smart homes are cool

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PuTTY riot: Nov 16, 2002

the toaster was programmed in imperial but the knob to select doneness is metric

# ? Mar 4, 2015 19:48

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 20:31

pram: Jun 10, 2001

Lol he lives in the apartment from Brazil

# ? Mar 4, 2015 19:54

Sniep: Mar 28, 2004; All I needed was that fatty blunt...

King of Breakfast

Laphroaig posted:

You need to get a smart toaster that is just a huge fire risk due to The Cloud loving up and telling it to toast for 70 minutes instead of 70 seconds or something

yeah it will totally be like that scene from I, Robot the movie with teh demolition robot that nearly kills will smith

but with toasters

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:04

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

pram posted:

Lol he lives in the apartment from Brazil

yeah but he also said he was deniro's character, so IDK what to believe any more

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:24

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

This guy�s light bulb performed a DoS attack on his entire smart house

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:26

infernal machines: Oct 11, 2012; we monitor many frequencies. we listen always. came a voice, out of the babel of tongues, speaking to us. it played us a mighty dub.

rise of the machines: cyberwar

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:28

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Wired is miles ahead of us: THE NIGHTMARE ON CONNECTED HOME STREET

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:47

Glorgnole: Oct 23, 2012

i can't wait for my house to get infected with inline livelink adware

# ? Mar 4, 2015 20:51

Jenny Agutter: Mar 18, 2009

i have a regular style rf harmony remote that is really good at controlling tv, receiver, ps3, etc. is there a way to make it also control some bias lighting that would be plugged into an outlet behind teh tv?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 00:07

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Busta Chimes.wav posted:

i have a regular style rf harmony remote that is really good at controlling tv, receiver, ps3, etc. is there a way to make it also control some bias lighting that would be plugged into an outlet behind teh tv?

What else do you have nearby? A PC by chance? You can do this directly with Insteon but a) it's Insteon which is likely a dead-end at this point and b) it's $100 + a $50 lamp module at which point you'd be better off just buying a new Harmony Home Control. If you have a PC nearby you might be able to hook up a cheap IR receiver and a $50 WeMo lamp module.

edit: you know what, you might be able to skip all that poo poo and hook up this weird looking chinese POS for all of $5. Amazon reviews suggest it might even work, if poorly.

Visual GNUdio fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 5, 2015

# ? Mar 5, 2015 04:18

Jenny Agutter: Mar 18, 2009

thanks for the info. didn't realize most of the solutions would require a whole PC in the loop, I'll try one of those cheap Chinese receivers

# ? Mar 5, 2015 06:29

poty: Jun 21, 2008; 虹はどこで終わるのですか？あなたの魂の中で、または地平線で?

Visual GNUdio posted:

Exhibit A: I currently cannot control my home office lights with the switch on the wall. Why? A CLOUD SERVICE hosed up a couple hours ago and is misinterpreting the action that should be taken when pressing butans. It did this once before and the problem magically went away a few hours later so I'll just hang here in the dark until THE CLOUD decides to stop making GBS threads on my stupid face.

lol

# ? Mar 5, 2015 07:24

poty: Jun 21, 2008; 虹はどこで終わるのですか？あなたの魂の中で、または地平線で?

Visual GNUdio posted:

Regarding Cat Genie
When it works, it's awesome. We bought one when we moved to a new condo, and even had a closet built with a cutout to fit the device. Cat drops a deuce, Cat Genie scoops out deuce, grinds it into a slush and pumps it into your toilet. Easy!

Until it fucks up, and it will. I'm not sure how this guy just wound up with toasted turds. Ours wound up getting cat hair clogged in the pump impeller roughly once every 2-4 weeks. Then I'd get the pleasure of tearing apart a machine full of liquefied cat poo poo to get at the pump and pull out whatever clumps of cat hair and cat poo poo I could get my fingers on, all while immersed in liquid cat poo poo. It was a deeply unpleasant experience and after a year or so of this we gave up because nobody could take it anymore and we'd rather scoop poops twice a day then deal with the clogged up Cat Genie again.

lol

# ? Mar 5, 2015 07:40

poty: Jun 21, 2008; 虹はどこで終わるのですか？あなたの魂の中で、または地平線で?

im starting to think life at a smart home is a good premise for a sitcom

# ? Mar 5, 2015 07:40

H.P. Hovercraft: Jan 12, 2004; one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse; Slippery Tilde

poty posted:

im starting to think life at a smart home is a good premise for a sitcom

that show was called eureka and the smart home had an ai in it with the voice of one of the male actors modulated to be a lady

# ? Mar 5, 2015 07:56

duckfarts: Jul 2, 2010; ~ shameful ~; Soiled Meat

Visual GNUdio posted:

I'll shamefully admit to having a boatload of smart home things in my house.

Here's the general overall synopsis:

It's poo poo.

