Is the Philips Hue Ecosystem 'Collapsing Into Stupidity'? (rachelbythebay.com) 194
The Philips Hue ecosystem of home automation devices is "collapsing into stupidity," writes Rachel Kroll, veteran sysadmin and former production engineer at Facebook. "Unfortunately, the idiot C-suite phenomenon has happened here too, and they have been slowly walking down the road to full-on enshittification." From her blog post: I figured something was up a few years ago when their iOS app would block entry until you pushed an upgrade to the hub box. That kind of behavior would never fly with any product team that gives a damn about their users -- want to control something, so you start up the app? Forget it, we are making you placate us first! How is that user-focused, you ask? It isn't.
Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.
It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you. If you have just the lights and smart outlets, Kroll recommends deleting the units from the Hue Hub and adding them to an IKEA Dirigera hub. "It'll run them just fine, and will also export them to HomeKit so that much will keep working as well." That said, it's not a perfect solution. You will lose motion sensor data, the light level, the temperature of that room, and the ability to set custom behaviors with those buttons.
"Also, there's no guarantee that IKEA won't hop on the train to sketchville and start screwing over their users as well," adds Kroll.
What has your experience been with the Philips Hue ecosystem? Do you have any alternatives you recommend?
Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.
It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you. If you have just the lights and smart outlets, Kroll recommends deleting the units from the Hue Hub and adding them to an IKEA Dirigera hub. "It'll run them just fine, and will also export them to HomeKit so that much will keep working as well." That said, it's not a perfect solution. You will lose motion sensor data, the light level, the temperature of that room, and the ability to set custom behaviors with those buttons.
"Also, there's no guarantee that IKEA won't hop on the train to sketchville and start screwing over their users as well," adds Kroll.
What has your experience been with the Philips Hue ecosystem? Do you have any alternatives you recommend?
It was dumb from the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Is the Philips Hue Ecosystem 'Collapsing Into Stupidity'?
No it is not.
It was dumb from the beginning to connect all lightbulbs to the internet.
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Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:5, Interesting)
They are keen to stress that you don't need to give internet access to the range (so there's no phoning home. Yet) and things will keep working just fine. Except you'll be needing to set up an account before you can use anything, but they are being coy about how something that doesn't need internet access to operate is able to confirm an account has been set up on a remote server.
They are also keen to stress this account creation is all about security of the devices, but then admit the data is going to be used to send you marketing spam, which you have to explicitly opt out of. This is contrary to GDPR (or equivalent) in many countries and a Dutch company wouldn't know about such things...
Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: It was dumb from the beginning (Score:2)
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Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:5, Informative)
The point is that you didn't have to connect Hue lightbulbs to the internet, they worked locally with a Hue Hub.
I know it's Slashdot tradition not to RTFA, but it does mention that in the summary.
Anyway, there is a solution. Make your own hub and everything is done locally under your control again. Integrates with Home Assistant. https://diyhue.github.io/ [github.io]
Before buying any product like this, make sure that there is at least an open source hub/app you can use them with. Ideally get ones with Tasmota open source firmware support too. The good news is that if Philips does enshitify Hue, there will be some cheap and open enough bulbs coming to a bargain bin near you.
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"Anyway, there is a solution. Make your own hub..." ...that uses the Hue hub to provide Hue support. Genius!
"Before buying any product like this, make sure that there is at least an open source hub/app you can use them with."
Of course, you cannot know whether those open source solutions work before you buy the product. You can, however, confirm that the open source hub you linked to does not replace the Hue hub.
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I always see people advocating for using Rpi devices as smart home controllers, but the base unit plus all the transceivers needed pushes the price up substantially from just a $50 Pi.
Hubitat makes the Elevation, which is a $100 smart home controller the size of a pack of smokes that is more or less a do-everything smart home controller. It doesn't rely on internet connectivity and it has automation controls that let it do some neat stuff by for example monitoring when a particular MAC address is joined to
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You don't need a $50 pi. A $10 one would work fine. Or a $2 ESP32.
