
Philips Hue blocks 3rd party lights - cstuder
https://home-assistant.io/blog/2015/12/12/philips-hue-blocks-3rd-party-bulbs/
======
mdip
I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I
can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked
like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it
was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that
aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more
motivated to buy Philips Hue products since they're already invested in the
existing system".

The first argument is out the door because now they'll just get a lot of
support questions around many more products that don't work. The second
_might_ happen for existing customers, but I'm now going to avoid this product
as a future customer because _compatibility is a feature_ , and for me, and
I'd think _anyone_ who is looking to purchase a tool that manages
lighting/small electrics around the home, compatibility is easily the #1 or #2
feature. If there were a choice between a lightswitch that worked with a wide
array of lightbulbs, and one that worked with only one company's bulbs, guess
which one I'm buying?

~~~
roymurdock
Boss: We introduced Hue back in 2012 w/ a plan to lose money the first 3 years
developing the hub, subsidizing partners, and getting our product out in the
market. Tell me we're seeing a positive ROI now.

Hue PM: Hue is profitable, but only marginally so. Our strategy of making up
the initial investment on $60 per bulb hardware is being undermined by cheap
3rd party lighting fixtures. Plus we're incurring costs responding to all of
these non-hue connectivity and reliability issues.

Boss: We control a large enough market share now and most of the market is
already heavily invested in our ecosystem. Cut off hub connectivity for these
3rd party products. People should not be using non-Hue approved hardware with
our software. We're a for-profit company, not a government or a charity.

Hue PM: That won't go over well with the early adopters and the tech
community.

Boss: I've already run the cost/benefit analysis. The tech community might be
mad for a little while, but we've got our sights set on industrial and
commercial contracts now that we've proved Hue's viability in the consumer
market. Do it.

~~~
cbsmith
That doesn't seem like a fair view of the analysis.

If the real value was in the hub, and these other lights were getting a free
ride on it, then the opportunity would be to charge more for the hub.

What is far more likely to be the case is that the support costs around
problems caused by random third party components messing with the Zigbee
network were exceeding the value of providing that support, particularly when
you factor in that the customers they really wanted to grow wouldn't be using
anything other than Hue's.

So, while blocking out 3rd party devices decreases the perceived value of the
hub, the drop in perceived value is far exceeded by the drop in support costs.
Easy win.

It's still hostile, but to a distinct use case, rather than their entire
customer base.

~~~
gherkin0
It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into
existing products that people _already own_ and have spend money and effort to
integrate. These people bought product with the expectation of compatibility,
now they're out their investment because of Philips's selfish business
decision.

Even they have elevated support costs, Philips's made their bed by offering
compatibility in the first place _for many years_. If they want to remove it,
they really should introduce a new model ("Introducing Hue 2.0: Now with less
bulb compatibility!") and leave the existing customers unaffected.

~~~
jzwinck
> It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into
> existing products that people already own

Last year, Shimano (the bikes-and-fishing people) released a firmware update
for their electronic shifting system which prevents 2012 (10-speed) parts from
working with 2014 (11-speed) gear mechanisms. Literally, if you upgraded your
bike from 10 speeds to 11, it worked when the hardware was released, but not
after you installed the (irreversible) firmware update. This is with
everything coming from a single brand!

You can read a little about that here: [http://fitwerx.com/converting-shimano-
ultegra-6770-di2-to-11...](http://fitwerx.com/converting-shimano-
ultegra-6770-di2-to-11-speed/)

~~~
qq66
A firmware update for a BICYCLE? I obviously haven't ridden in a while.

~~~
RightWingRabble
Wireless shifting. It's supposed to save us from the tyranny of the shift
cable.

~~~
gherkin0
And when your batteries inevitably die out on the trail and you're stuck in
some random gear, you'll bless the day you bought into this ~ _innovation_ ~.

~~~
gknoy
I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;)

~~~
throwaway7767
> I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;)

I'd be surprised if they did. A dynamo adds a noticeable load on the bike, and
the people buying this are already optimising for small improvements. Adding a
dynamo to power it would probably be a net negative for performance.

