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Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

defcon.social

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Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#271

Post by mdekkers »

dheera wrote: post #215
jchw wrote: post #210

Most (almost all?) Philips Hue devices are standard Zigbee devices. Chuck out your Philips gateway and replace it with a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant and a Zigbee stick. Yeah, it's a bit more work, but if you're reading Hacker News you probably already know how to do this anyways, and honestly, Home Assistant is pretty damn good at staying hands-off. (I only update it every few months, it's on a battery backup in my…

> standard Zigbee devices One of the issues with these "standard" Zigbee devices is that you can't configure all of their settings. I have a bunch of Aqara motion sensors and I can't set their timeouts or sensitivity unless I use the Aqara app and hub. Used as a normal Zigbee device they offer no configuration options.

That’s right. I have a significant investment in Hue devices since they are (or were, prior to sale of company) simply the best LED lamps available.

The Hue app surfaces functionality that isn’t available on plain zigbee, such as soft on/off and motion sensor programs. It is possible to mimic this to an extent but the native implementation is superior.

I also have a lot of different lamps that are either plain Zigbee or IKEA, and no matter the approach - node-red, home assistant, homekit - the “integrated” experience sucks compared to the Hue.

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#272

Post by mdekkers »

AdamGibbins wrote: post #264
EduardoBautista wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you can have dynamic lighting that slowly changes the color of the lights with just the Home app.

You can, Homekit call it "Adaptive Lighting". It's not as flexible though, you just turn it on and Apple does what it wants - there's no variables you can fiddle with if you don't like what its doing.

[flagged]

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#273

Post by Krssst »

nrvn wrote: post #237

The older I get the more I de-value "smart" things. I love dumb things. Lightbulb must be dumb. Incandescent lightbulbs were a direct evolution of candles and gas lamps leveraging on simple physical laws and principles. They were not very effective turning most of the energy into heat and LED light bulbs must have been great. But they bring electronics and multiply complexity. I already cannot just simply get a light…

If I want some sort of remote control or automation, I use products that rely on an IR remote. This way a Raspberry Pi with an IR LED can do anything I want without depending on vendor software.

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#274

Post by jorvi »

mirekrusin wrote: post #41
jorvi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a somewhat strangely named German brand that sells private IoT door / security cams. Forgot the name, sadly. They’re quite expensive though. My guess is they might sell private lightbulbs. For home audio, Sonos is great. Their voice assistant is completely locally processed.

Are you joking about Sonos? They force you to have account with them to use speakers and you have to enable location sharing on your app to connect (!!). They know more about people than their parents do.

And yet they're one of the few (only?) smart speaker that does locally processed commands. You and everyone else downvoting me are unknowledgeable clowns.

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#275

Post by ipython »

pixl97 wrote: post #270
ipython wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree but there are use cases where the smart bulbs have been great for us. 1. Next to our bed we have reading lamp sconces. The sconces we picked out do not have light switches (oops). It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as now the reading lamps automatically switch on in the evening before we come upstairs to bed, then turn off as part of the “good night” scene (which also alarms the security syste…

Yea, that's mostly where I am on this too. Primary lighting is dumb and controlled by switches. Secondary lighting/mood lighting is smart and has the ability to be color changed and timing controlled. That said, 'smart' systems love to lose connection or their settings and do the wrong thing too frequently.

I’ve found HomeKit to be pretty resilient. During internet outages it still functions locally, which was an important design choice for me.

There was one time where it went on the fritz and ultimately fixed itself when I restarted my phone (wish there was more troubleshooting or audit logging, but that’s endemic to all Apple products not just HomeKit)

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#276

Post by jorvi »

coremoff wrote: post #98
mirekrusin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking about Sonos? They force you to have account with them to use speakers and you have to enable location sharing on your app to connect (!!). They know more about people than their parents do.

Sonos are also agressively pushing out app updates that sunset older models of their speakers, as we all arbitrarily doing things like blocking streaming of audio from your phone. Sonos might have been good in the past when they were selling a way of streaming your ripped mp3s around your house, they are no longer good now that they think they own the content too.

> Sonos are also agressively pushing out app updates that sunset older models of their speakers

Sonos has a ~10 year support timeline on their speakers. That's longer than even Apple supports any of their devices, and they're often considered the gold standard of long support of tech products.

I hate being made to defend Sonos twice as it makes me feel like a shill, but it is truly how it is.

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#278

Post by nullwarp »

dheera wrote: post #215
jchw wrote: post #210

Most (almost all?) Philips Hue devices are standard Zigbee devices. Chuck out your Philips gateway and replace it with a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant and a Zigbee stick. Yeah, it's a bit more work, but if you're reading Hacker News you probably already know how to do this anyways, and honestly, Home Assistant is pretty damn good at staying hands-off. (I only update it every few months, it's on a battery backup in my…

> standard Zigbee devices One of the issues with these "standard" Zigbee devices is that you can't configure all of their settings. I have a bunch of Aqara motion sensors and I can't set their timeouts or sensitivity unless I use the Aqara app and hub. Used as a normal Zigbee device they offer no configuration options.

There are some quirks fixes that add support for a lot of these in zha that just haven't been merged yet but that you can add

https://github.com/zigpy/zha-device-handlers/pull/2485

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#279

Post by nullwarp »

ilyt wrote: post #192
vidarh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of smart home devices that supports reasonably open protocols. This includes Hue devices (Zigbee) The problem tends to be that all of them want to sucker you into using their apps or bridges to tie it all together. It's entirely avoidable, but most users don't know what to look for.

Flashing those devices to more open software (thanks to the fact vast majority is just esp8/32 with some extra electronics) also often requires opening them which is pita.

Hue devices require no flashing

Re: Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account

#280

Post by KANahas »

psyclobe wrote: post #140
grumblez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately all of their lights work over a standard Zigbee connection. No need for a Hue Hub or App at all. I was already transitioning my lights from using the Hue Hub/App to directly connecting via Zigbee/HomeAssistant before this was announced.

All except their new wifi connected ones... called Wiz.. watch out for those, much more affordable but really crappy app/setup situation.

Those WiZ bulbs have actually been pretty reliable for me in the few years I’ve had them. Pretty early on I set them up to be controlled by Home Assistant [1], and they are on par with my other Hue devices in terms of performance (maybe not a 100% match in brightness, but close enough). Definitely worth their much cheaper price to me.

[1] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/wiz/

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