Jesus. All of the cost and complexity of managing complex IT infrastructure... for light bulbs. Is this satire?
I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
151–160 of 317 posts
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#152I don't get it. What's the point in these systems? Genuinely. Why would I ever need this? Just like a "smart" doorbell, fridge, meter. I would love for someone to be able to explain the benefits to me over the normal, cheap, completely working "dump" version. The only "smart" device I own is a TV and it is crap, worse thing I've ever bought.
I'm building a stable and veterinary practice building for my wife (who is a horse vet), 22x10 m, 2 floors. She wants several types of lighting in the stable part which should be switchable from several locations. Switching a light source from 2 locations can be done easily, 3 is doable but more than that requires a separate switching circuit with momentary switches and a contactor to do the actual switching. It is here where a system like this, especially a wireless one can help by making it possible to have switches anywhere you want them without having to pull loads of cabling (which by regulation has to be mounted on the walls instead of in them in agricultural buildings). For now I've settled on 2 switching locations for most of the lighting so as to avoid any "smart" solutions, should she insist on having to be able to switch the "mood light" in the stable from the observation window in the office on the 2nd floor I'll have to go that way with all the problems that come with "smart" electronics on the countryside - power failures, lightning, etc.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#153Our ceiling lamps and mini-split air conditioners are all IR remote controlled, so I just got a couple of IR blasters and set them up with Homebridge, so I can control the aircon/lights/TV with my iPhone or Apple Watch. If the smart stuff breaks down, I can just throw away the IR blasters and everything returns to how it was before. The only negative is since IR is one-way, you can't see the current status of things after you've manipulated it with a manual control.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#154I don't get it. What's the point in these systems? Genuinely. Why would I ever need this? Just like a "smart" doorbell, fridge, meter. I would love for someone to be able to explain the benefits to me over the normal, cheap, completely working "dump" version. The only "smart" device I own is a TV and it is crap, worse thing I've ever bought.
I'm replying to myself in an effort to reply generally to everyone who replied to me, thanks for your use cases.
I can see some of the reasons and benefits and to me, no offence meant, the seem pretty trivial, especially when you take into account the privacy issues.
I have dumb timers for lights I want on at certain times, dumb movement sensors for outside lights that only turn on at night, my boiler has a timer which I manually set if needed, and I've yet to see any actual benefit to a smart meter. I can read and calculate my usage.
My point is everything I need can be accomplished without network connectivity or providing multi-national tech companies with all my data. I don't need a digital assistant and don't want to talk to my lightbulbs.
As one of the other commenters said, you get all the problems of IT infrastructure for light bulbs and sensors. Hell if I wanted some automated stuff I'd look at a raspberry pi or Arduino and roll my own version (half joking, I'd definitely attempt it).
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#155Since lockdown started, we've gradually converted most of our house to Hue. A key feature is that _all the light switches still work_. We just don't use them all that much, unless something's failed. From reading Matthew Garrett's exploits, I'm pretty sure we don't want WiFi IoT devices. We have Hue switches next to the physical switches, which don't depend on WiFi being up; Smart control works with only local networ…
For those who don't have Hue, one nice feature of the design is that if the power to the bulb goes off and then back on the bulbs default to 'on'. This means that if you have a power cut, the lights come on automatically afterwards without the controllers being needed, which is useful at night so you don't have to wait for wifi. But it also means that you can turn them off and then on again at the normal light switch…
> For those who don't have Hue, one nice feature of the design is that if the power to the bulb goes off and then back on the bulbs default to 'on'.
After a recent update this is now also configurable. You can still have them default to full brightness, but also off or any other mode.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
The easy solution is to have the intelligence in the lightbulbs the way Philips, Osram and IKEA did on their Zigbee based systems. I have all lights (100+) in the house on Zigbee but without changing any wiring. Only non standard is that I replaced all the wall switches with a variant that's electrically "always on" and sends a Zigbee command when pressed (and can be pulled out to access a traditional physical switch…
> I have all lights (100+) Your house is massive or your castle is very tiny. Either way, that’s an usual amount of lightbulbs.
Easy to reach if you use spot lighting. I counted a bit less than 30 in a (tiny for American standards) 100sqm house.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#157Since lockdown started, we've gradually converted most of our house to Hue. A key feature is that _all the light switches still work_. We just don't use them all that much, unless something's failed. From reading Matthew Garrett's exploits, I'm pretty sure we don't want WiFi IoT devices. We have Hue switches next to the physical switches, which don't depend on WiFi being up; Smart control works with only local networ…
For those who don't have Hue, one nice feature of the design is that if the power to the bulb goes off and then back on the bulbs default to 'on'. This means that if you have a power cut, the lights come on automatically afterwards without the controllers being needed, which is useful at night so you don't have to wait for wifi. But it also means that you can turn them off and then on again at the normal light switch…
If I had a short power cut in the night and it resulted in all the lights coming on, I'd be pretty unhappy.... I'd rather just sleep through it.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#158What is the point of trying to wirelessly link up a system that needs so much wiring in the first place, including electricity? This seems moronic, unless it’s for fun. And even then it’s pretty stupid.
Retrofitting new wires to every light fixture and switch in a house is unenviable. In some cases, impossible. Laminate floors can deprive you of subfloor access of a whole floor, running cables through existing stud walls is difficult at the best of times... Wirelessly linked smoke alarms are becoming extremely common now in the UK because outside a narrow envelope building regulations want linked alarms (linked eith…
That’s why ZigBee in mesh/star topology exists. No wires except for the hub.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conduit isn't very common in US residential construction. Electricians will generally cut a hole in the drywall, drill a hole in the floor plate and tack the cabling to the framing.
In houses than are typically built with a wooden frame. From a European pov, that sounds like a recipe for fire.
Americans love building single-storey detached houses on big lots. And when they build an upper floor, they love complex roof systems where almost every upper floor window has a first floor roof or porch below it.
This means problems like fires spreading to adjacent buildings and fires trapping people where they can't escape are much reduced; you'd never see a repeat of the great fire of London in an American suburb because there's practically a fire break between every single home.
This is made affordable by America's vast tracts of land and high rates of car ownership.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the bulbs. Our Philips Hue bulbs (ZigBee) work perfectly fine. None of the issues you or the OP describes are an issue: they continue to work as regular bulbs if the hub fails, can be paired via Bluetooth app without proximity to the hub, and seem to have a lot of range. Best thing is that no wiring/electrician is necessary.
Same experience here, Philips (and other Zigbee lights like IKEA) did a great job. Only problem I had with the Philips hub is that it's memory limited and can't handle more than about 50 devices. Above that you need to replace the hub with something like Home Assistant, but can keep the rest of the system.
You can also use multiple hubs (HomeKit and various third party apps support this - the Hue app does, but IIRC you have to manually switch between them).