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You seem to be confused. These devices use the Zigbee protocol, they don't connect to your WiFi. If you control the hub, you control the devices. No internet connection required, no forced firmware updates. You just need a Raspberry Pi and Zibee hat. Home Assistant gives you control via your phone or a locally hosted web page.
You can easily find out which products support open source firmware and hubs before buying, just do a Google search. The most popular firmware is called Tasmota.
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If you make your own hub using Home Assistant then nothing leaves your network. In fact if you put a screen on the hub then nothing leaves it at all.
Re: It was dumb from the beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
The point theyâ(TM)re making was that they *werenâ(TM)t* connected to the internet before. Instead only the local network. If you wanted, you could then use a HomeKit hub to control them through the internet, but you didnâ(TM)t have to if you didnâ(TM)t want to, and even then it was only the HomeKit hub (which generally has decent security, and a large company providing patches) that talked over the internet, not a series of lowest cost possible lightbulbs.
The update now requires you to connect the lightbulbs to the internet.
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Right, the slow and steady gait towards totally driving your customers insane. I see similar frustration with iphone/ipad. I never "login", because I don't remember my password and it's a pain to look it up, and because it's not mandatory or necessary for operation. But I was asked 5 times in rapid succession login during the time I tried open my Microsoft Authenticator and swipe my finger so that I could authenticate the laptop at work. It was like 1 to 2 seconds between each request by Apple to login.
T
Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:5, Funny)
Intelligently Designed Internet Of Things Systems are made for their acronym.
Re: It was dumb from the beginning (Score:2)
Re: It was dumb from the beginning (Score:3)
Hue was the first good multicolor LED bulb. The only way to have color control without a total home rewiring means you need wireless tech.
They were originally zigbeeLL devices in 2012. You could use something like HomeSeer or Wink as a multi-platform controller or use the Hue hub, which had a RESTful api and its cloud connection for remote access. (HomeAssistant was not released until a year later)
Then Philips/Signify slowly went evil. They broke compatibility with ZigbeeLL in different ways (had the hubs r
Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:5, Informative)
Philips Hue used to use Zigbee, not wifi. It was a local wireless standard (hence the hub).
This is more like Logitech deciding that bluetooth mice should suddenly be wifi mice.
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Philippa Copleston-Warren. is person worth a search on - she posted revenge porn using home automation products in the uk.
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That was entertaining, LOL she certainly has a love hate relationship with home automation and those who use such things.
Re:It was dumb from the beginning (Score:4, Funny)
The economy would utterly collapse as you just decribed the top ten largest companies in the world.
On the other hand, the only person I know who has Hue lightbulbs is because he's utterly addicted to any technology that's new. Addicted to the point that he's gone into severe financial difficulty.
Meanwhile a sibling has gotten a newer thermostat with a heat pump. He claims he can control it from is phone, but the thermostat has normal controls if you don't have a smartphone. I asked "why would you want to control it with your phone?" His answer is "I don't want to, I don't use that feature, it's stupid, I just mentioned it to annoy you."
Not going for full integration. (Score:3)
I've had a hodge podge Hue system for about 3 years now.
It works.
Kinda. (When you can't control a bulb in a lamp becuase the signal won't go 10 feet and pass through the paper lampshade? Problem.)
I initially did it because I had to rearrange a couple walls in my home, putting light switches on the far side of the room from the entrance.
However, when I sell this home, i'm stripping it all out (Kinda have to, as Hue's setup isn't terribly mobile or transferable.
Between that and the semi-regular need for full system (from your internet gateway down) reboots...
Nice twoy. Nothing more.
All will be Apple (Score:3)
Hand the market to Apple faster why don't ya :/
Ask Newton. (Score:2)
Apples make really bad light bulbs.
Also, they get rotten, stink, and fall on your head. Ask Newton.
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Apple loves lock in, but they use it to make the UX better.
I don't have apple products, but it's pretty easy to see this.
I suspect this company will redo a decent UX (it's definitely flawed as evidenced by third party apps available to control it), make it lock in, and also be really really bad.
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Apple doesn't need to take over the light bulb just yet to destroy Hue's margins, if Hue can't differentiate because they make people not use their software they force themselves to compete on a commoditized homekit bulb market.
