I don’t agree with this… I use Govee everything and control it through Google … I can’t imagine forgetting a Google password. I don’t care much about privacy on my lighting control. Yes everything is over complicated but pick a brand and a control device and you’re fine. Before I consolidated I had 4 different lights and controlling apps and if I messed up a stored password I could easily reset one of them using an email addy …mostly disposable ones
I’m reminded of GE and their unintentionally hilarious video about how to factory reset their smart light bulb
It won’t let me watch unless I sign in and confirm I’m not a bot.
What are you hiding? Just confirm you aren’t a robot! Which👏Blocks👏Contain👏Stairs👏!
I think I got to watch it. I’m honestly not sure if it’s a parody. Is the real one over 8 minutes long? Because if so, holy shit that’s a scary light bulb. Maybe GE is trying to become an influencer and get lots of views?
The 8 minute long one is a parody, but it’s basically the same as the real one except it has like 50 cycles instead of 5.
But can your normal lightbulbs ddos a Minecraft server?
okay fine i’ll get some
You underestimate the electromagnetic emissions of cheap knock-off led bulbs!
Reminds me of that post
“My room mate asked if I could unplug his book so I can charge my cigarette, the future is stupid”
Are the persons a little mixed up?
I added my heated socks to Home Assistant so I can have them turn on when getting out of bed because I have a pressure pad under my mattress to track when I get up.
Frivolous automations is the way! I have a WLED strip go on 5 pm when a wheely bin needs to go out, with colour matching next day’s bin collection.
Yeah I’m never buying those bulbs again. Learned that lesson years ago.
Being able to change colors from your phone is neat but let’s face it, you’re going to have it on the same setting forever anyway.
Maybe once I start selfhosting I’ll fuck with HomeAssistant but till I control what connects to what, how, and why, I’m good.
Tip: don’t get the smart bulbs, get snack sockets. Easier to fix and reset and bypass if needed.
?
Lmao autocorrect got me! I meant smart sockets.
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I have one WiFi bulb in my house near the entrance to my office. I turn it red to let my housemates know I have a meeting without leaving my chair.
This is about the only reason I could see for a WiFi light bulb. I could wire something but that’s a lot more work.
It is more work, but imagine how cool you would feel with a big red button on your desk that you hit to turn the light on!
Thousands of people found out during 2020!
(I’m sure there was a physical button one somewhere)
With a Linux box and the lirc program, you can do it with a leftover number pad. Then you get … more than 10 buttons!
Do you manually set the light bulb to red or do you have some kind of automation?
I tried to set up an automation with home assistant, because I use it for everything anyway.
But getting the information “You’re in a call” from microsoft is impossible, if you can’t create an “app” in order to get an api key, if the company sysadmin doesn’t want you to have it.
Sadly I don’t have any automation for this. I just switch it to red with my phone.
Which is fine for me. Sometimes I have meetings where I’m not talking a lot and don’t have my camera on, so I don’t need to worry about interruptions.
You can go from blue alert to red alert without changing the bulb.
Hass is awesome, but not something you’d probably use instead of an actual switch, I use it for my leds in my office where it makes sense.
I’m of the mind that Home Assistant should live alongside your lights and everything. They should still function without it, but function better with it. Like my lights are all still controllable from normal light switches, but with Home Assistant they change color temperature and brightness throughout the day with the sun.
Exactly, it adds, it doesn’t replace.
So you can set the lights when you’re away, or it’s inconvenient, but you have a switch to act like a normal human otherwise.
Yeah, I want smart switches w/ manual override, not smart bulbs. I can maybe see those smart bulbs for accent lighting or something, but definitely not for the majority of the lights.
The cheap ones we got have a fallback to 50% brightness warm white, if you turn them off and on again twice within a couple of seconds. Without that I doubt I could live with them either.
You wont regret starting with HA. It’s awesome and the possibilities are endless.
I like using the smart bulbs as part of my wake up alarm. HomeAssistant starts fading the lights on 10 minutes before my alarm is set to go off.
I bought the bulbs before Hue made accounts mandatory, so I blocked the bridge from all internet access, and it never got the update. If I ever need new/more bulbs, I’ll be just buying some generic zigbee bulbs.
Hue bulbs are just zigbee. You can get an offline zigbee hub, plug it into Home Assistant, and control it without needing the Hue hub anymore. Then just keep using your existing bulbs and buy generic zigbee ones as needed to replace when they fail.
