I have found Hue to be a rare example of how IoT can be good, they have a pretty open platform using the bridge and api, with good quality if a little pricey product. Be great if hue made a devkit for the kind of projects in the post.
You missed the most important ones in my book: you don't need an account to use it and things work fine if you block its access outside your home network.
It also works find with other zigbee stuff (in both directions, you can pair MUCH cheaper Ikea bulbs to the Hue bridge, and pair Hue bulbs to other zigbee coordinators), even if they don't really advertise that.
This is a really annoying limitation that I genuinely don't understand the need for. It seems a really irritating place to throw up an arbitrary wall. If they're going to let me use the bulbs with their system in the first place, why cripple them by not bridging them to HomeKit with whatever level of functionality they already support them for?
I bought two cheaper bulbs and won't buy any more of those because of this. So I guess if the reason is "money grab" i have to grudgingly admit it was successful.
I've tried using other products that were "cheaper". They work at first, but then issues. First, I bought a compatible bulk LED strip. The listing suggested the power supply to use, but it was way too weak to push the entire strip. Luckily, I bought the strip to cut into sections for using in multiple places. The suggested power supply was still to weak for the smaller sections. Knowing how to calculate the draw per inch of strip length is imperative. Once that was done, the strip itself left a lot to be desired. I bought the proper controller for the RGBWW config, and once synced, the color settings would drift. I would set them in the Hue app, and once happy just forget about it and go about my day. After some time, the color would just be different. After some time, I noticed that one section of my strip had smoked all of the LEDs for one color. Luckily the did not result in a fire, but every LED in this section is clearly burned and obviously no longer working. The other LEDs in the RGBW are working still.
In the end, it would have been cheaper and less time consuming had I just bought the Philips Hue strips.
I did the underside of all our kitchen cupboards in CCT RGBW LEDs linked to a Hue bridge (nearly 5 metres split over three controllers and PSUs), I’m thankful I thoroughly researched the topic before buying anything as nearly a year on, I’ve never had a single issue with any of it.
The key learning from my research was to buy commercial grade PSUs and LEDs from a proper retailer that supplies industry and over spec the PSUs - if you calculate your LEDs need 40w, get something like a 60w PSU. I don’t think it cost significantly more than if I purchased cheap no name Chinese stuff off Amazon.
As a side note, I didn’t go for the Hue strips because the LEDs would have been a lot less bright, the cut points were far more restrictive and it also would have worked out more expensive.
I got a Sowilo LED Strip (the discontinued Bifröst-147, replaced by -168) with their recommended power supply and Hue Controller, and I couldn't be happier. Its advantage over Hue is that it's much brighter.
There is exactly one device on the market (that I have found) which seems to satisfy both sides of your interests here: a rotary dimmer by a somewhat obscure company called Martin Jerry which functions perfectly well as a dumb dimmer but also can be fully controlled as an iot device.
The only downside (apart from the idiosyncratic physical knob design) is that it's a tuya platform device, but the manufacturer also markets a DIY version which is trivially flashable to open source tasmota or ES32Home, severing the connection to the mothership entirely while retaining all functionality.
I have 3 Hue light bulbs + 3 IKEA Tradfri light bulbs ( + bunch of other zigbee stuff, in total ~40 devices in my mesh network)
I started home automation with a Philips Hue starter kit but built my own zigbee network with Home Assistant later on. I'd say IKEA light bulbs, being around half the price of Philips, are pretty much on par with them.
The worst lights I had were OSRAM, they kept losing the zigbee connection and were PITA all the time.
I’ve found the IKEA bulbs to be significantly worse than the Philips ones, so I would definitely say the price difference is warranted.
The IKEA bulbs aren’t as bright, get overwhelmed if you send a lot of commands quickly (so you can’t implement a dimmer for example, without the light jittering as it dims), and don’t have the “turn power on-and-off quickly to reset to full brightness” feature (though this is nice if that’s what you specifically want).
Not entirely relevant here, but Zigbee supports sending a duration to take for changes in configuration, which tends to lead to much smoother dims than brute forcing it. If applied to a group of bulbs it’ll also synchronise over the entire group.
I could have done with them not removing the perfectly functional and reliable Apple Watch support that I paid for just to update their app to shove ads about other products in my face. I spent too much on this setup to get spammed and lose features.