~~~
wiredfool
They should generate power from the motion of the shift levers.

~~~
throwaway7767
> They should generate power from the motion of the shift levers.

How much power would that really generate? You can't make them too stiff,
since part of the reason people like electronic shifting is that it's easy to
do when your hands are numb from cold.

------
underbluewaters
I've been a hue user for the past year.

1) Their lights/bridge are by far the most reliable IoT product I've used. A
9/10 where other products (Wink, GE, Lutron) are at best 3/10.

2) While 3rd party bulbs were sort of supported, it wasn't advertised. I've
never seen it described as a interoperable Zigbee Light Link device.

3) My attempts at getting a GE bulb working were inconsistent, and even when
it did work the brightness range and responsiveness were worse than the hue
bulbs. I had constant disconnections where I had to re-add the bulb as well. I
imagine many people blamed philips when in fact the problem was with the cheap
15.00 bulb. This is probably the reason for discontinuing unofficial support.

I don't like the fact that there's not a thriving range of interoperable,
cheap, and high quality zigbee light link devices out there. I'm happy the
Philips is focused on delivering a product that actually works, however. All
of my other home automation purchases have ended with many wasted hours and
eventual returns.

~~~
funkyy
If people blamed Phillips for this, then there is quite easy solution. Allow
people to activate the 3rd party access, but do it Android way. Hide the
option from plain sight, force users to read quick warning message about 3rd
party bulbs can affect or damage system. This way only people that did their
homework will be able to reactivate it.

~~~
zorpner
As relevant today as when it was written:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030728-00/?p=43043)

People will blindly follow a tutorial online that tells them how to activate
this option, and continue to contact Philips for support. I've worked on
products that have these unsupported/advanced modes, and customer queries on
them are constant and time-consuming, even to simply dismiss (and, of course,
those customers then go on to leave bad reviews, et cetera).

~~~
hcf
The Chromebook method (to disable write protect) requires you to open the
device and remove a specific screw, it's beyond just blindly following
instructions.

~~~
motoboi
Is this screw method used so you lose guarantee if you change the software?

------
dperfect
This problem isn't unique to Philips Hue, and I'm not sure Philips is
necessarily a bad actor here. They are, after all, just acting in their best
interest (and contrary to common belief, companies _are_ self-interested; the
customer's interests are important only so much as they serve the company's
interests - for better or for worse).

Perhaps the problem is more related to the ZigBee standard, or more
specifically, what ZigBee _doesn 't_ cover. As I understand it, the fact that
Hue products conform to the ZigBee standard only applies to the protocol
between the hub and lights; it says nothing about communication between
control interfaces and the hub.

With that in mind, I feel that anyone who expected to use the Hue hub for
controlling anything other than Hue lights had incorrect expectations. I
certainly don't remember seeing Philips advertising any kind of third-party
interoperability with the product.

Of course, it would be awesome for consumers if Philips did make that
guarantee of interoperability, but from a business standpoint, once you start
going down that road, you effectively have to support everyone else's products
(whether or not they conform to the spec), and any failing of another product
then reflects poorly on Philips' brand - even if they aren't the ones at
fault.

So maybe if we put more pressure on these companies to adopt a common home
automation control standard (not Apple's, not Google's, but something vendor-
neutral), then we might start to see home automation interoperability in a
consumer-friendly way.

~~~
marcosdumay
> and contrary to common belief, companies are self-interested; the customer's
> interests are important only so much as they serve the company's interests -
> for better or for worse

The idea used to be that companies served the consumer interest, and then
billed some money in exchange.

