101–110 of 153 posts
Outages have happened weekly and there isn't even a place I can see statuses...
There are many night where I want to cut my lights off with the app and I just can't. No explanation just no connection from their application to their service..
There have been so many times I've had to use the api manually to do this
Hopefully this new bridge addresses this issue.
So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
So here is my frustration with the hue service... The uptime is terrible. Outages have happened weekly and there isn't even a place I can see statuses... There are many night where I want to cut my lights off with the app and I just can't. No explanation just no connection from their application to their service.. There have been so many times I've had to use the api manually to do this Hopefully this new bridge addr…
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They market their bulbs as having a 15 year life span.
Bulbs (the expensive part) will still function, just gotta upgrade the $25 bridge. And even without upgrading the bridge, bulbs will still work just fine with the older one, as long as you are trying to access them on your LAN instead of while you are outside of home. What Philips did here sounds very reasonable to me imo.
Imagine you are designing the web server for some hardware like this. You might write it in Go, dockerized and hosted it in Kubernetes in Google Cloud. You might use a hosted mongo db and 3rd party auth service. Now in 30 years time, Google Cloud will probably no longer exist, your database API will have changed beyond recognition, and your auth service has closed down. IPv4 no longer exists and your hardware depends…
Working on software from the late 80s to 90s also come with its challenges. You’ll have a discontinued third party database engine that is no longer maintained and writing files on smb shares wich more or less regularly breaks. It’s probably written by real plumbers and not software plumbers because they back at the time were more available. If you haven’t constantly adapted the code it for sure doesn’t compile with…
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To give a better and perhaps more relevant example: The wiring and many electrical devices in my house are over half a century old, yet all the switches and outlets still function perfectly fine.
If they use aluminum wiring, the situation may be less rosy than you think.
So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
If you bought a hammer 8 years ago and the hammer company had a way to "deactivate" certain uses of the hammer so it only worked in a few situations, would you say "8 years is long enough for a hammer, it's perfectly reasonable they force you to buy a new hammer in order for it to work properly." ? Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
If you bought a hammer 8 years ago and the hammer company had a way to "deactivate" certain uses of the hammer so it only worked in a few situations, would you say "8 years is long enough for a hammer, it's perfectly reasonable they force you to buy a new hammer in order for it to work properly." ? Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.
If you bought a hammer 8 years ago and the hammer company had a way to "deactivate" certain uses of the hammer so it only worked in a few situations, would you say "8 years is long enough for a hammer, it's perfectly reasonable they force you to buy a new hammer in order for it to work properly." ? Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
> Philips has the resources to keep this up and running.
See how your analogy doesn't work? A manufacturer of a hammer doesn't have to continually expend resources to keep your hammer operating, secure, and compatible with other devices. Because it's just a hammer.
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...which all the digital assistants like Google Home or Alexa use, so this breaks voice commands for those. For most people, that's the main reason to have smart lights.
The V1 bridge does not require any outside access from an Echo device -- it communicates directly with the bridge over the local network. With V2 it requires a skill, a Hue account, and access from the internet to the bridge.
I have a V2 with "Out of home control" set to disabled and it works fine with my Echo Dot and with the Amazon Alexa apps on my phone and iPad.
My guess is that the bridge sends status information, including the bridge's IP address, to the Hue site, and the Echo can retrieve that information in order to find the IP address to send commands to.