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Re:All will be Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cargo cult design, just copy what Apple did and the gods will be pleased.
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They're trying to be Apple except they don't have account syncing, email, messaging, cloud storage and one of the most popular mobile platforms in the world as well as unbeatable brand image for privacy. Yes, I know homekit automations don't work offline, but people accept way more retarded shit from Apple than "Philips". They don't have a reality distortion field.
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Don't forget blue texts!
Automate the switch, not the bulb (Score:2)
Automating the bulb has a bunch of drawbacks, like leaving you with a switch that can turn off all your automations. Get yourself some smart switches, like the Leviton ones in the US or the Lightwave ones in the UK. Neither requires internet to work. Both in fact just directly connect to HomeKit.
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Replacing switches is a delightful solution for renters, rentals often benefit the most from Hue bulbs.
Home automation is not worth the cost (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been interested in home automation for almost two decades now, and have played with a few technologies including X10 and Insteon. I've also written a bunch of software that talks directly to Insteon networks.
The first problem with home automation is that all the off-the-shelf stuff now wants to talk to the internet, and that's terrible. The included software is also often buggy. I installed a home energy monitoring system that records power usage down to the individual branch circuit level, and the software that came with it would lag to the point of being unusable within about two months, and the database would hit about a gigabyte in size within that time. Their solution was that I should pay a monthly fee to have it upload my energy data to a cloud service. I wrote my own software for it with a focus on performance and space efficiency and it works great with a decade of data and only takes about 100 MB of space per year. Every other option on the market only included a black box that forced you to upload your data to the cloud.
Secondly, the local networking is often broken. I've had a webcam for monitoring a 3D printer, and networked temperature sensors and such that are supposed to work locally to my phone, but if you block their connection to the internet at the firewall they stop working or the app can't find them. It's frustrating. The apps are also just garbage, constantly logging you out and forcing you to login again when you just want to take a quick glance at the status of your 3D print or something.
Given all those problems, I have no confidence in the security of a smart lock for your front door or your garage door, which is designed to work over the internet so you can unlock your door while you're on vacation on another continent.
Finally, don't get me started on always-on smart home speakers and robot vacuums that map the contents of your home and upload them to their servers so they can sell the data. You want these devices listening and recording the most intimate moments of your life? No thank you. This is dystopia and I want no part of it.
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I'm not worried about the security of my internet enabled smart garage door opener. It needs a regular power cycle to work at all. If someone wants to break into my garage to reboot my cloud garage door opener so they can hack into it to break into my garage they are welcome to.
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For your camera, try a Raspberry Pi and Octoprint (if you're not using it already). The camera stack supports Raspi cams, as well as many standard USB web cams.
I can access mine remotely and directly, and control the printer (mainly to stop it if a tangle) - through the web page, not an app - by tunnelling via SSH and punching it through my router. I use keys only for the SSH connection - not passwords. I do password-protect the Octoprint UI, as a belt-and-suspenders approach to securing it.
No dumb-ass clou
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'monitoring a 3D printer'
Yeah, we should ask the team that developed OctoEverywhere to do a HA app. It would be free/paid, but their stuff does work. For me at least.
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I've been interested in home automation for almost two decades now, and have played with a few technologies including X10 and Insteon. I've also written a bunch of software that talks directly to Insteon networks.
The first problem with home automation is that all the off-the-shelf stuff now wants to talk to the internet, and that's terrible.
You did all that research and missed zwave, zigbee, tasmato, and esphome?
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For home automation stuff, look for things that support the Tasmota open source firmware. If you search AliExpress for "tasmota" you will find loads of compatible devices. Many Western brands can be converted Tasmota too.
You can also just buy modules and built your own. Basically an ESP microcontroller board and the sensors of your choice.
You can use it for all your needs. Webcams, temperature sensors, light switches, power monitors, door locks...
For smart speakers, you can build them from a Raspberry Pi. N
Alternative (Score:2)
Disclaimer: I've never purchased anything from this site, but it looks like it has decent products that don't require Internet access to work: Cloud Free [cloudfree.shop].