When was it that companies become some self sustaining beings, with their own
interest to be served? (Yeah, surely when they discovered they could take
their clients as hostage. The question was rhetorical.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't know if that idea was ever true. Maybe it worked back in the times
when customers and sellers knew each other personally, but that must have been
way before we first invented cities. The idea is certainly being taught to
kids though, and it's also used to argue that the market can solve everything
in a nice way.

~~~
marcosdumay
Companies (or similar things) are probably doing this since they exist. But
people used to expect them to behave and even reasonably recently (like the
end of the XX century) people (normal people, even on government) used to
display outrage when companies made defective products to push their bottom-
line.

Nowadays that seems to be the expected behavior. But in a second thought, that
looks like one of those cyclic features in society, that get worse only until
people react, then get better until people get complacent.

------
mschuster91
Having had the pleasure of developing ZigBee stuff (NDA, so cannot name
specifics), I can understand Philips' position of blocking 3rd party stuff.

Zigbee is nasty enough to develop for even if you HAVE all the relevant docs
and everything, without adding stuff developed by others into the mix. The
only thing why this crap ended upon users is because it's less power hungry
than WiFi will be and has a bigger range than Bluetooth.

------
jcromartie
Are there grounds for a lawsuit when a manufacturer pushes out an update to a
product that intentionally degrades its feature set like this? This is no
longer the same product that these users bought, it's effectively damaged by
the update.

~~~
bitwize
No, technically the third-party manufacturers were in violation of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, a federal offense with penalties up to five years in
prison. From Philips' perspective, refusing to cooperate with those criminally
infringing their IP is a feature, not a bug.

~~~
bjt
This is wrong on a couple levels.

1\. The protocol is open. It's not Philips' IP.

2\. Even if the protocol were closed, and Philips put some DRM on it to lock
out 3rd parties from reverse engineering the protocol to make compatible
bulbs, the third parties _still_ wouldn't be in violation of the DMCA, even if
they had to include small copy/pasted bits of the Philips code that are
necessary for interoperability. This was the holding in the Lexmark case back
in 2004.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v._Static_Control_Components,_Inc.#The_appellate_ruling)

~~~
DannyBee
Lexmark is only good law in the sixth circuit ;-)

------
throwaway420
I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other
options. Good timing on your part hue.

Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and
others?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Didn't Keurig just get valued at $shitton BN? If anything, this case teaches
us that being customer-hostile and abusive pays off. Which is sort of obvious
if you think about how the market works, but people still act surprised.

~~~
jkestner
They did, but they were worth double the shittons a year ago. That's why they
got bought.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/coffee-machine-
maker-...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/coffee-machine-maker-keurig-
sold-14b-35621055)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Oh. Good.

------
someotheracct7
This is odd, but not catastrophic. If I understand right, Zigbee is open, so
what's to stop the bulbs working with a third-party controller hub? Say, a
Raspberry Pi with a Zigbee interface?

Wonder if this is still relevant?
[http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-
hue-t...](http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/discussion/141/getting-hue-to-join-
my-coordinator-and-related-zigbee-questions)

That thread suggests it's possible to have Hue bulbs join third-party ZigBee
networks.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes, you can do this. And for the most part you can control your lights from
your own software. I was looking at the protocol using a HackRF One to see how
easy or hard it would be to build a replacement hub controller. I don't know
if there are any patent issues however, that would be something that you
couldn't really code around.

~~~
Sanddancer
It's an open standard, which Philips hypocritically helped write, so there
shouldn't be any patent issues other than the normal ones. You can even get it
online from [http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-
developers/applicationstand...](http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-
developers/applicationstandards/zigbee-light-link/) . It's clickwrapped, but
rather extant.

~~~
ChuckMcM
The same Phillips that sent out C&D letters to people who wrote software i2c
implementations [1]. Their reputation precedes them.

[1[
[http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+...](http://www.piclist.com/techref/postbot.asp?by=thread&id=I2C+COPYRIGHTS%3F%3F%3F&w=body&author=Tim+Hamel&tgt=top)

------
kefka
I've ranted about this and the IoT and how we've came to it.

IoT is awesome, and super, as long as you don't buy products that require to
beg for your data from some website API.

What makes more sense? Local device ->Internet ->Someone else's server(cloud)
->API ->Your cell/computer

-or-

Local Device ->Local controller

I extensively use Node-Red and Apache NiFi both. Node-Red is built on Node.js
and is a graphical flowchart programming in the browser. It makes chaining
together complex interactions easy and also makes many things no-code at all.

I use Node-Red for my home automation. It's open source, it works, and just
makes sense.

Now, what should you use for the light bulbs? Unfortunately not Phillips Hue.
This however opens up the market for others to come in and snipe business
away. And that's a good thing. And whatever takes away the power of "other
peoples' servers" cloud-crap, the better. It's just used as a way to control
and extract more money.

