side, you can sell these bulbs to people who can plug them in without needing to re-wire their house.
mseebach 12y ago
Current circuit layouts are wasteful, you have to run enormous amounts of wire between the outlets and the switches, just to be able to control the lights. Much better to just run power directly to the outlets. The control logic should ideally go into the socket, but with 50k hour lifetimes of LED bulbs, the lost efficiently of putting it in one over the other place is trivial. Also remember that putting the controls on the bulb makes it a trivially user-serviceable part, where putting it in the socket technically requires a electrician to install it (you and I are probably comfortable servicing domestic electrical installations, the average consumer isn't, and shouldn't be) - especially in these early days, when neither standards, features or protocols are anywhere near finalised, investing a couple of hundred dollars in bulbs is much better than investing thousands in electricians fees.
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
  LEDs may have 50k hour lifetimes, but that's very far from true of the constant current drivers. I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. That's more like 1.5k hours. The cheap chinese ones I also tried lasted on average four months (I bought 8 bulbs), all of them blew up electrolytic capacitors on the buckpucks (with release of magic smoke). As for the needing an electrician part: remote socket receivers are a well proven, cheap and safe technology requiring no electrician to install it. IMO, the Telldus offerings are the best solution for wireless/smart light controls.
  - xrjn 12y ago
    You might want to check the electrical setup at your home. A friend had issues with incandescent light bulbs going out every few months, he replaced them with LEDs, and they still crapped out too quickly. I'm not well versed on electrical problems, but I'd guess that this was related to brown-outs or a dirty power supply. Personally at my home, I can't recall a single LED bulb failing since installing some of the first ones in 2010/11 (and these were dirt cheap ones from Lidl). We've also bought some decent e27 8w ones from Aliexpress in ~2011, and of the 6 I bought, they all still work (apart form the cold white one which I took apart). Throughout the past two years I installed a bunch of LED strips around the house, ~20m of which stay on at low power all the time, and I've virtually had zero failures (there may have been a 3cm segment that died, but that's it).
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    50k hours is probably ambitious for some, but not too far off the mark. The Achilles' heel here is the capacitors, they are the weakest link. 10k hours is easy, and they should never fail before that absent some design or manufacturer defect, or atypically high ambient temperatures. >I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. You have an electrical problem in your home. Perhaps a poor connection on the neutral leg of the circuit. It is even potentially unsafe, as in a possible arcing condition.
    - 12y ago
hueving 12y ago
Well Phillips pushing the Hue is pretty far from daft in their perspective. Get people to shell out hundreds to replace bulbs instead of a 1/10th of that. Remember, Phillips is the reason incandescent bulbs had their lifespans intentionally cut in half for planned obsolescence.[1] 1.http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbu...
- cowsandmilk 12y ago
  > Remember, Phillips is the reason incandescent bulbs had their lifespans intentionally cut in half for planned obsolescence. Because all companies have the same management and culture as they did 90 years ago.
  - pluma 12y ago
    They didn't make any steps to reverse that decision in those 90 years, so it's safe to assume they're at least indifferent to it.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      They didn't make any publicly documented steps. Saying that they're still doing something because they did it almost a century ago isn't really honest.
- vibrolax 12y ago
  The Spectrum article was very informative. Thomas Pynchon riffed on this story extensively with his iconic (for geeks) 1974 novel "Gravity's Rainbow" in the tale of "Byron the Bulb". Another of Pynchon's prescient fantasy creations that is breaking into reality, the sentient light bulbs are self aware and communicate with each other.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  You know, the hotter incandescent bulbs consume less energy, saving much more than their more usual replacement cost. Added to that, they are cheaper to make. But let's not disrupt a good conspiracy theory (who was Philips conspiring with, by the way?). If Philips simply launched a bulb that lasted less, with no advantages, people would buy from other manufacturer, and Philips wouldn't be here anymore. They even took a huge risk launching it, because despite it being cheaper to use, people do not like changing bulbs.
danieldk 12y ago
Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. We have Hue and I don't agree. Setup is now zero effort, you just replace bulbs and you are ready to go. Since the light bulbs form a mesh network, the distance from the hub is not a problem as long as a light can connect to another. I would have never switched if we had to replace each light socket, even more because we are renting our house. Also, the expected lifetime is 15 years, so I am not sure how much of a problem it is. <ot> In general, we are pretty happy with it, especially since its color is much nicer and more natural than previous LED lights we tried (which were awful). The Android app is a bit flakey at times, especially when the home Wifi signal is weak (we don't use the geofencing options). The feature we use most is different light settings, e.g. relatively warm & low light at night (e.g. when we have to feed our toddler). Of course, it isn't life-changing. And I would recommend most people to wait until prices go down. </ot>
javadocmd 12y ago
>I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. Agree with this completely. As the article mentions, with a wireless bulb the wall switch actually becomes a point-of-user-failure and he wound up taping them 'on'. I have a WeMo brand wall switch (actually a button) on my front porch light which solves this elegantly. Porch light goes on and off timed with sunrise and sunset (it updates its schedule over wifi) and if need be I can control it manually from the wall switch or the app. I wouldn't replace every circuit in my house with one, but in the right application it's golden.

tonylemesmer 12y ago

At the very least they could have separated the intelligence and the bulb so the bulb could be replaced independently. But yes the intelligence should really go in the circuit.

viccuad 12y ago

that being said, the intelligent light bulb approach has its advantages: I can take a handful of lightbulbs with me to other room/apartment in a heartbeat. And the problem of getting dimmable LEDs out of an AC source is not easy, you are going to end with electronics in each led bulb anyways.