If it’s just dimming you could go with dumb dimmable bulbs and just make the light switch “smart”.
Apparently modern dimmers just PWM the power so it wouldn’t take much to make something that does that. I assume LED bulbs work nicely with dimmers by now.
In my case, I don’t want all the bulbs on, and splitting up the circuit now would involve cutting holes in my ceiling and walls. Otherwise, yeah, I would have gone with a smart switch. Most LED bulbs are dimmable these days.
it very much helps to be able to set colour temperature as well as hsl
The smart light switch has exactly the same problems as the smart bulb, and it’s much harder to replace.
Smart switches aren’t really a big deal to swap in. Plus, there’s more options for purely local only devices based on espHome.
The only reason I didn’t go that route is because I have wall sconces that I wanted to separate from pot lights, and I really don’t like doing drywall repairs.
I’m having a problem with smart switches maybe someone knows the solution, my switches don’t have positive and negative, they are 1 wire only, there are some solutions that use a super capacitor I installed one as a test and it works fine.
That said, I’m looking for dimmable and/or ZigBee alternatives that work that way.
But the benefit of a smart switch is that it remains “always on” for remote control, and physical actions on the switch also reflects on its state at the software level.
That said, I’d go with stuff that don’t need online connectivity.
I bought the bulbs before Hue made accounts mandatory, so I blocked the bridge from all internet access, and it never got the update.
jus a liddle “fhack hueeee” 😎
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I haven’t reconnected all of my smart-bulbs in over two years because every time the software updates or when I have to change devices I have to reinstall everything all over again and find my account information and reset my password and all that, and it’s fucking absurd and I am done with it.
Fuck voice controls, it was fun at first but there are switches on the wall, I will keep using them.
Maybe in a few years some AI program will be released that actually works and can be used to assist with home-control and it will just work autonomously, but I doubt it. These companies have zero intention or motivation to produce things that make our lives better, they go halfway by making something “cool” we want to try, but don’t make efforts to make the new, cool things actually work better and more efficiently for users. No need, if they already buy the thing, then line goes up and that’s all that matters.
Any AI intelligent enough to understand you will be intelligent enough to disagree with you.
That was how I expected things to go when ‘smart’ bulbs came out based on all the other sMaRt stuff, but kinda expected it to improve over time for some silly reason.
We’re experiencing the same thing with AI right now, in that the companies are producing shit that promises the moon and the stars, but they’re not making actual effort to make a powerful, universal product that can actually be broadly useful. Why do that when you can just release incrementally updated models? Why make a product designed to help you do actual business and work when you can make a machine that is good at entertaining you for a few hours until you get bored? They’ve been doing this with smartphones and other tech products for years.
Just to mention a few of my use cases:
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I adjust lights from my phone while seated in the sofa to get a good lighting for watching movies. Since my house has open solution between kitchen, dining table and TV corner, it’s nice to be able to reduce all lights to my preference.
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In the room I use as an office, it’s nice to have integrations with my periferals to adjust lighting to accomodate for video call meetings.
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It’s nice to go through the rooms to check which lights are off after going to bed.
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When putting my baby to bed, it’s nice to be able to dim down lights from her bedside while singing lullabies and comforting her. I can also dim lights in the hallway to reduce lights peeping through the cracks around the door and avoid lighting up the room when I leave.
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When on vacation, it’s nice to have lights which can vary a bit during the day to create the apparence of the home not being empty.
… So is this all worth it? Maybe not. Probably not. I’m pretty confident that I would be happy without any smart bulbs in my home. The inconveniences regularily outweigh the conveniences. But the conveniences do exist, and there are times when I am very happy to have them.
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Matter over Thread is generally what you should look for. Local control is always possible, and it’ll work with any major ecosystem.
You do need a “Thread Border Router”, which you likely already own. If you’re tech inclined, Home Assistant is amazing, though it takes some tinkering.
Echo (4th Gen) Echo Show 8 (3rd Gen) Echo Hub Echo Studio Echo Studio (2nd Gen) Echo Plus (2nd Gen) Echo Show 10 (3rd Gen) Eero Beacon Eero Pro Eero 6 Eero 6+ Eero Pro 6 Eero Pro 6E Eero PoE 6 Eero PoE Gateway Eero Max 7 Apple TV 4K (2nd generation) Apple TV 4K Wi-Fi+Ethernet (3rd generation) HomePod (2nd generation) HomePod mini Nest Hub (2nd generation) Nest Hub Max Nest Wifi Pro Nest Wifi SmartThings Hub (v3) SmartThings Station Aeotec Smart Home HubAmazon…google…apple…yeah none of these routers are going in my house.