~~~
femto113
Hue's hub works both ways, locally Smartphone -> Hub over WiFi (via a shared
LAN connection, the Hub isn't it's own WAP), or remotely Smartphone -> Hue.com
-> Hub over the internet. The remote mode has profoundly more lag, but also
means you can turn on your lights from anywhere. The connection from Hub to
the bulbs is always Zigbee. Unless/until Zigbee is built into smartphones this
seems like a nearly ideal set up.

~~~
kefka
Zigbee isn't hard to implement within a Node-Red network. You can use an
Arduino-Zigbee bridge to talk on that network, and then control the lights
however you wish. In that case, it opens up using all the lights you choose
from the cheaper_than_phillips category.

I also use Node-red on a Raspberry Pi. It's slim and as small as a base
station. I also have Bluetooth, wifi, and nRF24L01+ boards on it, talking all
those protocols. No reason for Zigbee, but it would be doable for $15 (I
assume the price).

I've found the "from anywhere", at least for Node-Red is to use a static IP.
If you dont have that, a dynamic one will work. If that doesn't work, a ToR
hidden service works well.

My control over my hardware is always advantageous over control by a 3rd party
entity.

~~~
WorldMaker
If you are building your own Zigbee bridge you could use Phillips and Cheaper
than Phillips lights all together. The change here is that Phillips has
declared that the Hue bridge is not intended to be a generic Zigbee bridge and
is focused on Hue (and friends) lights.

------
PinguTS
When I read this statement[1] from Philips, that third party that is assigned
will continue to work and only commissioning is blocked, then the reason for
that seems to be as simple as the Master Key for commissioning got
released[2].

So, Philips just started to issue a new Master key that now has to be
implemented in all those third party devices. But Philips will issue that
Master key probably only under very strict NDA with selling your first child
and such things.

[1] [http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-
hue-...](http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9249753)

------
Animats
Can you dump Hue and use Wink? Wink can supposedly control both GE and
Phillips bulbs.[1] GE uses Wink as their main control system, and GE is big
enough to argue with Phillips.

[1] [http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-
start...](http://www.wink.com/help/products/philips-hue-lighting-starter-
kit/#faq)

~~~
sitharus
From a casual look it seems that Wink just controls your existing Hue bridge,
which exposes a REST API to do all the control actions.

I don't use the Hue app myself, I call the API from my automation system.
Works well.

------
gregmac
This is the Philips controller software (app) that is refusing to talk to or
control 3rd party light bulbs.

I don't really see this as being a problem. It's not the nicest thing,
perhaps, but neither is 3rd party companies building bulbs (presumably by
ripping off the design and protocol of Philip's bulbs), and then relying on
Philips to build the software so they can actually be used. In other words,
Philips is refusing to build software, for free, to control their competitors'
and/or counterfeit products.

Do the Philips bulbs (still?) work without the Philips Hue software/app? If
so, non-issue: you just have to use 3rd party software to control everything.
If not, well, that's why you shouldn't buy into closed, walled-garden
products.

~~~
wlesieutre
I wouldn't describe 3rd parties as "ripping off the design and protocol" when
bulb <-> hub communication is done using the ZigBee Light Link protocol.
Philips didn't develop that.

Standard here:
[http://www.zigbee.org/?wpdmdl=2132](http://www.zigbee.org/?wpdmdl=2132) [pdf
warning]

And no, lights from other manufacturers (I have several from GE) no longer
work via the Hue app or any of the 3rd party alternatives. I made the mistake
of accepting Hue's "update your bridge" prompt already, not realizing it would
break them. Until I saw this headline I assumed it was a matter of
unpair/repair to get the working again, but it looks like no luck. They're no
longer in my list of paired bulbs, and (I'll try when I get home) it doesn't
sound like they can be paired anymore.

