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Hue Light Hack

atomic14.com

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Re: Hue Light Hack

#41

Post by globalise83 »

wpm wrote: post #8
davidy123 wrote: post #4

I wish there were a way, though maybe not at the hardware level, to get these bulbs to go dimmer. In many circumstances, especially at night when avoiding glare off windows, just enough light to prevent tripping over things post eye adjustment would be ideal. But the lowest setting is far brighter than that.

I set my Hue Color bulbs to 25% and pure red at around 1AM every weeknight. It's dark but I can still see enough not to ram my toes into the coffee table.

Also gives you that Hunt for the Red October feeling

Re: Hue Light Hack

#43

Post by nfriedly »

maxbaines wrote: post #23

I have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.

As far as IoT goes, I too am relatively happy with my hue bulbs. In particular I appreciate the fact that they still work if my internet goes down.

However, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd probably just install dimmer switches in the wall and skip the IoT aspect entirely.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#44

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #34
aardvarkr wrote: post #29

@OP, what are your thoughts on Dubai bulbs/“ultra efficient” led bulbs? I was annoyed to learn that modern led bulbs are overclocked by design so that they fail quickly, and have been seeking a solution ever since the Dubai bulbs made it to the front page here.

Couldn't you avoid that with these Hues just by running it dimmer than 100%?

The Hue bulbs are on the dimmer side compared to a traditional bulb (LED or otherwise) so this would defeat the purpose for my use cases.

The color bulbs in particular are horribly dim, but fun nonetheless.

The only failure I've encountered in ~10 years is my original Hub started crash looping a few years ago and I ended up getting a new starter kit to replace it. The bulbs seem to really last, however.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#45

Post by johtso »

maxbaines wrote: post #23

I have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.

I mean, I'm sure there's worse out there.. but the fact that I have to wait for my phone to connected via bluetooth before I can turn on my lights is such bad UX, often taking multiple attempts to connect to all the lights.

Just let me flick the switch, and then turn the lights on as and when you manage to successfully connect, don't make me wait.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#46

Post by cschneid »

maxbaines wrote: post #23

I have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.

I haven't tried it, but I believe you can even get them into bare zigbee mode, entirely disconnected from the Hue system. At which point, Home Assistant and similar systems can control them directly.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#47

Post by jaywalk »

javawizard wrote: post #26
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how you know it's not AI generated :) Full of typos. Fixed now. Looks like “pry” was chosen.

Fun story: "prise" or "prize" are more common in the UK, "pry" is more common in the US. I do wonder what those from other countries where other spellings are more common think when us Americans come in and correct them, as if our spelling is objectively more correct...

It's not "as if our spelling is objectively more correct" rather the fact that most people in the US probably have no idea that "prise"/"prize" is used in place of "pry" in the UK. I know I sure didn't.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#48

Post by tiborsaas »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #30

> The MCU on the logic board is an Atmel SAM R21, a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ processor with a 2.4GHz ISM band transceiver for Zigbee communication. It has 256KB of Flash and 32KB of SRAM and runs at 48MHz. Excellent; we're getting to the point of lightbulbs having as much compute as computers used to:)

As a fun exercise I'd encourage everyone to count the number of computers they have in their home, being in the walls, bulbs, coffee machines, scales, toothbrushes and eventually Macbooks should all count.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#49

Post by Aeolun »

davidy123 wrote: post #39
wafflemaker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Hue Color and White Ambient (that go from cold white to warm white) have a Nightlight predefined modes that give barely any light. I also have a dimmable lightbulb from hue that looks like these hipster 19th century lights and this one doesn't go that low. There are 3 types of regular Hue bulbs, maybe you need to see the.other ones?

Nightlight on the colour & ambient bulbs I have don't go nearly dim enough. I haven't tried the hipster bulbs, but I don't want a lightbulb that calls attention to itself.

Setting it to red and lowest brightness is pretty good for making the surroundings dark, but your bulb itself will still be a massive red blob.

Re: Hue Light Hack

#50

Post by nfriedly »

bombcar wrote: post #9
davidy123 wrote: post #4

I wish there were a way, though maybe not at the hardware level, to get these bulbs to go dimmer. In many circumstances, especially at night when avoiding glare off windows, just enough light to prevent tripping over things post eye adjustment would be ideal. But the lowest setting is far brighter than that.

The different bulbs have different "minimums" I've noticed, but if you really want a nightlight setting you might want to get a dedicated bulb or light for it. The full color at "very low red" are quite low. (Or like me, for my sins, have a single blue LED on a piece of hardware that lights the room bright enough to read by)

I have a PC connected to the TV in my living room with an annoyingly bright blue power light. Even worse, it blinks when the PC is asleep. I ended up taking it apart and wiring in a 470k ohm resistor and three 2.2uf electrolytic capacitors in parallel. The resistor lowers the brightness and the capacitors make it fade in and out a little bit instead of just going on and off. (It still lights up pretty fast, but it fades out fairly gently.)
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