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I want Hue light because they look really good. I have tried a bunch of Tasmota/Zigbee LED bulb and they werent as bright, the colors not as good, and they are fragile. Put them in a lamp and knock that lamp over, they die. The Hue bulb is still going.
Your fault (Score:2)
It Didn't (Score:2)
It didn't require this nonsense. Philips changed how it works. Did you read the article?
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Plenty of FOSS support for Hue devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Hue owners:
Go get a Zigbee dongle, and plug it into something that can run Home Assistant and diyHue. A raspberry pi will be fine. In Home Assistant, install Zigbee2MQTT and the diyHue integration. One by one, delete your lights from the Hue bridge, which will make them available to pair with Zigbee2MQTT, which will present them to HA and diyHue. Now you can pair all your favorite third party Hue apps with diyHue, which presents the same API as an official Hue bridge. Each of these projects are open source -- diyHue and Home Assistant are Apache-licensed, and Z2M is GPLv3. None require active Internet access or cloud-based logins.
For apps, you have a variety of options which you can find on Play or App Store. Also, diyHue and Home Assistant both have some native webapp functionality including light control, plus Home Assistant has its own ecosystem surrounding it that you can find apps and such for.
As a bonus, you also gain the ability to integrate with DIY solutions -- for instance, you can buy long reels of light strip (like SK6812-based RGBW strips) that are easily a match for what Philips puts out, with the added capability of individually-addressable LEDs, at a fraction of the price, with more selection in PC board color and IP rating and LED density, and connect them up with cheap ESP8266 controllers. You can now also integrate with tons of other stuff, and link controls for all of it within Home Assistant.
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There's Ethernet-attached Zigbee coordinators you can get, and those will also work with Z2M.
Re:Plenty of FOSS support for Hue devices (Score:4, Informative)
Glad to be of help! If you're going this route, another thing I found helpful was using the SN74AHCT125N bus buffer gate to step the 3.3V output from the 8266's RX pin up to the 5V expected by the SK6812. Also, slap a ~67 ohm resistor or so between the 5V signal output from your controller and the first LED. diyHue has some firmware for doing SK6812 stuff -- find that in their github (it's kinda buried), flash it to the 8266 (you can use the Ardunio IDE), then pair to the wifi AP it gives you and set your own wifi access info and light configuration, and then got to diyHue, add lights, punch in the controller's IP and tell it to auto-detect the type... then your lights show up in diyHue!
Another interesting project to look at is WLED. Have fun!
IKEA Dirigera hub (Score:4, Funny)
Four out of five star rating. Pretty good. That means IKEA will be discontinuing it real soon now.
Wiz (Score:2)
I find it funny (Score:4, Insightful)
and in the next breath talk about how they have it hooked up to Samsung, Apple, Google, Amazon, or whoever for VA.
What is the point of bitching about something being local only? You gave that up for voice control.
Re:I find it funny (Score:4, Informative)
HomeAssistant has an offline-voice mode, if you are concerned about privacy.
I use it without voice control at all, since my setup is pretty simple. For the few awkward lights I have, I just use a cheap zigbee button or the HA app on my phone - and even that's rarer, since my automation is more along the lines of "turn these lights on at dusk, and off at 10PM".
Turn off automatic app updates (Score:2)
And block all requests the HUE lights and hub make to external sites. Its crazy that HUE and Nanoleaf (an even shittier less reliable light/app ecosystem) "needs" to connect to multiple external sites every minute.
Updateshittery surprise EULA problem solved.
PS
Like people on here are saying,quite often it does takes more time to pick up the smartphone, unlock it, open the app, wait for the app to respond-often it seems to be searching for someting, tap the room, tap the light, and tap ON/OFF than the 5 seco
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At a guess, being fairly familiar with the Hue API, I suspect that the hub will not be responsible for enforcing the login requirement since they'd have to make a breaking change to the entire third-party ecosystem they've built up. They've already found it challenging to drive adoption of the v2 API, which did not have this kind of sleaze, and introduced a lot of actual improvements. The bulbs themselves are Zigbee-based and do not do IP at all. The problem is that Philips still controls the phone app. Thi
stop buying this crap (Score:2, Troll)
You can just use the switch. You are just wasting money, light bulb apps have not improved your life.