For an example of the now-useless bulbs I have:
[http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-Link-60W-Equivalent-Soft-
White...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-Link-60W-Equivalent-Soft-
White-2700K-A19-Connected-Home-LED-Light-Bulb-PSB19-SW27/205404345)

GE isn't even selling these saying "get our cheaper bulbs and use them with
Hue," they're marketed as being compatible with the Wink hub. But since it all
works over the same open standard, you can use them on whichever base you
like.

This is like Apple saying "Laptops from other brands are no longer supported
on Airport wireless networks so that we can ensure devices are fully
compatible." It's a _huge_ dick move on Philips's part.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> This is like Apple saying "Laptops from other brands are no longer supported
> on Airport wireless networks so that we can ensure devices are fully
> compatible."

Didn't Apple do that with Bluetooth once? I recall reading that at least one
iteration of iPhones could not send files via Bluetooth to non-Apple devices.

~~~
odbol
iPhones can't even send files to other iPhones or Mac or anything over
Bluetooth. In fact iPhone doesn't even HAVE files.

It's 2015 and still the only way to share files from your iPhone is to plug it
in.

~~~
cdcarter
An example file that you can share from iPhone to iPhone or iPhone to Mac is a
photo.

~~~
lostlogin
A pdf? Or today, a dicom. I didn't know I could do that.

------
dmritard96
We are building some related home control products and have forgone radio
level integrations instead favoring integrating with anyone over http,
providing an open api, and shortly after launch an sdk. Radio integrations in
theory are fine but in practice it's a matter of picking sides, allowing third
party devices to dictate your access to the Internet and interop, for a few
features, offline (local http should be an option with any hub, nest etc but
isnt) and lower latency operation as probably the biggest features. Not
controlling your own products' access to the Internet is a scary proposition
not to mention range/interference issues with 2.4ghz if you don't have aa
critical mass. Building IoTs right now is as much an alignment excercise as a
technical one and while it's a bummer that they have chosen to remove/prevent
compatibility, consumers aren't really choosing subscription models for
devices and cloud backed services hence the economics of customer acquisition,
support, margins etc aren't realities that can be wished away.

~~~
Sanddancer
This is a device using an open standard though. Philips could conceivably do
the same thing over http by checking MAC addresses.

------
bottled_poe
I'm not convinced this was a hostile decision by Philips. It would be
reasonable for the company to want to advance their own technology which would
often entail a changing interface. If the third-party products are
implementing an older interface, how is that the fault of Philips? The moral
thing to do would be to standardise and publicise the interface...perhaps this
is the situation already...?

------
cubano
Creating a new compatible hub now sounds like an ideal Kickstarter project,
no?

Also, I can't help but wonder if UL issues may have influenced the decision
too...just look at the current hoverboard fire issues with cheap Chinese
manufacturing and I can at least speculate that they might be.

~~~
odbol
Or just wait for Google to release Weave and Brillo. Those are both open
platforms for communicating with IoT devices. Which is the exact opposite
strategy as Apple's, who is SO CLOSED DOWN you actually need to buy a physical
chip from Apple and incorporate it into your hardware for your hardware to be
controlled by Siri.

------
rythie
Surely with the Pi Zero selling at $5 there has got to be way to do this
without Philip's locked in, expensive system?

~~~
JshWright
Even more relevant is the ESP8266 at $2. The Pi Zero doesn't have WiFi, and
has _way_ more computing power than you would need to run a few RGB LEDs.

~~~
dheera
The Pi Zero might be able to do some additional interesting things through
with that computing power, including transmitting information over those LEDs
at imperceptible modulation frequencies and such. Perhaps it could even be a
Ethernet-over-Power to Li-Fi bridge, with some additional circuitry. No Wi-Fi
sucks though. And putting Wi-Fi into a Pi Zero requires a micro-USB to USB
dongle and then another USB Wi-Fi dongle, thus the Pi Zero as big as a Pi
after that cable and dongle mess. If it had on-board Wi-Fi it would be ten
times more useful.

