I will say that every bulb and switch I have replaced with a Hue stuff is in a box in my garage. I didn't just throw them all away. If I ever reach a point where I'm done with the product I can just pull the old bulbs and switches and be back in action in 30 minutes. No biggie.
I set up two automations that my family adores. There's a plex webhook that dims/raises the lights just like a movie theater when we play something. In my daughters room, I set up an IR wand to "cast a spell" that dims her lights and plays her stories at bedtime.
Took a non-trivial amount of troubleshooting time to get working, but I'm happy to do it because I have the skills to do it and it's memorable for the family. What's a better use of my ability to work with terrible technology than making my family's life a little nicer?
Tip: I never recommended to any clients that they "lock in" to any one vendor's ecosystem (e.g. no computers within lightbulbs; no touchpanels) when rewiring their homes; stick to simplicity (e.g. no ceiling fans which operate via [losable] remote)!
The wireless switching protocols are among my least favorite household ecosystems ("smart home" stuff). I have seen 90+ year old switches which still work perfectly, while the 5 year old "latest-greatest" geekswitch gets firmwared out of operation.
Obviously this bug affects their behavior, but the deadmans logic in allowing them to just be normal with standard tech is pretty adept.
Am I misreading?
We talk about inflation a lot these days, but not too much about simple things being over-engineered to the point we can't afford them anymore. And companies apparently have little incentive to produce real budget options anymore.
In the rare scenario I change one from 20% brightness and red color (we did this for a nightlight when feeding baby, but then loved it), I do so manually by opening an app and connecting.
I can’t imagine dealing with all the “smart home” stuff people get into.
That said I wired my mum's house with smart plugs and all the lights go on when she gets home and off when she goes to sleep, and she loves it. She's 72 and reaching down to toggle all the switches is getting harder for her. The plugs work via WiFi, so basically any software can control them.
Yeah right, this is some nice BS. These lamps are driven by Zigbee, Please explain to me how "random radio traffic disruptions" are able to disrupt a protocol that has built in proper AES-128 encryption.
Radio traffic disruption, not data manipulation. Like when your network hub stops working or someone is using a microwave in the next room, for example. Most zigbee devices are transmitting in the 2.4Ghz band, which makes them very susceptible to being drowned out by EMI.