My concern is, those are microphones that listen if you criticize Our Great Leader.
Sad how far they’ve fallen. I used to think new tech was cool. Now it’s depressing.
Never had a problem with password resets. e-mail-based 2FA and being unable to change the attached e-mail, OTOH…
In the future my negative self-talk will come in handy - just think harder, you lazy fuck
“Does the pole count as part of the traffic light…?”
Do the bulbs that are off in the picture count?
The only smartbulb feature I need is dusk-to-dawn for my porch lights, and I found lightbulbs that actually have it builtin.
Good old electronics that don’t depend on the cloud.
I did this with a string lights, a smart plug, and a home assistant ‘sun’ integration
The first thought into my head was that you’re somehow doing PWM by directly switching mains electricity.
I just have my porch lights hooked up through The Clapper and my computer uses a local weather feed to trigger sundown mode and play a clap sample through my Bluetooth speaker array.
/S, but now I kinda want to do it.
I do this with a USB relay, it doesn’t use any radio communication but the downside is it requires some rewiring
Fancy. I just have a dumb switch that does it offline with any bulb. No dimming, though
Is this real?
It shouldn’t be. Usual smart bulbs let you use the light switch. Unless you somehow removed the analog switch, though, maybe?
But the switch needs to be in the on position all the time for the smart bulb to work. I’m pretty sure I tried turning them on like normal bulbs at my sister’s and it did not work. You need to do the “Alexa turn on x”
That’s correct, although I do like that my IKEA ones have programmable remote switches. I don’t tend to use them anyway, but my whole thinking is to Home Assistant them whenever I have time. The real dream, though, is have my house setup up detect exact location so they can fade in and out as I approach like a freaking video game, though, which is apparently possible.
But no, I just flip a switch like a person who doesn’t have time for this lol
I mean they might need to log in to reconfigure their settings, not just turn them on and off. It’s the meme made after the fact that assumes he doesn’t have a switch lol
If you ever need a smart bulb stick with one that supports Matter. Matter devices don’t need an internet connection.
Zigbee and Z-Wave, too!
Or go with WLED software on a suitable wifi connected controller (e.g. QuinLED).
Or go with a two-way switch in the wall and get off your lazy ass.
(Edit, this is totally tongue-in-cheek. My washing machine just told me it’s time to switch the load)
Only with smart lights can I laugh maniacally and have myself be silhouetted by flashing white-blue lights behind me. I didn’t become a mad scientist to do this stuff manually.
The one I have in my bedroom blinks like crazy if it gets desynchronized with the cloud and that happens all the time
That would make for a good alarm mode synced to your phone. Strobe lights + screamo music is all I need for a good start to the day.
I refuse to buy appliances that need an internet connection to work.
The pursuit of the almighty dollar has enshittified too many things! Bring back useful, well made things!
The thing with most of them is that I really don’t understand why I need remote control of half of the white goods in my house. Why would I need to remote start my washing machine and dishwasher. I still have to load the fucker. I’ll just set a delayed start.
Why does my kettle need to boil on a schedule. It takes 2 minutes while my toast toasts.
About the only thing I understand it for is central heating. It would be quite nice to have a nice warm house for when i get home but even then, I can just set a schedule on a typical physical dial.
No need to sign in, poke holes in my network security, and give my information over to get another company that can get hacked and leak my data anyway. I’m not a Luddite but 90% of this stuff just feels like a pointless waste of money for minimal utility, reduced reliability, and compromised security.
My parents had the same washing machine for 40 years. When they replaced it, 2 of them died within 10 years after the control pcbs got wet. You’d think they’d protect against that seeing as it’s going to be in a fucking washing machine.
I mean, you can do a lot of stuff without relying on technology, like doing the dishes in the sink or washing clothes in a river. This is just another step. But setting up a kettle to boil at a specific time isn’t the only thing these smart homes can do.
I keep telling people to quit buying this shit and stop using corporate social media. But they’re scared that lemmy is a virus (shrug) and only trust daddy google and apple