~~~
khedoros
I've seen some cool mods where someone took a USB hub or a wifi dongle out of
its case and soldered the pins directly to the USB pins on the Pi itself. That
gets around a lot of the mess.

~~~
dheera
I'd gladly pay another $2-3 extra for someone to do that for me with some
automated manufacturing process, and sell me "Pi Zero with Wi-Fi" boards.
Soldering mini-USB can be a bear, let alone doing it 10+ times to get a room
full of mini-robots or drones or something else to do interesting things. The
true value in a cheap computer is really that I can buy a huge number of them
at a reasonable price. But a huge number of mini-PCs is terrible if you have
to mod each board. If I only needed one, I'd be okay paying $100 for it.

Even better if it's a "Pi Zero with USB Hub and Wi-Fi" for, say, $15, so that
I can actually add something else useful besides Wi-Fi, such as a camera or
sensor or something else. Sure, there are GPIO pins, but there are a lot of
super-useful things out there that come in USB.

I use an Arduino Yun for a lot of basic tasks such as having a sensor report
values over Wi-Fi, or putting a couple servos on Wi-Fi with as little work as
possible, but the price is steep at $60+ and not much computing power.

~~~
khedoros
I take your point; soldering individual boards scales badly (although the
pitch for the USB+power contact points only looks a little worse than for the
GPIO pins: [http://hackaday.com/2015/11/28/first-raspberry-pi-zero-
hack-...](http://hackaday.com/2015/11/28/first-raspberry-pi-zero-hack-piggy-
back-wifi/) ).

------
bradyd
Philips statement about the block:

[http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-
hue-...](http://www.developers.meethue.com/documentation/friends-hue-update)

------
ultimoo
I have been consistently disappointed by Philips Hue ever since I purchased
the $200 starter kit a year and a half ago. Numerous iOS app updates have
rendered the system useless (lack of basic QA), slow to adopt HomeKit and
price gouging for it (they want users to buy an entirely new Hub for $60).

~~~
05
Only because Apple requires HomeKit accessories to be MFi-certified, which
requires a DRM chip. Can't add a chip via firmware update..

------
daveguy
Here is the amazon product page for the hue starter pack with the reviews
listed -- most recent first. Even if you haven't purchased this yet you can
let everyone know these new reviews rolling in about the product are helpful:

[http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-
reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_...](http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-
reviews/B00A4EUUO8/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1)

------
endgame
Defective by design.

~~~
orionblastar
DRM is defective by design.

I first saw the Hue lightbulbs on SyFy with the 12 Monkeys show. It syncs up
lighting to your show. I knew I didn't need that and it would be trouble later
on. Now I know the devices lock out third party bulbs.

~~~
josho
Let's start redefining DRM as what it truly is:

    
    
      Digital *Restrictions* Management

~~~
TeMPOraL
No need to redefine anything. DRM works as advertised (lame pun intended) - it
manages rights to a product or service. The thing is, the default assumption
that "I bought it = I own it" is often no longer the case. Most people just
didn't notice. DRM makes it painfully obvious that you don't have the rights
you thought you had.

------
xutopia
So what would you recommend we use instead?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I would strongly recommend that any home automation device you buy has a
direct method that it can be interfaced with and programmed in a local way. If
a device is only programmable by a web API, rule it out.

You may also wish to consider looking for devices which are based on a switch,
rather than a bulb. Controllable bulbs do not play nice with the state of
physical light switches, and in the case of multi-bulb fixtures, bulb
solutions may be excessively expensive. Meanwhile, a smart switch plays nice
with physical users and can control as many bulbs as you want.

~~~
gregmac
I never understood the desire to control lights _without_ using a wall switch.
I say this having had X10 and later Insteon installations in 3 different
houses over the past 10 years.

Even today, I have the ability to control nearly all the lights on the main
floor of my house with an app on my phone. I actually use this feature _maybe_
once or twice a year, being generous. Even if my phone is on me and already
unlocked (due to being in my house), I have to pull it out, swipe the screen,
launch an app, wait for it to load, then find the lights I want and click to
turn on. Or I can press the switch on the wall next to me.

Or, even better, a timer/motion sensor has already turned on the light for me
and I don't even have to think about it. This is what real home _automation_
is all about.

~~~
egypturnash
It's not so much a desire as a work-around for the fact that smart bulbs need
a trickle of power 24-7 so they can respond to external messages from
timers/sensors/etc. The wall switch _has_ to stay on, so you need to kludge up
some other way to control it.

