Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights • Hacker News Board

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#281

Post by throwaway7767 » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 1:03 PM UTC

wiredfool wrote: post #278

throwaway7767 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;) I'd be surprised if they did. A dynamo adds a noticeable load on the bike, and the people buying this are already optimising for small improvements. Adding a dynamo to power it would probably be a net negative for performance.

They should generate power from the motion of the shift levers.

> They should generate power from the motion of the shift levers.

How much power would that really generate? You can't make them too stiff, since part of the reason people like electronic shifting is that it's easy to do when your hands are numb from cold.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#282

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 1:20 PM UTC

ticklemyelmo wrote: post #227

ohitsdom wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where can you buy a ESP8266 for $2? SparkFun has it for $6.95. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13678

Basic: http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-esp8266-esp%25252d01.h... Fancy: http://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-nodemcu-v3.html?spm=21...

Nice, thanks!

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#283

Post by 746F7475 » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 1:27 PM UTC

Am I only one who doesn't see a problem here? Sure it would be nice if company X allowed me to use cheaper Chinese knock-offs with their product, but to me, they are well within their rights to decide: "hey, we don't want competitors to benefit from our product(s)"

In essense Phillips put money into R&D and marketing and if you are to believe the linked article into making smart lightbulbs mainstream. That shit is not cheap so why would they give money for their competitors? This move forces others to build their own base system and what not, which is fair.

I am sure you can find open{source|hardware} alternative if you don't wish to support Phillips anymore.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#284

Post by justin_vanw » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 1:31 PM UTC

746F7475 wrote: post #283

Am I only one who doesn't see a problem here? Sure it would be nice if company X allowed me to use cheaper Chinese knock-offs with their product, but to me, they are well within their rights to decide: "hey, we don't want competitors to benefit from our product(s)" In essense Phillips put money into R&D and marketing and if you are to believe the linked article into making smart lightbulbs mainstream. That shit is no…

You might be the only one. What if you bought a car, and after you bought it, the manufacturer of the car announced that they have remotely flashed the car's computer and now you can only drive to work, and if you want to drive anywhere else you have to buy 'tickets' for $5 per trip, or the car will refuse to run.

The point is that when you buy a thing, it is yours. When you own a thing, you are within your rights to do whatever you want with it, so long is it is legal. If makers of things can retroactively impose restrictions on the thing's use, then you have no rights whatsoever and anything that you own is yours to use only so long as whoever manufactured it feels like your use is maximizing it's profits.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#285

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 1:38 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #224

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the point where it all goes wrong. Like the game of deaf phone, by the time the idea reached the mind of students, it's twisted into an abomination, having lost the entire essence in-transit.

How wonderfully perfect that "game of telephone" by the time it reached your ears had transformed into "game of deaf phone."

I was writing that on mobile so it was inconvenient to double-check if I got the name right (that's what we call this game in Polish anyway - "głuchy telefon", which literally means "deaf phone"). I see how this is fitting though :).

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#286

Post by jrockway » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

throwaway7767 wrote: post #265

gknoy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;)

> I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;) I'd be surprised if they did. A dynamo adds a noticeable load on the bike, and the people buying this are already optimising for small improvements. Adding a dynamo to power it would probably be a net negative for performance.

A dynamo doesn't actually add that much load to the bike, but they're heavy and invasive, the exact opposite of what an electronic shifting system aims to be.

I run a dynamo generator for lights on my bike. The datasheet says it steals about 7 watts of power. I'm a relatively weak cyclist, but I can put out 230W continuously for an hour. The dynamo doesn't matter unless you're racing.

That said I still have good-old-classic 10 speed mechanical shifting. It works so well I don't see the need to add another computer-based gadget to my life.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#287

Post by thesmok » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

tdkl wrote: post #279

tl wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPad 2's performance on iOS 9 makes me wish they had made something around iOS 5-6 into an LTS version for older devices.

Here's a blast to the past to cry about : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iwh3lDeCME iOS 5 smooth 60 FPS responsive interface, compared to 9 stutter fest. What added value does the iOS 9 bring to the table then ? The content in Facebook, Instagram, Youtube etc. is all the same.

I have an iPad 2 which I updated to the latest iOS knowing it will decrease performance. Why? I wanted Apple Music and iCloud drive. And performance is still acceptable.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#288

Post by gergles » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 4:27 PM UTC

dnr wrote: post #234

xutopia wrote: post #2

So what would you recommend we use instead?

Another vote for Z-Wave. As others have said, the lack of being "open" means that stuff actually interoperates. I'm using a Razberry with an older Raspberry Pi as the controller, and Linear brand in-wall dimmers and lamp modules, plus a motorized drapery system from Somfy. The software that comes with the Razberry acts as a basic controller, but I wrote my own web front-end that talks to their controller over local h…

Domoticz and OpenZWave are actually way more powerful than Razberry, and I'd highly recommend investigating that so that you don't need to keep updating your own controller. Domoticz also has a pretty good scripting (lua) support built-in, so you can automate stuff in a really simple way.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#289

Post by squar1sm » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

I've been using neopixels to great success in combination with particle.io chips. They have cloud events and you can send whatever data to them. I'm sending a payload like `{ "color":"blue" }` and then all listening LEDs change. Plus they are individually addressable and are reusable for other projects. It's not the same level of brightness I'm guessing.

Adafruit has a 24 neopixel ring with a particle slot. It's like $45 for everything for one. No hub.

Re: Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights

#290

Post by digitalsushi » Tue, Dec 15, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

bufferout wrote: post #264

odbol wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was other bridge hardware that could communicate in a more open manner. Unfortunately, Hue is one of the only companies that even OFFERS an SDK—most other systems are completely closed down.

https://github.com/LIFX

I didn't research smart bulbs at all before walking into best buy and purchasing a pair of LIFX 1000 color bulbs using the light intensity as the only metric between brand selection. Getting home, I realized that LIFX doesn't really plug and play with the other technologies. Their cloud service is not very reliable, and so it was a very bad experience upon arrival.

Then I discovered the lightsd package, which is a service daemon that runs on anything with python. It exposes a json api on the network that any client can easily send programming commands to your lights. You can tag each bulb, so you can target any subset you can come up with. I made my own ruby client in a single night, and I barely code. Lightsd turned the LIFX bulbs from an obvious store return into something I am willing to keep. Barely.