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Phillips Hue bulbs are locally controllable and expose a REST API through their bridge.
Oh wow! Consider me sold. I looked into smartbulbs a few years back and these details eluded me. That checks all my boxes.
https://lan.developer.lifx.com/docs
But the API provided by the Phillips Hue bridge is maybe more high level.
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Is there any friendly alternative to these home automation things ? I would like to try some stuff but I don't want to spend a weekend creating vlans or fighting google play services, alexa etc.
Philips Hue: You can use the phone app to control individual bulbs directly with bluetooth, but for more control you need also the Hue brigde, which talks to the bulbs over Zigbee (a wireless protocol), and to your phone app over your wifi. For initial setup, the bridge needs an internet connection, but otherwise it will work as long as your home wifi is up, even if there is no connection to outside internet. The fea…
Their bulbs also sometimes just ignored commands, so you'd have to just spam power off or the color you were trying to choose until it finally worked (this was in a room with the bulb and a hard wired wifi AP). The app was also slow and took awhile to start (on flagship Android phone at the time).
Eventually my bulbs died and I haven't gone back to smart lighting yet (though I'm considering ordering some hue or Ikea bulbs).
If you check /r/lifx on Reddit it's basically filled with people complaining about lifx's awful software.
>Dark mode
Is crap in practice. 1/10 of your programs needed for a task will not have dark mode. Also most dark modes are high contrast instead of just low brightness. Most programs will suddenly show something bright because they are not cohesively developed (some stupid library will show an unthemed window), and most LCDs cannot be dimmed enough to be used in the dark without straining your eyes (also it will need to be PWM-free which is common now but it is still another constraint). Another fun fact is that if you use a program like redshift to set the color temperature low, the overshoot on a typical LCD will make flashes of white light every time you scroll. The pragmatic solution is to go to bed early, or just do what I do which is to use CRT/OLED and forget about dark modes but set the brightness and color temperature low.
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I just want some lights that expose a simple API and are easy to talk to. I want smart lights that will work when the internet is down and doesn't need an app to connect to.
Phillips Hue bulbs are locally controllable and expose a REST API through their bridge.
One of the things I love about the shift to LED lights has been the focus on quantifying the different characteristics of light they emit, in terms of brightness, color, and spectrum, etc. It affords customizing light in ways that were swept under the rug a bit with bulbs in the past.
The reason those didn’t matter so much in the past is because traditional light bulbs are so damn good. Even today, as good as LEDs have gotten, their color rendering is still noticeably worse than incandescents. (The highest scores are around 80-90 CRI, an old-fashioned bulb is the standard at 100.) Trouble dimming smoothly, harsh blues, flickering, strobing, excessive glare… all of these weren’t a problem until CFL…
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Philips Hue: You can use the phone app to control individual bulbs directly with bluetooth, but for more control you need also the Hue brigde, which talks to the bulbs over Zigbee (a wireless protocol), and to your phone app over your wifi. For initial setup, the bridge needs an internet connection, but otherwise it will work as long as your home wifi is up, even if there is no connection to outside internet. The fea…
As someone who had Lifx due to them not needing a controller, don't buy them their software sucks. It worked fine for months at a time, but would then decide it no longer wanted to obey commands and you'd have to re-pair it, which usually took 30 minutes and 5 failed attempts where it would fail during the setup process after resetting the bulb. Their bulbs also sometimes just ignored commands, so you'd have to just…
Sounds about right.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Philips Hue: You can use the phone app to control individual bulbs directly with bluetooth, but for more control you need also the Hue brigde, which talks to the bulbs over Zigbee (a wireless protocol), and to your phone app over your wifi. For initial setup, the bridge needs an internet connection, but otherwise it will work as long as your home wifi is up, even if there is no connection to outside internet. The fea…
As someone who had Lifx due to them not needing a controller, don't buy them their software sucks. It worked fine for months at a time, but would then decide it no longer wanted to obey commands and you'd have to re-pair it, which usually took 30 minutes and 5 failed attempts where it would fail during the setup process after resetting the bulb. Their bulbs also sometimes just ignored commands, so you'd have to just…
Phillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.
Is there any friendly alternative to these home automation things ? I would like to try some stuff but I don't want to spend a weekend creating vlans or fighting google play services, alexa etc.
"Edison bulb" refers to a style and not anything to do with the quality of light. And you will probably get LED and a buggy one at that. Get incandescents, never ever use CFL because they look terrible and will make you want to kill yourself. Only get LED if you need cold color temperature, and know what you're doing enough to avoid flicker and other LED problems like bad color rendering. Half of LEDs will flicker ev…