These kludges are slowly getting better: maybe you can get a menu bar app so
you can control your lights from the computer, maybe your phone/tablet light
app can stick some buttons in an Android widget or in the iOS notifications
pulldown, there are even people trying to make switches that you can stick
over the normal switches and hit to trigger light changes without having to
hire/be an electrician who can replace the switches.

~~~
odbol
Tappur does exactly that: [http://tappur.co](http://tappur.co)

It's a widget in your notifications bar and your lock screen with buttons for
remote control. Also has a smartwatch app. I use it all the time and it's so
much faster than the official Hue app.

~~~
egypturnash
I use the LIFX bulbs myself (such better greens and blues!); their iOS app has
a notification widget. And a watch UI as well.

And I wrote a little app that lives in my Mac's menu bar and lets me pick from
the scenes I set up in the official app, too, someday I should actually
package it up properly.
([https://github.com/egypturnash/weatherlight](https://github.com/egypturnash/weatherlight))

------
Roritharr
What a horrible bait and switch.

Sadly I'm too lazy to go through the hassle of asking for my money back. :(

~~~
tomlongson
Consider writing a review if you bought it from a site like Amazon.

------
josteink
Worth quoting in this context is Doctorow's law:

    
    
        "Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes,
        and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit."
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow#Nonfiction_and_other_writings)

------
746F7475
Am I only one who doesn't see a problem here? Sure it would be nice if company
X allowed me to use cheaper Chinese knock-offs with their product, but to me,
they are well within their rights to decide: "hey, we don't want competitors
to benefit from our product(s)"

In essense Phillips put money into R&D and marketing and if you are to believe
the linked article into making smart lightbulbs mainstream. That shit is not
cheap so why would they give money for their competitors? This move forces
others to build their own base system and what not, which is fair.

I am sure you can find open{source|hardware} alternative if you don't wish to
support Phillips anymore.

~~~
justin_vanw
You might be the only one. What if you bought a car, and after you bought it,
the manufacturer of the car announced that they have remotely flashed the
car's computer and now you can only drive to work, and if you want to drive
anywhere else you have to buy 'tickets' for $5 per trip, or the car will
refuse to run.

The point is that when you buy a thing, it is _yours_. When you own a thing,
you are within your rights to do whatever you want with it, so long is it is
legal. If makers of things can retroactively impose restrictions on the
thing's use, then you have _no rights whatsoever_ and anything that you own is
yours to use only so long as whoever manufactured it feels like your use is
maximizing it's profits.

~~~
746F7475
Your car metaphor is completely off. It's not like Philips updated your lights
to only light up in specific location.

But cars are a good example, say your automatic shifter breaks. There are no
real third party options, you've pretty much got to buy a new one from the
manufacturer or by used one. You can still do all normal car things with it
you just can't use third party pieces. Same with the lights, they still work,
they shine light and do everything that they did before now you JUST can't use
third party bulbs with the system.

If you want to go with other shitty analogies say you made a game, something
like an MMO that has monthly fees. You sank a lot of money developing the
game, the box price isn't high because you know you'll make your money from
the monthly fees. You also use money from the monthly fees to improve the
game, fix bugs, add content. Now your subscription model is a little strange,
it works by players entering a code on your website. They buy it from your
online store, get it in their email and use it to get play time. Now let's
imagine that your security isn't absolute and some third party figures out how
your keycode generator works and they start selling codes for half the price.
Now your paying subscriber count is shrinking. What do you do? Do you A) fix
the problem which results into many users losing money since they already
bought several months worth of play time from this company? or B) leave the
system as it is because openness or something like that?

------
squar1sm
I've been using neopixels to great success in combination with particle.io
chips. They have cloud events and you can send whatever data to them. I'm
sending a payload like `{ "color":"blue" }` and then all listening LEDs
change. Plus they are individually addressable and are reusable for other
projects. It's not the same level of brightness I'm guessing.

Adafruit has a 24 neopixel ring with a particle slot. It's like $45 for
everything for one. No hub.

------
SEJeff
In slightly related news, the open source project, Home Assistant, that this
blog post references, is an excellent open source "hub" for controlling the
smart things.

------
Someone1234
I always wondered about smart bulbs... How much, per year, do they cost to run
idle? Since they appear to use wireless to operate, so there must be at least
the draw for that.

