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Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

home-assistant.io

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Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#171

Post by kamaal »

gregmac wrote: post #22

This is the Philips controller software (app) that is refusing to talk to or control 3rd party light bulbs. I don't really see this as being a problem. It's not the nicest thing, perhaps, but neither is 3rd party companies building bulbs (presumably by ripping off the design and protocol of Philip's bulbs), and then relying on Philips to build the software so they can actually be used. In other words, Philips is refu…

>>In other words, Philips is refusing to build software, for free, to control their competitors' and/or counterfeit products.

Not sure how this works. There are start ups out there who will do anything to get people to download and use their apps. Here you have several hundreds of thousands of users willing to download and use your app for free. Why chase them away?

I think it was Bill Gates who said something to the order that if people were using Pirated operating systems, he would prefer they pirate Windows so that he could convert them to paying users someday.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#172

Post by detaro »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #145
detaro wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All electrical work in the unit has to be done by someone legally qualified to do so (I'm not) and it is not worth getting a bill for a "proper" electrician to fix it for. Also only work for one lamp per room (that already has a light switch) and doesn't do any fancy new color-control features. Everything else needs additional modules and wireless controls anyways, so why do it differently for this one case? Exchangi…

I kinda wanna know how many people actually get asked to show proof the electrical work of shutting off the power, unscrewing wires from a light switch, and screwing them back onto a new light switch, was done by a licensed professional. I get you probably don't want someone running new wiring around a place who doesn't know what they're doing, but changing out light switches isn't substantially more difficult than c…

I really depends on the situation (Here it certainly would be noticed and questioned), but that really wasn't the main point I wanted to make. I was more going after your argument that true home automation isn't flipping switches: a principle I very much agree with, and in my experience various wireless systems make setting that up relatively easy. Because it is linked to a computer for more complex features, and you can move stuff around within seconds. Just because some of these systems come as only a bridge and a smartphone app doesn't mean that's how people actually use it, as far as I can see. But many start with just a fancy colorful lamp as an effect, which works fine with just the app, and then comes integrating it with the TV, and the alarm, and ...

These basic sets require very low effort to get started, and THEN people are interested.

I hope I got my point across better now, it's kinda late here.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#173

Post by khedoros »

dheera wrote: post #135
khedoros wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd gladly pay another $2-3 extra for someone to do that for me with some automated manufacturing process, and sell me "Pi Zero with Wi-Fi" boards. Soldering mini-USB can be a bear, let alone doing it 10+ times to get a room full of mini-robots or drones or something else to do interesting things. The true value in a cheap computer is really that I can buy a huge number of them at a reasonable price. But a huge numbe…

I take your point; soldering individual boards scales badly (although the pitch for the USB+power contact points only looks a little worse than for the GPIO pins: http://hackaday.com/2015/11/28/first-raspberry-pi-zero-hack-... ).

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#174

Post by jpatokal »

gherkin0 wrote: post #161
cbsmith wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a fair view of the analysis. If the real value was in the hub, and these other lights were getting a free ride on it, then the opportunity would be to charge more for the hub. What is far more likely to be the case is that the support costs around problems caused by random third party components messing with the Zigbee network were exceeding the value of providing that support, particularly whe…

It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into existing products that people already own and have spend money and effort to integrate. These people bought product with the expectation of compatibility, now they're out their investment because of Philips's selfish business decision. Even they have elevated support costs, Philips's made their bed by offering compatibility in the first place f…

I'm sure page 67 of the Philips Hue T&C states in 3-point font that Philips Hue is only compatible with itself and they reserve the right to pull the plug on third-party product compatibility at any time.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#175

Post by dperfect »

tehwebguy wrote: post #170
dperfect wrote: post #105

This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best interest (and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests - for better or for worse). Perhaps the problem is more related to the ZigBee standard, or more specifically, w…

Removing features from something I already bought is bad acting every time.

To be fair, did Philips ever list that as a feature when you bought it?

I purchased a few Hue products myself, but never once expected it to be an open platform or even compatible with non-Hue products (even if I wish that were the case).

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#176

Post by stcredzero »

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…

"Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products since they're already invested in the existing system".

We all need to put our support behind the most open of the open source lighting control/home automation options! Then the open options will be the most compatible options. If we do it right, then proprietary bulbs will just work with themselves, and the marketplace will punish them.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#177

Post by bigiain »

usaphp wrote: post #78
tdkl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 run…

Looks over at my first gen iPad stuck back on iOS 5...

It still works fine, but it's hardly because Apple are doing me any favours (past building a good product back in 2010, and "supporting it" with OS updates until 2013...)

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#178

Post by bigiain »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #150
bsder wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boss will be promoted by then because profit went up 150% for two quarters.

It's funny how in today's corporations it is in manager's best interest to make decisions that are profitable short-term but bad for the company long-term - the manager will be there for a reward, but long gone by the time consequences come.

See also politicians and societies...

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#179

Post by TD-Linux »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
wlesieutre wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't describe 3rd parties as "ripping off the design and protocol" when bulb hub communication is done using the ZigBee Light Link protocol. Philips didn't develop that. Standard here: http://www.zigbee.org/?wpdmdl=2132 [pdf warning] And no, lights from other manufacturers (I have several from GE) no longer work via the Hue app or any of the 3rd party alternatives. I made the mistake of accepting Hue's "update…

> This is like Apple saying "Laptops from other brands are no longer supported on Airport wireless networks so that we can ensure devices are fully compatible." Didn't Apple do that with Bluetooth once? I recall reading that at least one iteration of iPhones could not send files via Bluetooth to non-Apple devices.

They still do it. For some Bluetooth device classes, you must get your device signed by Apple and use certain chips. One product I worked on had a dual Bluetooth and BLE stack - Bluetooth for Android, and BLE to circumvent the Apple limitations (BLE devices don't need to be signed).

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#180

Post by bborud »

IshKebab wrote: post #52
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…

Having been involved in a couple of these discussions, I'd say it is more like "Shouldn't we control this? Are other people doing stuff with our products that we don't control? That's bad isn't it? Let's stop them." I.e. it's more about paranoid control than actual reasons .

Actually, earlier today I wrote some MCU code to control my HUE lights, and I figured "hey, why not build a controller to make my christmas lights controlled by the HUE hub". Guess this news answers that.

Seen together with the Phillips Hue bulbs I have being noisy as hell, hue just became a lot less interesting.

I hope there will be an open source system and manufacturers whose bulbs can easily be integrated. Hopefully some that don't make a lot of noise.

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