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.
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.
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.
The smart light switch has exactly the same problems as the smart bulb, and it’s much harder to replace.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 Hub
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.
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.
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.
Tip: don’t get the smart bulbs, get snack sockets. Easier to fix and reset and bypass if needed.
My phone lets me listen to over 10,000 different songs.
How many different songs do you listen to each week?
Oh, I just play my 15 favorites on loop.
I blame Spotify for its crappy algorithm. I have over 2000 songs on my liked list and shuffle gets me the same 30 every day.
It’s not just theirs, I swear every fuckin streaming service has made the most dogshit algorithm of all time. If I have a playlist of 100 songs, and I hit shuffle and repeat, I expect a list to be generated with each song in a random order that will get played through until each song has been played once, and then ideally a new randomized list is generated to listen to the same 100 songs again in a different order.
For every streaming service I have used so far, my experience is that it’ll just pick a cluster of maybe 10-15 songs, and cycle through exclusively that until the algorithm either decides you want to listen to something not on your playlist, or the internet connection breaks for a second and the algorithm just gives up completely on randomization.
Don’t let ‘em
https://stevenaleong.com/tools/spotifyplaylistrandomizer
(What’s the worst that can happen, Spotify account/credit card stolen… publication of all listening data… I am paranoid, still trusted the guy and his tool for Tru-Ly Random Playlists)
…assume not True-Random Truly 😉
Their recommendations thing is still relatively new and developing, but I love listenbrainz recommendations. You can set it up to follow your music listens on multiple different music streaming apps (and locally too, I think). It made it easier for me to bite the bullet and cancel Spotify.
If you don’t like it, stop using it. There’s no one to blame but yourself.
Yeah, you’re right. I pick 2000 songs and put them in a list, then tell it to shuffle all 2000 songs, and it plays the same 30 over and over again. That’s all my fault.
Mine play at random. Actual random, not depending -on-corporate-feels-random.
But can your normal lightbulbs ddos a Minecraft server?
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.
My rule for smarthome stuff is that it’s self-hosted, and it has to have a low-tech way to use it. A light switch can be on Zigbee attached to my Home Assistant server, but it needs to function as just a light switch when the network is down.
Have some old stuff that doesn’t follow these rules, but I’m slowly replacing them.
All fun and games until you get a power outage and one of your nodes doesn’t boot properly which means no quorum to start HAOS which means no lights
But that’s what flashlights are for :p
That’s why my HAOS instance runs on bare metal 😁 (Lenovo M710q, G4560T, 4GB RAM)
Yeahh probably the smart move, I went ham acquiring some overkill hardware for relatively cheap, and now the power bill is making that evident 🫠
It has been fun playing with a setup like this, but you definitely don’t need 128gb RAM to run the measly services I’ve got, though game servers would be a blast… if I ever had time
All fun and games when a grey hat hacker “hacks” his way into your living room through your window and starts turning on your lights without your permission.
And someone could throw a brick through my window and take all my stuff. There are some threats that we take care of by having a society where people don’t break other peoples things just because they can.
Usually it’s due to fear of repetcussions, but now anyone in a MAGA hat can throw bricks through your window and take all your stuff whenever they want
I recently bought a zigbee dongle to use with a home assistant VM. Do you have any advice on products? There is alot of stuff out there and I am trying to make sure I get good stuff.
My current plan is that id buy assorted types of lights to fill the roles of actual lighting and mood lighting, and I would pair that with a 4 button switch to toggle between some different presets. Been looking at Moes for the scene switch buttons and Sengled bulbs, and still need to find a solution for having home assistant to turn on or off non-smart items by delivering power or withholding, but i feel like i am flying blind.
IKEA has a lot of cheap, yet quality stuff you can use. The best thing for me is that they are nearby, and things like switches and buttons are super cheap.
Are you using home assistant? Their website says ikea switches arnt compatible with it.
There’s the Sonoff ZBMINIR2 device. You install it between a physical switch and the wiring, and then tuck it into the electrical box. It has three different modes:
- As a relay, so that you can control the light either with the physical switch or by ZigBee. Works just like normal when the server is down.
- Detached mode, so toggling the physical switch sends a ZigBee message to trigger an action on the server, and the server controls the light.
- Like 2, but the light socket is always powered so it supports a smart bulb.
I have a couple, and they’re great. They just don’t support dimming.