The biggest issue is that there's a lot of different protocols from a lot of different vendors. Historically this wasn't the case. When you bought a Leviton system, you had to pay out the rear end for everything to be Leviton branded because that's all it would work with. If you were a zillionaire you'd go w/ Crestron or AMX but I'm going to leave dealer installed options out of the discussion. None of this poo poo would talk to each other across systems, but when you had an all Insteon system that you bought from the one company that makes that poo poo, it'd all generally work the way you'd expect it to. It was expensive-ish and limited in capability but it worked.

Then some jackass got it in their head that the way forward was to make a hub that would control all sorts of stuff. Instead of one expensive vendor that sold a bunch of poo poo that would pretty much work together, you have vendors trying to orchestrate a mismatched shitpile of things that each individually are unreliable, so the only thing certain about the system is that at any given time some part of it is sure not to be working.

Exhibit A: I currently cannot control my home office lights with the switch on the wall. Why? A Butt SERVICE hosed up a couple hours ago and is misinterpreting the action that should be taken when pressing butans. It did this once before and the problem magically went away a few hours later so I'll just hang here in the dark until THE Butt decides to stop making GBS threads on my stupid face.

STUPID poo poo I'M CURRENTLY PUNISHING MY FAMILY WITH

5 Assorted Sonos speakers (not poo poo, Sonos own zone)
3 Harmony Hub Remotes (mostly not poo poo)
ecobee3 smart themostat (expensive, but gently caress if it doesn't own and kicks the poo poo out of Nest)
3 Hue bulbs + 2 Hue Iris things (not individually poo poo, but poo poo as a group)
GE Link bulbs (hue compatible, no color change just dimming. see poo poo rating above)
Handful of Z-Wave dimmers and switches (individually work great, control system is still garbage)
Z-Wave multisensors (detects motion/temp/humidty/light. motion detect works, temp and humidity is hilariously inaccurate, have no use for light sensor)
Z-Wave door contact (still can't quit get it to line up right on my gate, have now resulted to 3d printing a replacement magnet holder thing in order to get it to work)
Z-Wave wall scene controller (see Exhibit A above)
Some random IP camera (mostly useless due to installation issues)
SmartThings hub (total garbage, butt everything, read exhibit A above for why)

The Thing To Do these days is to buy one of the hubs and then buy a bunch of compatible poo poo and then hope for the best. To help you out I've created this handy list:

SmartThings - Z-Wave, Zigbee, WiFi - A Kickstarter thing later purchased by Samsung. Big money means they might stick around for a year or two. I know the most about this one because it's what I'm currently running at home. Open web-based IDE but lol it's all some hacked up version of Java called Groovy. Developer friendly platform with a lot of developers which means a bunch of shoehorning poorly programmed things together in awkward ways until you get something to work. The worst part about SmartThings is that it's all in my butt. Every command your system receives gets sent to my butt for processing. Want to turn on a light? Press button, wait for it to go to butt, decide what should be done, packet is sent back to the hub and only then does the hub go and do something. It might turn on right away or it might turn on in 5 seconds or never. It's like a roulette wheel of fun for everything you do!

MiCasaVerde line - Z-Wave, WiFi - These guys have a few different models. The newest model is butt based (see above) but the rest handle processing locally. Fully scriptable by the user with Lua. By all accounts the development environment is an ever changing target and generally a mess to work with. A new OS (UI7) has been in beta for nearly a year and it's still a mess. Upgrades are painful and break everything. Device support is spotty and often spread across UI releases, so your garage door opener requires UI7 but your thermostat will only work with UI6.

Revolv hub - Z-Wave, WiFi, Insteon - This looked like a very promising device with loads of radios and powerful hardware so a bunch of people bought them and then... Google bought the company, shut everything down and bailed on all the users. Rumor has it they were after a couple of the RF engineers and bought the company just to get them to work on their next Nest thing. Get used to this story. Spend hundreds (thousands) of dollars on a home automation system only to have all support disappear one day in a headhunting exercise.

OpenHab - Z-Wave, WiFi - OpenHab is a linux thing that lets you turn a PC into a hub of sorts. It can interface with other hubs to let you control Insteon and some older protocols. To my knowledge there's no ZigBee binding working yet. In general, the platform is linux as gently caress, poorly supported by a bunch of german neckbeards. The standard UI comes straight out of IOS 2. Like most things lunix all support happens by way of a mailing list that's nearly unusable. There's also a forum for support, but it's all in german. Good luck with this option.

Staples Connect, Wink Hub, Lowes Iris, PEQ - Assorted poo poo, typically some combination of Z-Wave, ZigBee, and WiFi - Home Depot and Lowes and fuckin Staples don't want to be left out in the cold (that's for dumb homes) so they either bought or partnered with somebody to get in on the hot hot action. Some of these are bad, some are OK. All of them are closed systems so they support whatever they support and that's the end of the list. Hopefully Staples or whomever doesn't get out of the home automation business because if they do you're hosed, there is zero way to interact with their system except through their app, and there's no good way for third parties to interface their things with these hubs.

