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Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

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Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#71

Post by balls187 »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

3rd argument: non certified bulbs may cause damage to the hue system, and be a hazzard risk.

Curious what the process is to be listed as Friends of Hue (or w/e).

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#72

Post by AndrewKemendo »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions.

I think it's because Apple more or less proved that the walled garden approach can be wildly successful and everyone is trying to copy them. Seems however that they are the only ones to have success with it.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#73

Post by DannyBee »

bjt wrote: post #66
bitwize wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, technically the third-party manufacturers were in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal offense with penalties up to five years in prison. From Philips' perspective, refusing to cooperate with those criminally infringing their IP is a feature, not a bug.

This is wrong on a couple levels. 1. The protocol is open. It's not Philips' IP. 2. Even if the protocol were closed, and Philips put some DRM on it to lock out 3rd parties from reverse engineering the protocol to make compatible bulbs, the third parties still wouldn't be in violation of the DMCA, even if they had to include small copy/pasted bits of the Philips code that are necessary for interoperability. This was…

Lexmark is only good law in the sixth circuit ;-)

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#74

Post by roymurdock »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

Boss: We introduced Hue back in 2012 w/ a plan to lose money the first 3 years developing the hub, subsidizing partners, and getting our product out in the market. Tell me we're seeing a positive ROI now.

Hue PM: Hue is profitable, but only marginally so. Our strategy of making up the initial investment on $60 per bulb hardware is being undermined by cheap 3rd party lighting fixtures. Plus we're incurring costs responding to all of these non-hue connectivity and reliability issues.

Boss: We control a large enough market share now and most of the market is already heavily invested in our ecosystem. Cut off hub connectivity for these 3rd party products. People should not be using non-Hue approved hardware with our software. We're a for-profit company, not a government or a charity.

Hue PM: That won't go over well with the early adopters and the tech community.

Boss: I've already run the cost/benefit analysis. The tech community might be mad for a little while, but we've got our sights set on industrial and commercial contracts now that we've proved Hue's viability in the consumer market. Do it.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#75

Post by balls187 »

soperj wrote: post #64
mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

And yet, lots of people don't avoid Apple.

> And yet, lots of people don't avoid Apple.

On one hand, having to use Apple's proprietary Lightning connector sucks.

On the other, having Apple be heavy handed with iOS App Store submissions means I have a higher confidence with my iOS Apps behaving compared to those I install on my Android Device.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#76

Post by khedoros »

dheera wrote: post #29
JshWright wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more relevant is the ESP8266 at $2. The Pi Zero doesn't have WiFi, and has _way_ more computing power than you would need to run a few RGB LEDs.

The Pi Zero might be able to do some additional interesting things through with that computing power, including transmitting information over those LEDs at imperceptible modulation frequencies and such. Perhaps it could even be a Ethernet-over-Power to Li-Fi bridge, with some additional circuitry. No Wi-Fi sucks though. And putting Wi-Fi into a Pi Zero requires a micro-USB to USB dongle and then another USB Wi-Fi don…

I've seen some cool mods where someone took a USB hub or a wifi dongle out of its case and soldered the pins directly to the USB pins on the Pi itself. That gets around a lot of the mess.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#77

Post by [deleted] »

mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

[deleted]

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#78

Post by usaphp »

tdkl wrote: post #67
mdip wrote: post #35

I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…

> I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. Because they can. John Doe will think "oh, I just need to shell out some money to get it working again", or "oh, the system needed an upgrade anyway". The mobile bonanza (well, that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware) in last couple of years perverted the word "upgrade" from "a software upgrade, which adds new features and…

> that one company who gets majority of revenue from hardware

I hope you are not referring to Apple, because compared to other companies , iPhones and iPads are the one who can run current software on older devices with almost no issues. Samsung and other android manufacturers on the other hand have not supported older devices at all until recently (and even now not as good as Apple does). My first gen iPad still runs perfectly fine

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#79

Post by thescriptkiddie »

throwaway420 wrote: post #39

I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other options. Good timing on your part hue. Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and others?

Me too. Hue gear is absurdly expensive, but I was sold right up until this. To make matters worse, it looks like the apps I wanted to use the bulbs with (sleep as android, f.lux) only work with the Phillips hub. I hope the developers of those apps use this as an opportunity to learn about the dangers of vendor lock-in. This is just the FTDI debacle all over again.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#80

Post by ocdtrekkie »

rlpb wrote: post #47
xutopia wrote: post #2

So what would you recommend we use instead?

I've been looking into this but haven't committed to buying anything yet. Insteon doesn't seem well enough documented for third party controller implementations to me, although there are third party controllers available. Z-Wave (distinctively different from Zigbee) are the main contender for me right now. They seem to have the most interoperability but it is still a closed protocol in that documentation isn't freely…

INSTEON documentation is actually somewhat decent. But fragmented. There's some great third party software, there's some great third party hardware. The thing that excited me into building my own INSTEON controller, is that you can directly control a light with about 20 lines of VB .NET code: http://madreporite.com/insteon/plm_basics.html

Since I've been so unhappy with home automation software I've found, not doing exactly what I want, I've started building my own in VB .NET. The basics, plus what I specifically want it to do.

X10 is outright terrible. It was designed before nearly as much signal interference existed on powerline, so now you need tons of phase couplers and filters to get a good signal. INSTEON's mesh network (and dual-band powerline/RF) jumps signal issues far better. INSTEON's newer devices also drop support for X10, FYI.

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