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The lightbulb reinvented

kickstarter.com

101–110 of 138 posts

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#101
post #60

I like the idea of "f.lux for my house". Might improve my sleeping. This part of the project is potentially life-altering . 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…

You could achieve a f.lux for your house with a timed dimmer, I think.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#102
post #101
post #60

I like the idea of "f.lux for my house". Might improve my sleeping. This part of the project is potentially life-altering . 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…

You could achieve a f.lux for your house with a timed dimmer, I think.

Lowering the brightness helps, but there's more to it than that. Changing the color temperature is one of the cool features of both f.lux and this bulb. The idea is a warmer color temperature at night acts less like the sun.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#103
Very cool. 6 Watts, wifi controlled, colors and dimming, and plugs into a standard lightbulb socket. Mayhaps, the transformation from 110VAC adds to the complexity and possibly power consumption. Power over ethernet might be a better option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

We're using 12V with many white LEDs that consume .1 Watts powered entirely from the sun. The tiny 12V sockets have intially caused some problems because there are two prongs on the base and the base, and there appear to be different ways of wiring this.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#104

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.

Because assumptions generally make fools of both sides - you'll assume that someone will tell you and they'll assume that you knew.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#105

From an efficiency/sustainability point of view, I have a basic discomfort with the idea of throwing away all the wifi/controller stuff each time you need a new bulb. I know LEDs don't run out very fast, but they do run out. This has cost implications too. 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? Th…

I'd be generally more worried about the power supply components. There's a tiny switchmode supply in there, which means capacitors. Which would be my main concern for early failures, I'd think far earlier than the LED under normal conditions.

Hopefully they'll be able to arrange good quality caps for manufacturing, even better if the whole unit can be opened up and serviced. Although it's questionable whether 99.5% of the market would ever try and fix it.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#106
This is one of those times where I wonder what these guys think Phillips, GE, and others are spending hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars on LED lighting solutions are doing. In some industries you can say "Oh they just don't get it" but lighting is so fashion driven and so fundamental to everything we do these entrenched players don't miss out on much.

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#107

From an efficiency/sustainability point of view, I have a basic discomfort with the idea of throwing away all the wifi/controller stuff each time you need a new bulb. I know LEDs don't run out very fast, but they do run out. This has cost implications too. 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? Th…

No, I agree. This idea is braindead because it's much more effective to focus on a device you plug in between the outlet in your wall and the devices you want to control power to. A standard already exists for half the project which is called x10.

Have you ever worked with X10? It's a standard finalised in 1975, and this shows.

Take a look under "Commands getting lost", "Relatively slow", "Limited functionality", "Interference and lack of encryption" for a quick overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)#Limita...

Certainly there are good things about having a standard for home automation, but there are many good reasons for not adopting X10.

(I take heart in the fact this project has some committed hacker types involved with it, Andy Gelme was a founder of the Melbourne hackerspace and I absolutely believe the Kickstarter project when it says the device will have a specified API and be hackable. Not an open standard, but at least interopable.)

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#108

From an efficiency/sustainability point of view, I have a basic discomfort with the idea of throwing away all the wifi/controller stuff each time you need a new bulb. I know LEDs don't run out very fast, but they do run out. This has cost implications too. 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? Th…

It's funny, I had the exact opposite worry. With a rated life of 25 years, the WiFi components are likely to become obsolete long before the bulb itself quits. If I buy one of these, am I going to end up maintaining an obsolete WiFi network in the 2030s just to run my household lights?

Re: The lightbulb reinvented

#110

I'd find this potentially interesting if I had any confidence that it wouldn't burn out in a few months like every other "lasts for years" bulb I've tried.

Two cases here.

Many CFL bulbs are junk. Their "years" claim assumes they are only used for brief periods each day, and even at that I doubt they can reach their warrantee period. That doesn't matter though, because you will be unable to find any mechanism for contacting the manufacturer about the warrantee. I assume they have zero claims.

LED bulbs are different. Heat is a killer. You might be burning them up in an enclosed or even partially enclosed fixture.

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