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Philips Hue is older I think and doesn't have this insanity. The bulbs have a serial number on them, you just input that serial into the app synced with a new bridge.
Just do this:
On-off a bunch of times puts the bulb into a receptive state for 30 seconds, where it will stop everything else (other than the light being on) and listen for admin commands from a controller, one of which is "reset".
Kids messing with the lights? If no admin command gets sent, it returns to normal operation after 30 seconds.
Problem solved.
Resetting a lightbulb. What a time to be alive.
Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. I mean, I'm as geeky as it gets, but I'm still "amused" by the fact that we have lightbulbs with a firmware and a reset procedure, books that need to be charged and fridges that tweet.
Some features I love; # When I come to my home during the evening, lights are automatically turned on. # When I leave my place, they automatically turn off. # You can set up alarms, like 30 minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning, lights are starting turn on slowly. By the time the alarm goes off, the room is completely lit.
If you have kids they play with turning the light switch on and off. So I can see the need not to reset by accident. A simpler solution is to have ordinary plain light bulbs. Probably friendlier to the environment due to less electronics. It’s hard to hack ordinary light bulbs so they are secure. Reset button makes sense though. Reset button are costlier for bill of materials so manufacturers save on that.
Reset button is actually a safety issue, as the bulb would have to be plugged into the mains to register the reset. A metal paperclip inserted into the body of the light bulb would be very problematic from an electrical isolation point of view. The big failure arguably is not testing the firmware sufficiently (or building in recovery algorithms) to necessitate a reset procedure in the first place.
As to firmware, cosmic rays for example randomly flip bits. Which means for any large scale deployments you want a reset option.
Could people remind me why they need these "smart" bulbs in the first place?
* Wake timers. I can wake up with light shining in my face even with the curtains drawn, which makes it easier for my body to sense that it's time to wake up and harder for it to fall back to sleep. Bonus points if it's green or blue on a grey day, which the more expensive bulbs allow you to choose.
* Security and timing. Lights can be programmed to turn on and off at semi-random times to simulate the appearance of someone being home, and normal wall timers only control lamps, not ceiling fixtures. Those timers are also a terrible programming experience compared to a good smartphone app, and they flat out disable the light when off (smart lights on a timer can be overridden by cycling the fixture's power, which cheap wall timers don't detect).
* On-the-fly color shifting. Certain colors of light help me focus when I'm up late at night wrangling code; others help sleep. A dim red light at night means you can easily find your way to the bathroom around possible obstacles without fully waking yourself up.
* Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness.
The only thing that smart lights don't do is come in 100W-equivalent models- at least, not Hue bulbs, which make the colors and maximum light output dimmer than might be desired.
That said, the GE thing is clearly a "feature" that some engineer was either forced to implement (or worse, thought it was a good idea) because they didn't want to shell out the 5 cents per unit for the reset button. Which is a valid point, but the fact you have to do that in the first place betrays larger and more fundamental problems with their product.
Could people remind me why they need these "smart" bulbs in the first place?
Could people remind me why they need these "smart" bulbs in the first place?
If Facebook had made the light bulb, you’d have to unfriend the lightbulb for it to reset.
If Google had made the lightbulb, well the reset function would be discontinued.
If Microsoft had made the lightbulb, you’d need to call your active directory admin to perform the reset.