51–60 of 138 posts
Wouldn't it make more sense to make the actual lightswitch wi-fi controllable rather than the lightbulb?
What about a setup where there are two levels of screw: the LED bulb screws into a fixture with the wifi stuff inside, which then screws into the light fixture? Then when the bulb goes out, you can just unscrew the LEDs without having to throw away all the other components.
Maybe there's something I'm missing though; I am by no means knowledgable about electronics.
I wonder if it can be paired to multiple phones? Otherwise you'll end up with only one person who can turn the lights on or off.
Shame this uses WiFi rather than Power line networking; I'm sure it would be more efficient and future proof.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make the actual lightswitch wi-fi controllable rather than the lightbulb?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer 'assume makes an ass of u and me'.
I've never understood why it makes an ass out of the "me" in that context. I can only imagine scenarios in which the person doing the assuming is making an ass out of themselves, not where their assuming is making an ass out of other people.
The home automation market has been an utter disaster for decades. I hoped the "green" movement would nudge it mainstream. Not yet, and Google even killed off their home electricity monitoring projects. Here's a similar product: http://www.smarthome.com/2672-222/INSTEON-LED-Bulb/p.aspx No color change capability and requires some other stuff as part of the system, but once you start turning on lightbulbs you quickly…
Seriously, color changing? Dimming? Make a simple natural light bulb, a smartphone app and a wifi wall switch. Latter is far far more important than an ability to drown my kitchen in a shade of green. Keep it useful, damn it. Not a single home automation company gets this. Usability is a key to adoption.
Lots of people in the comments are getting hung up on the "control your lights over wifi" aspect of this project, which is far less interesting. INSTEON is (AFAIK) the current best solution for home automation, and already does this pretty well: http://www.insteon.net/
It's backwards compatible with X10, uses both powerline and RF to send control signals, and each INSTEON device also functions as a repeater, so you're far less likely to run into poor signal issues that plagued X10.