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We need “cloud optional” labelling (Score:2)
This situation demonstrates why some people want “cloud optional” or “cloud required” labelling on products, with no “oh the cloud is now required”, in some future update. We don’t know how companies our using our data and the need for the cloud makes the solutions useless for anything off-grid or when the connection to the ISP fails.
A nation named "Sue" (Score:3)
Talk to lawyers. Add a computer to something, suddenly there's tons of potential to get sued. Bugs, security holes. If ladder companies could flip a switch and stopping you from using their ladder until you pasted warning sticker #73 on it, they would have no choice.
all complaints are app-related (Score:2)
Hue is first and foremost a standalone solution that works just fine without an app. You need an app to set it up but not to use it.
It is perfectly possible, in fact preferable, to use Hue devices without the Hue app. I wouldn't know about annoying EULAs in an app I've never used. There are better solutions for the app,there are not better solutions for the bulbs.
The hub, though, has always been a POS.
I have a box of 30 year old X10 stuff. (Score:3)
I've seen how this ends (Score:3)
Another appliance company that will decide your account isn't valuable, or you haven't upgraded to new appliances, and so will delete it: Your appliances can't log-in, so you can't change the settings. Some brands even disable remote on/off.
Of course, you can create a new account and install your settings (cloud services don't pull the current configuration from the appliances), and three months later, another new account. I've seen how this ends: The surprise being, enshittification wasn't adopted earlier.
Re:Alternative (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, its called getting off your backside and flicking a light switch.
Yeah, I don't think you get how this works. My light switches are Hue, and work by Zigbee. One button controls many bulbs, and sets a "scene" for the room. I also use sensors, and timers. Rarely voice control.
I like that it all works locally. If Signify screws things up, I can move my Hue switches to directly connect to Home Assistant, and de-commission the Hue Bridge. This would be sad, and a lot of extra work, since the Hue Bridge has worked well as a local light controller. It does simple things by itself, but also works with Home Assistant for more customised behaviour.
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Ditch the lot and reinstall mechanical switches. You've only got yourself to blame for buying into this technology-for-its-own-sake BS in the first place.
It reminds me of touchscreens in cars - take a technology refined to almost perfect usability , ie buttons and knobs, and make it much harder to use for someone driving a 2 ton vehicle at 60mph by making everything non tactile amnd variable location touch control. Great move.
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I chalk this up to generational shifts, sort of a slash-and-burn tech ecosystem. New designers and engineers come in and want to change things for no reason other than to "update" the technology, even though it does a worse job and costs more to maintain. Then the old engineers retire and nobody remembers how things used to work, so they end up rediscovering and reinventing what they replaced in much more complicated ways. I see this now with web developers reinventing basic accessibility ideas that existed
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Best example I can think of is the Windows 8 "Modern" UI which is still shitting over Windows today. Of course by modern they meant look and feel circa Windows 1.0 ignoring all usability enhancements made in the intervening 30.
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It wasn't technology for its own sake.
It was technology to take advantage of WW LEDs so I can have harsh light in the morning and warm light in the evening.
The ability to push a button and have the can lights behind me on, but not the ones between me and the TV is a nice perk too.
I know these sound stupid and minor, but they make my life just a little bit better (the color temperature adjustment especially) every day.
Do I need them? No
But I don't need a lot of things I have, and it'll suck if they require I
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The lights behind you don't glare off the screen?
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Probably a fair ways back from TV, dimmed, and recessed up in the ceiling. The room would need to be rectangular such that the lights are far enough from TV. The recessed part is the key.
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I just looked at my layout.
They're ever so slightly in front of me (but above my field of view). They're in canisters so the light is mostly down.
When adjusted to their dimmest I do not notice them on my TV.
I think if my TV was maybe 6 inches taller they'd start to interfere.
It's not why I purchased the lights, but it was pretty nice to put a button on my coffee table that can make the lights bright (morning), dimmer warm (evening), or just the 2 lights all the way dim (movie), or off.
Is it worth the $2/mon
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"It reminds me of touchscreens in cars..."
