51–60 of 93 posts
I really thought this was a parody.
Yeah it’s actually hilarious. It’s like something straight out of an Adult Swim show. Cheerful music, complicated and obviously error prone procedure, narrator that sounds really happy about what they’ve done here. The added text in the description about the firmware version. Life is stranger than fiction sometimes. I love it. Oh and I’m never buying GE smart bulbs lol.
Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch . For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work! What do people that buy smart bulbs do, tape their light switches in the “on” position so you c…
1) we have one in our bedroom - wife loves to crotchet in bed, but of course then inevitably I'm the one being kicked out of the bed to switch the light off. Smart bulb solved that issue, I can just switch it off from my phone. 2) yeah smart switches sound great but it's physically impossible to get them installed in the UK thanks to the unique way our electrical wiring is done - the switch on the wall only has the p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a bunch of smart bulbs, and actually, I really like them. For starters, the Hue bulbs are fairly high quality LEDs. They don't flicker excessively, they distort colors less than cheaper bulbs, and I haven't had one burn out yet. Oh, and the default color is apparently now programmable. We normally run ours off of old-fashioned switches, with the exception of one or two rooms where the switches are badly positi…
>The biggest downside is that after a power outage, every light turns on. Set your lights to return to the last state after power recovery.
(It does make outtage recovery inconvenient, but that's much rarer than the day-to-day inconvenience)
I have some GE smart lightbulbs and i've never needed to reset them. People seem eager to mock this, but i don't see the problem. it's a (hopefully) rarely used procedure that you wouldn't want to be accidentally triggered, on an item that's very price sensitive. A physical reset button would significantly add to the cost of a part that sells for If anything, be happy that GE has not only engineered a reset procedure…
However, they recognised the complexity of the reset process, and that customers may have a more-significant-than-none need for a reset. (A simple example that occurred to me: Lost/destroyed phone). This video was the result. A professionally filmed video, even with low needs such as this one, also come with significant costs, as well as the PR fallout when people realise it's absurdly complicated compared to pressin…
Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch . For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work! What do people that buy smart bulbs do, tape their light switches in the “on” position so you c…
> Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch. For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work! While I agree, a large part of the challenge is that people live in apartment buildings, where…
Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch . For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work! What do people that buy smart bulbs do, tape their light switches in the “on” position so you c…
Was it really to expensive to add a cheap button? It's not like it needs to be pressed more than once or twice per product lifetime.
I don’t own any smart lightbulbs, but my flat’s ceiling is at about 3,90m and getting a ladder out for every reset would be tedious. This would work without.
I have some GE smart lightbulbs and i've never needed to reset them. People seem eager to mock this, but i don't see the problem. it's a (hopefully) rarely used procedure that you wouldn't want to be accidentally triggered, on an item that's very price sensitive. A physical reset button would significantly add to the cost of a part that sells for If anything, be happy that GE has not only engineered a reset procedure…
However, they recognised the complexity of the reset process, and that customers may have a more-significant-than-none need for a reset. (A simple example that occurred to me: Lost/destroyed phone). This video was the result. A professionally filmed video, even with low needs such as this one, also come with significant costs, as well as the PR fallout when people realise it's absurdly complicated compared to pressin…
It would constantly lose pairing with the bulbs. In order to re-pair with the bulbs, all the bulbs had to be reset individually using this process, and then all configuration had to be deleted from the app and every bulb needed to be re-added as a new bulb. Pairing was error-prone. Firmware updates would constantly fail.
Not only that, but initially the software didn't even support turning them on or changing the color on a schedule, despite the hardware being capable of it (they added the feature later). If basic things like schedules don't work what is even the point of smart bulbs?
Looking at this error message from the app [1] might give you an idea of how sloppy their SW was. This isn't from the first version either.
After they added schedules it was a bit better since you could just set one and not touch it. And after years they've fixed some of the major bugs.
I still think smart lights are useful. Setting the lights to turn on in the morning (as a substitute for an alarm clock) is very nice, as well as changing to a warmer color temperature in the evening. But switches are superior to phones for just turning the lights on and off IMO. I think an ideal smart light system would use switches to turn them on and set brightness/color temperature, and only use the phone for advanced things like scheduling.
Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch . For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work! What do people that buy smart bulbs do, tape their light switches in the “on” position so you c…
1) we have one in our bedroom - wife loves to crotchet in bed, but of course then inevitably I'm the one being kicked out of the bed to switch the light off. Smart bulb solved that issue, I can just switch it off from my phone. 2) yeah smart switches sound great but it's physically impossible to get them installed in the UK thanks to the unique way our electrical wiring is done - the switch on the wall only has the p…