I got IKEA Tradfri controllers for my Hue "network" because I didn't want to always be looking for my phone and loading the app, they work although color changing isn't possible.
In theory you could get a Pi to host a website that talks to the Hue hub's REST API. Actually, I'd be surprised if such a thing doesn't exist on GitHub, but it could be a hunt to find one with has a more than decent UI.
I haven't tried it, but I believe you can even get them into bare zigbee mode, entirely disconnected from the Hue system. At which point, Home Assistant and similar systems can control them directly.
I mean, I'm sure there's worse out there.. but the fact that I have to wait for my phone to connected via bluetooth before I can turn on my lights is such bad UX, often taking multiple attempts to connect to all the lights.
Just let me flick the switch, and then turn the lights on as and when you manage to successfully connect, don't make me wait.
Connecting over BT is the worst possible way. If you really want to make heavy use of the bulbs you should really have a bridge and real remotes. Zigbee is much, much faster.
I got a chill of terror when I saw this at #1 on the front page, thinking it was the other meaning of "hack" and that it was some massive vulnerability that is going to ruin my morning while I take my bridge and bulbs offline and make me regret ever buying into it.
I know this is Hacker News, but the classic hackers lost that linguistic battle or at least achieved stalemate decades ago. If you're going to use the word "hack" in a post about something internet-connected, in a way where either meaning of the word is equally plausible, please use a more descriptive title. I note the author of this post did that for their YouTube video linked at the bottom: "Hacking a Philips Hue Light - Teardown and Reuse"
If a somewhat vague title gave you a "chill of terror" then I suggest you go back to normal light bulbs. You should assume there is some undisclosed vulnerability. In fact, if you search "Hue light bulb hack" you will find several articles that actually imply what you were scared of...
> [T]he classic hackers lost that linguistic battle or at least achieved stalemate decades ago.
The classic hackers weren't above breaking computer or even physical security where they felt it was in the way of their work or curiosity, either, so in relation to pre-extortionist hacking it's probably less like a battle Stallman and others branded it as and more like a messy civil war. Of course, once less-than-technical reporters get into it, everybody else might as well give up (witness "dark web").
I did have the same misunderstanding as you, to be fair :)
I'm barely an expert with embedded/EE, more like an engineer with 5 years experience in the field. If there is anything that is extremely basic, its LEDs.
I was wondering if they were going to be able to figure out how to send bits through wifi to control the light without any auth.
Nope, they rewired the board to external LEDs.
I should feel like a genius after seeing someone put the time into this, and HN upvoted it. Instead I'm a bit disappointed.
more than a decade ago the running joke in our house was to set the bathroom light to bright red just as someone had snuck off to take a shit. not a hack but still, hilarious.
got even funnier at house parties where people on various psychedelics did not know what had just happened.
I have about 10 hue bulbs throughout my apartment, which I've only purchased on Black Friday sales (they tend to go up to 50% off, I've found, which puts them more in line to what I feel is a reasonable price.)
My biggest gripe is the unserious development of their iOS app, which has really been a hurdle to get them setup correctly.
The app underwent a rebuild maybe 18 month ago, which forced users to allow for phone Widgets to ONLY be created via the Apple Shortcuts app. Shortcuts, to be clear, is a great app on the iPhone, but this introduces an extra step, requiring you to ALSO create the correct Scenes for your particular Rooms, with particular Lights, FIRST, ensure they're named / setup in a clear manner, THEN add them to Shortcuts, THEN create a Shortcuts, and export, add to your homescreen. The previous method, was Hue app itself was a Widget, independent of a second app.
It honestly boggles the mind the Philips team went in this direction and speaks to how little user feedback they did. It has deliberately made using their product harder, and make life a little easier. It no joke took an entire day to get like 6 scenes setup properly.
I know there are 3rd party apps that quickly solve this. But such a basic feature like "Make a button on my homescreen I can tap to instantly turn on/off all the lights in my home" a chore is ludicrous. I thought IoT was supposed to make life easier.
If you add all your bulbs to Homekit you can control them all from there. I have all my Hue bulbs in Homekit and haven't touched the Hue app for years, it's also accessible from the iOS Control Center.
I have a bunch (15+) Hue bulbs and can't stand using them with HomeKit. I can't figure out how to get the color temp to be consistent. It seems to just do whatever it wants.
Yes, their app is pure trash now. So much fiddling to do things that were easy before. I almost don't use it at all. I need to learn how to make scenes on my Home Assistant.
