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…
The lightbulb reinvented
101–110 of 138 posts
Re: The lightbulb reinvented
#102I 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
#103We'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
#104Earlier 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.
Re: The lightbulb reinvented
#105From 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…
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
#106Re: The lightbulb reinvented
#107From 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.
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
#108From 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…
Re: The lightbulb reinvented
#109Re: The lightbulb reinvented
#110I'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.
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.