~~~
jfoutz
the hue bulbs use zigbee, so way less than, say, wifi, but it looks like about
.4W/bulb/day 2.8W for the starter kit (base has to be on as well)

[http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-
ph...](http://greenmonk.net/2014/02/20/internet-things-connected-philips-hue-
bulbs-review/)

~~~
paulannesley
Watts already express energy over time, so the /day is redundant. The article
you linked to gives a good comparison:

> [three bulbs + bridge] is the equivalent of leaving a 60W bulb on for a
> little over an hour and seven minutes per day

~~~
jfoutz
Yeah, but it's billed in kilowatt hours, because you buy power. Power is
energy supplied over a time.

But, you're right, i should have used better units, and the x/y/z is right but
confusing. your quote from the article is the right way to explain it.

------
reiichiroh
I didn't even know there were 3rd party lights compatible with the Hue
ecosystem. Can someone point me to some brands and models?

------
spdustin
I have three neighbors, all of whom are non-technical, that use Hue lights in
their home. I asked them if they used any other "smart bulbs" with their Hue
bridge. The universal reply, averaged out to a representative quote:

"I didn't even think that was a thing, I only use Hue bulbs with the Hue
bridge."

------
mmaunder
They're going for vendor lock-in. Someone peered over Apple's garden wall and
liked what they saw.

------
llamataboot
Damn. I just bought my first Hues a week ago - a little spendy but worth every
penny to have a super easy install into my living room lamps and be able to be
controlling my lights from a ruby script in 5 minutes. Hopefully, someone will
release a crack sometime soon.

~~~
tomlongson
Consider returning it and writing a bad review if you bought it from a
platform like Amazon.

Maybe they aren't doing anything illegal, but you can still rate them if the
product is different from what you expected.

------
djhworld
Why have they done this? Is it because the 3rd party bulbs were cheaper?

~~~
roymurdock
Official Reason: "The lamp that cannot be added may be a lamp from another
brand. Philips does not test and cannot guarantee the behavior of all bulbs
from other brands connected to the Philips Hue system. To guarantee the
quality of consumer experience only Philips Hue and Friends of Hue lamps can
be added using the the Philips Hue [Hub]." [1]

Real Reason: We invested money into our hub and building out our partnerships
w/ Zigbee and "Friends of Hue" partners. We need to make up that money on
hardware ($60 per bulb [2]) that 3rd parties could manufacture and sell for a
fraction of the price. Why would we let 3rd party hardware companies leech off
our investment?

[1] [https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-
hue-3r...](https://home-assistant.io/images/blog/2015-12-philips-hue-3rd-
party/mirror.png)

[2] [https://www.store.meethue.com/us](https://www.store.meethue.com/us)

~~~
fixermark
Do you have evidence of the "Real Reason" scenario as opposed to the Occam's
Razor scenario that (a) Philips really can't guarantee the protocol works with
any lights they don't explicitly test against and (b) the reason some
manufacturers can slide in at a fraction of the price is that they're cutting
necessary corners in either hardware or protocol compliance? ;)

~~~
roymurdock
I think most users would see open connectivity protocols as a feature, and
being unable to connect whatever lighting fixture they wanted to the Hue hub
as a deterioration of their "consumer experience".

Connect some dodgy 3rd party lamp that is non-compliant, or worse, infects
your system w/ malware and breaks your products? That's a bad consumer
experience you've brought upon yourself, knowing full-well the risks. If
anything, it'll make you an ever more loyal Philips Hue customer once you
shell out another $200 for another starter pack and never touch the untested
3rd party stuff again.

I'd be very surprised if this was anything other than the classic case of -
build a very nice garden, then wall it off, or else go broke.

------
KerrickStaley
What are good Hue alternatives I should check out?

------
kevindeasis
Keurig is that you?