Then they could have still left their app alone as it was with the minimal necessary updates. Instead they invested a lot of effort into rewriting it completely, into complete trash
I wish there were a way, though maybe not at the hardware level, to get these bulbs to go dimmer. In many circumstances, especially at night when avoiding glare off windows, just enough light to prevent tripping over things post eye adjustment would be ideal. But the lowest setting is far brighter than that.
Both Hue Color and White Ambient (that go from cold white to warm white) have a Nightlight predefined modes that give barely any light. I also have a dimmable lightbulb from hue that looks like these hipster 19th century lights and this one doesn't go that low. There are 3 types of regular Hue bulbs, maybe you need to see the.other ones?
In my experience, the White Ambiance lights don't get as dim as the other Hue bulbs. In places where I wanted even lower light, I've had to use their White Ambiance Filament or Color Ambiance bulbs.
Nightlight on the colour & ambient bulbs I have don't go nearly dim enough. I haven't tried the hipster bulbs, but I don't want a lightbulb that calls attention to itself.
The different bulbs have different "minimums" I've noticed, but if you really want a nightlight setting you might want to get a dedicated bulb or light for it. The full color at "very low red" are quite low.
(Or like me, for my sins, have a single blue LED on a piece of hardware that lights the room bright enough to read by)
I have a PC connected to the TV in my living room with an annoyingly bright blue power light. Even worse, it blinks when the PC is asleep. I ended up taking it apart and wiring in a 470k ohm resistor and three 2.2uf electrolytic capacitors in parallel. The resistor lowers the brightness and the capacitors make it fade in and out a little bit instead of just going on and off. (It still lights up pretty fast, but it fades out fairly gently.)
I've noticed the White Ambiance lights don't dim to a very low level for night time night light type of use, but the White and Color Ambiance bulbs can get far dimmer. Also the White Ambiance Filament bulbs seem to get dimmer than the regular White Ambiance bulbs.
It's a shame, really, because it seems like the expensive bulbs might meet your needs while their cheaper ones don't. Granted, the filament bulbs do seem to fall more in line with the regular bulbs, so might be worth exploring.
I set my Hue Color bulbs to 25% and pure red at around 1AM every weeknight. It's dark but I can still see enough not to ram my toes into the coffee table.
Submarines use red lights for the same reason that they make great night lights (and were used in old photography dark rooms): human night vision isn't disrupted by red light so red lights can be kept minimally dim and be more than enough to see by.
Admittedly for submarines light pollution can be life-or-death (because you don't want an enemy submarine to spot you) and it's a little less critical in cities already full of light pollution at all hours.
I've wanted to build a bulb from scratch that contains, let's say, 32 LEDs such that when they're all on you get the full light intensity you were after.
But then dimming is then bucketed to 32 discreet steps where we enable anywhere from 1 to all 32 LEDs for the different levels.
No flicker, and perhaps at a single LED you get that very low-level dimming.
I recently purchased their newer Hue White A21 (1600 Lumens) and while it has a brighter maximum as advertised, the lowest/dimmest it will go is also brighter than the previous generation which sucks at night. So YMMV as far as generation and lower brightness.
I wish they'd supply this information before you purchase. I want to know lumen RANGE.
Can confirm, colour hues go really low, especially as you shift them into the red colour. I have that as a nightlight in the bathroom and bedroom on a motion trigger.
@OP, what are your thoughts on Dubai bulbs/“ultra efficient” led bulbs? I was annoyed to learn that modern led bulbs are overclocked by design so that they fail quickly, and have been seeking a solution ever since the Dubai bulbs made it to the front page here.
Counterpoint: I've been using Hue bulbs for over 10 years, currently have around 120 lights operating and have had maybe a 5% failure rate (mostly 2nd and 3rd generation A19 bulbs). Flicker due to PSU failure, some completely dead bulbs, some which have lost specific colors in the array (maybe FET failure) so they turn weird colors (like green or purple) at certain white temperature settings.
I suspect the cause is mostly heat-related. As newer bulbs run much cooler I expect reliability will be better, but the product line is definitely not bullet-proof.
Exactly. Phillips is the only smart bulb brand (in my personal experience) that lives up to the lifetime claims on the box. Not a single outage in 7+ years.