Sure it does, and your solution to touchscreens in cars is to "get off your backside and walk"? Or do you understand the value of cars unlike your ignorance of the value of Hue bulbs?
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Get off the computer and go talk to people face to face. Kids these days.
The irony of aging Slashdot.
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Many modern TVs don't even have volume controls aside from the remote.
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False equivalence. Someone may flick through channels on a TV multiple times before they settle on something or adjust the volume depending on the show. You don't stand by a light switch flicking it on and off , you do it once and move on.
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you do it once and move on.
My outdoor lights on my house turn on automatically at dusk, dim themselves at 10, and shut off at midnight. (There's no streetlights in my neighborhood, all of my neighbors leave their outdoor lights on.) There's a light that I always forget to turn off and don't notice until I go to bed. The switch is out in the garage, so I'd have to schlep all the way thru the house and go out in the freezing ass garage to turn it off, now I can do it from my phone. I have a couple "portable" plugs that get used for va
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"You don't stand by a light switch flicking it on and off , you do it once and move on."
False choice. Hue bulbs have far more functions that "on" and "off". Maybe you can find someone to teach that to you.
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I wouldn't exactly call a person that tries to prescribe how to use light switches, sane.
Get help, dude.
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Do your pets read at night when you're not home? Left to their own day time animals will sleep when it's dark. Why keep them awake when you're at work late?
Re:Alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes you wonder how wolves cope in the wild without someone to turn on the lights for them at night.
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Maybe that works when the only light in your house is the lamp over your workstation. But it doesn't work when you have teenagers in your house leaving the lights on all the time, and every evening you have to make a tour around the house to turn them off. So I automated that: all lights are turned off at midnight. Using Hue this worked surprisingly well for many years, but now they have ruined the party. So I'm going to create a diyHue bridge to get rid of the C-suite crap.
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Things I heard growing up,
"Turn off the lights when you leave a room!"
"Put on a sweater if it's cold!"
"Put on your seat belt!"
You don't?
Re: Alternative (Score:2)
Grounding? Better to take the electric charges out of their allowance.
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Maybe the people using them are disabled and unable to walk?
Re: Alternative (Score:2)
Walking across a pitch black room to find a light switch seems safe
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"Clap ON! Clap off! The CLAPPER!" as old woman is seen turning lights on n off with a simple clapping motion.
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Hey , here's a radical idea - maybe switch the light on BEFORE it gets pitch dark!
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"Sod everyone with mobility issues."
Even for able bodied people, it's nice to be able to see the state of everything in your home at a glance. When you go out or go to bed, you can easily check that everything is turned off, for example.
And it all used to work completely locally, on Zigbee, so secure too.
People who just dismiss new ideas, and don't think for even a fraction of a second about what other people's needs might be, are too stupid to be let near technology IMO.
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Except everything isn't turned off. All those lights microcontrollers are contuously drawing power so nice waste of energy there for starters.
Secondly how do you think disabled people manage in normal houses, they sit in the dark? And if they're so disabled they can't use a light switch themselves then they'll need 24 carers anyway as lights will be the least of their worries what with not being able to eat or drink or go to the toilet on their own either.
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Not really. All the buttons on my Samsung are in the back and unified so the power button is also the navigation/menu switch. It's like one control to rule them all and is not very intuitive so it takes a lot longer than 4 seconds every time I have to figure out how to use it to navigate anything.
But, I get your point. The purists on either side are going to point fingers and call each other idiots, but, as always, there is a happy medium.
I don't personally have any app-based home automation, because I have
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You can? Which TVs still let you do that?
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The Samsungs have a unified button below the screen, 4 direction arrows (V+V- P+P-) and a central click to turn on/off. At least mine has, it's a few years old now.
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I think the proper analogy for this luddite is throwing away the TV and reading a book.
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" Getting rid of switch wires made it a lot easier - just run +, neutral and ground to every socket and every switch location"
So sockets are always live no matter what. Genius. I'm guessing you don't have small children.
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For the love of karma that is a fantastic phrase!
Re: Open source (Score:2)
The independence ended with Siri.
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There's the dumbest suggestion yet.