joosters 12y ago

Well it's all definitely overkill. But on the plus side, you can sell these bulbs to people who can plug them in without needing to re-wire their house.

mseebach 12y ago

Current circuit layouts are wasteful, you have to run enormous amounts of wire between the outlets and the switches, just to be able to control the lights. Much better to just run power directly to the outlets. The control logic should ideally go into the socket, but with 50k hour lifetimes of LED bulbs, the lost efficiently of putting it in one over the other place is trivial. Also remember that putting the controls on the bulb makes it a trivially user-serviceable part, where putting it in the socket technically requires a electrician to install it (you and I are probably comfortable servicing domestic electrical installations, the average consumer isn't, and shouldn't be) - especially in these early days, when neither standards, features or protocols are anywhere near finalised, investing a couple of hundred dollars in bulbs is much better than investing thousands in electricians fees.

semi-extrinsic 12y ago
LEDs may have 50k hour lifetimes, but that's very far from true of the constant current drivers. I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. That's more like 1.5k hours. The cheap chinese ones I also tried lasted on average four months (I bought 8 bulbs), all of them blew up electrolytic capacitors on the buckpucks (with release of magic smoke). As for the needing an electrician part: remote socket receivers are a well proven, cheap and safe technology requiring no electrician to install it. IMO, the Telldus offerings are the best solution for wireless/smart light controls.
- xrjn 12y ago
  You might want to check the electrical setup at your home. A friend had issues with incandescent light bulbs going out every few months, he replaced them with LEDs, and they still crapped out too quickly. I'm not well versed on electrical problems, but I'd guess that this was related to brown-outs or a dirty power supply. Personally at my home, I can't recall a single LED bulb failing since installing some of the first ones in 2010/11 (and these were dirt cheap ones from Lidl). We've also bought some decent e27 8w ones from Aliexpress in ~2011, and of the 6 I bought, they all still work (apart form the cold white one which I took apart). Throughout the past two years I installed a bunch of LED strips around the house, ~20m of which stay on at low power all the time, and I've virtually had zero failures (there may have been a 3cm segment that died, but that's it).
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  50k hours is probably ambitious for some, but not too far off the mark. The Achilles' heel here is the capacitors, they are the weakest link. 10k hours is easy, and they should never fail before that absent some design or manufacturer defect, or atypically high ambient temperatures. >I've had several expensive (Phillips/GE) LED bulbs fail after a year of sparse usage. You have an electrical problem in your home. Perhaps a poor connection on the neutral leg of the circuit. It is even potentially unsafe, as in a possible arcing condition.
  - 12y ago

hueving 12y ago

Well Phillips pushing the Hue is pretty far from daft in their perspective. Get people to shell out hundreds to replace bulbs instead of a 1/10th of that. Remember, Phillips is the reason incandescent bulbs had their lifespans intentionally cut in half for planned obsolescence.[1] 1.http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/the-great-lightbu...

cowsandmilk 12y ago
> Remember, Phillips is the reason incandescent bulbs had their lifespans intentionally cut in half for planned obsolescence. Because all companies have the same management and culture as they did 90 years ago.
- pluma 12y ago
  They didn't make any steps to reverse that decision in those 90 years, so it's safe to assume they're at least indifferent to it.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    They didn't make any publicly documented steps. Saying that they're still doing something because they did it almost a century ago isn't really honest.
vibrolax 12y ago
The Spectrum article was very informative. Thomas Pynchon riffed on this story extensively with his iconic (for geeks) 1974 novel "Gravity's Rainbow" in the tale of "Byron the Bulb". Another of Pynchon's prescient fantasy creations that is breaking into reality, the sentient light bulbs are self aware and communicate with each other.
marcosdumay 12y ago
You know, the hotter incandescent bulbs consume less energy, saving much more than their more usual replacement cost. Added to that, they are cheaper to make. But let's not disrupt a good conspiracy theory (who was Philips conspiring with, by the way?). If Philips simply launched a bulb that lasted less, with no advantages, people would buy from other manufacturer, and Philips wouldn't be here anymore. They even took a huge risk launching it, because despite it being cheaper to use, people do not like changing bulbs.

danieldk 12y ago

Having each light bulb intelligent seems like overkill, I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. We have Hue and I don't agree. Setup is now zero effort, you just replace bulbs and you are ready to go. Since the light bulbs form a mesh network, the distance from the hub is not a problem as long as a light can connect to another. I would have never switched if we had to replace each light socket, even more because we are renting our house. Also, the expected lifetime is 15 years, so I am not sure how much of a problem it is. <ot> In general, we are pretty happy with it, especially since its color is much nicer and more natural than previous LED lights we tried (which were awful). The Android app is a bit flakey at times, especially when the home Wifi signal is weak (we don't use the geofencing options). The feature we use most is different light settings, e.g. relatively warm & low light at night (e.g. when we have to feed our toddler). Of course, it isn't life-changing. And I would recommend most people to wait until prices go down. </ot>

javadocmd 12y ago

>I can see a per circuit setup where you replace the light switch. Agree with this completely. As the article mentions, with a wireless bulb the wall switch actually becomes a point-of-user-failure and he wound up taping them 'on'. I have a WeMo brand wall switch (actually a button) on my front porch light which solves this elegantly. Porch light goes on and off timed with sunrise and sunset (it updates its schedule over wifi) and if need be I can control it manually from the wall switch or the app. I wouldn't replace every circuit in my house with one, but in the right application it's golden.