The Hue bulbs are on the dimmer side compared to a traditional bulb (LED or otherwise) so this would defeat the purpose for my use cases.
The color bulbs in particular are horribly dim, but fun nonetheless.
The only failure I've encountered in ~10 years is my original Hub started crash looping a few years ago and I ended up getting a new starter kit to replace it. The bulbs seem to really last, however.
It looks like there are newer bulbs which are substantially better. Mine do 800 lumens @ 4000K which is fairly atrocious, even if I ran them at 4000K, which I would never do as it's horrible.
I suppose I have to consider replacing everything now...
> The MCU on the logic board is an Atmel SAM R21, a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ processor with a 2.4GHz ISM band transceiver for Zigbee communication. It has 256KB of Flash and 32KB of SRAM and runs at 48MHz.
Excellent; we're getting to the point of lightbulbs having as much compute as computers used to:)
As a fun exercise I'd encourage everyone to count the number of computers they have in their home, being in the walls, bulbs, coffee machines, scales, toothbrushes and eventually Macbooks should all count.
I know his entire shtick is doing dumb stuff and getting hurt (or at least pretending to?) in the style of "Ow! My balls!", but he wouldn't have been able to touch across 170VDC without flinching (@ 1:55). I've felt ~48VDC in the summer with my hands a bit sweaty. And both those terminals were actually still bouncing between +/- 170V along with the AC supply.
Then at 3:55 he gets shocked from touching those same terminals (as he should), with the circuit disconnected from the AC line, to segue into the need to discharge capacitors. This is what makes me question how much of his "getting hurt" is actually acting.
(Also just in case anyone is watching those videos and thinks there's a distinction between his usual haphazard behavior and when he gives explicit "safety" advice - there isn't).
That 'hands a bit sweaty' affects the outcome way more than you'd think. I've had a seriously unpleasant nip from a mere 24VDC (while drenched in sweat) and only a mild tingle from 90VDC (in an air conditioned office).
In this case I'd guess he's got some decent calluses and any leakage current isn't going through any nerves. Also he's only touching it lightly so won't be making very good contact.
When I say "Hey Google, turn off all the lights" and it says "Okay, turning 55 lights off" I always recoil. No significant regrets, though.
The app was awful a few years ago but they took the feedback in stride and made something responsive and usable (lots of headroom for improvement but I can't overstate how bad the app was on launch).
Same, but I also have ones that are turned off due to switches or outright not plugged in but still configured. So every night when I ask it to turn everything off it goes "Ok, turning off 15 lights and the 4 lights are not available" which is quite the mouthful. I've been waiting to try to configure Hue scenes via keywords using IFTT thinking this might bypass this but I never made it that far.
Three fiberglass circuit boards, one aluminum LED circut board, plastic covers and coatings, epoxies and coating compounds, capacitors, chips and transistors with heavy metals, at least 100 unique components, aluminum heatsink housing... That'll only sit in a landfill for 10,000 years or so and took materials from all around the world to create.
Remember when lightbulbs were thin glass with a bit of wire?
At least the new LEDs are better, hiding their electronics in the screw base and the LEDs are placed on a strip.
I think the actual problem is that most of them are not made up to the possible LED reliability standard; they either overheat LEDs, cutting usable lifetime to fraction, or have controller/power supply failure before that.
LED light bulb might be less ecological but having to produce 40x as much (including packing, shipping, storing etc) incandescent on top of higher energy production required ought to compensate enough for that.
But if random LEDs customers buy burn out after few years for bad design reasons that's not great...
Back when I was learning to wire up a Z-80 to make my own first primitive 4kb RAM computer, I really didn't think I'd live to see the day when there were 32-bit CPUs with 32kb RAM in lightbulbs.
Fun story: "prise" or "prize" are more common in the UK, "pry" is more common in the US.
I do wonder what those from other countries where other spellings are more common think when us Americans come in and correct them, as if our spelling is objectively more correct...
It's not "as if our spelling is objectively more correct" rather the fact that most people in the US probably have no idea that "prise"/"prize" is used in place of "pry" in the UK. I know I sure didn't.
That's a good point. I think my original comment came out harsher than I meant it.
I think it's interesting the sorts of things where we assume we know how something's said or done and then it turns out that's not a universal thing. On the one hand, best not to assume if one can help it. On the other hand, it's impractical to for example look up every word for cultural context before using it/voicing something based on an assumption around it.