Google Nest - WiFi, Thread - Nest was just going to be a new thermostat but they hit the market at the right time and everyone went bananas for smart poo poo so Google scoops them up for $3B before Apple gets around to it. Nest came out with their second product after the Google buyout and I think everyone knows how well the smoke alarm thing is doing. It's presumed that Google is going to extend the Nest to be a hub of some flavor but haven't really laid out what that is going to look like. My advice? Get an ecobee3, it's the same price but with loads more features and is generally less poo poo. It might be the one SMART THING in my house that gives me zero problems, it does what it's supposed to and I don't have to touch it ever. Plus it gives me fancy charts like this and this and I fuckin love me some charts.

Apple HomeKit - Bluetooth 4LE, WiFi - Not actually A Thing yet but the SDK has been released so we know what to expect. The choice of protocols is odd (more on protocols later). WiFi is what you think, but there is no low-power way to do WiFi, so unless you like changing batteries on your door contact sensor every other day you need something else. In this case, it's BT4LE. BT4 is nice, secure, and definitely low power, but it also has no mesh capability and is fairly short range so you're going to need to buy a bunch of Apple HomeKit Hubs (probably ATV3 or something like it) and hook them up all over your house. This is only stupid because there are low-power mesh protocols like Z-Wave and ZigBee that don't require any of that poo poo but lol Apple. Home Automation Done Right typically involves opening electrical boxes and sticking your fingers in places where your average Apple user shouldn't be sticking fingers, so it'll be interesting to see how they approach things like switches and other hardwired applications. You currently can't do anything with HomeKit but I expect they'll at least force the market to get their poo poo together... maybe.

OK let's talk about home automation protocols for a minute. In order to turn your fat fuckin finger pushin' into light switchin' you need some way for the signal to get from the fattie (you) to the light. In many cases this may actually be a combination of different protocols. In no particular order, here's what you're likely to be dealing with:

X10 X10 is a combination powerline and wireless protocol that is now 40 years old. It's unreliable, it's totally unsecured, and it's generally a mess. This is how things used to get done back in the day if you were poor but decided you needed wireless light switches for some reason. X10 has a huge installed base of customers who surely regret the decision at this point and has probably been pulled out of the wall already. Don't buy anything X10.

Insteon Insteon is a Smartlabs technology that mixes mesh and powerline communications. True to it's name it offers relatively low latency and is reasonably secure. If you're stupid and own a bunch of X10 crap, Insteon also offers backward compatibility to control X10 devices. Insteon probably would have seen wider support had Smartlabs been a little looser with the licensing, but as of today almost everything that is Insteon compatible is made by Smartlabs and they just don't have the money or momentum to push it any further. Insteon isn't a bad protocol, but it's owned by a company that can't hack it against Google or Apple or Samsung and the like. They've recently started inking a bunch of deals trying to change that, but it hasn't exactly caught on and everyone has moved on to something else.

WiFi WiFi is what it is. There is no good way to handle WiFi in a low power setting, so you can pretty well count out any battery operated devices utilizing WiFi unless you're OK with recharging them every day. That might work OK for a tablet, but isn't going to work very well for a door lock. WiFi doesn't specify layer 7, so hope that whatever you're buying has a well documented and supported API or you're going to be dealing with a bunch of incompatibilities and kludgey hacks to get things talking to each other. WiFi is best used for devices that can stand on their own with some local processing power and web UI (light switches = no, IP cameras = yes). Finally, WiFi needs to be setup somehow meaning the device has some way to handle input locally (a display and keyboard), a wired connection option, or you'll have to run some sort of app along side to get the thing up and running on your network (Chromecast/Sonos/Harmony/etc).

Z-Wave Z-Wave is a low power wireless mesh network developed by ZenSys and now owned by Sigma. That means that every Z-Wave chip needs to be purchased from Sigma which carries the license with it. Z-Wave is secured via AES encryption and is in widespread use for security systems (including modern ADT installations). They have a pretty well defined application layer and device description standards, so if you buy a Z-Wave controller it will almost certainly work with all Z-Wave lights without too much loving about. Same is largely true for not-lights (contact sensors, motion sensing, locks, doors, etc). Z-Wave is probably the most robust of the existing standards and has the widest range of compatible devices. The license encumbrance is a problem for some of the major players, so don't expect to see Apple or Google jumping on the bandwagon because Sigma owns the core protocol implementation.

ZigBee ZigBee is another low power wireless mesh network standard but published as a fully open standard. As a result there are loads of vendors with physical layer ZigBee chipsets available. The trouble with ZigBee is that until very recently there has been zero standardization of the application layer. For example, while Creston uses ZigBee for wireless control, you cannot interface to Crestron devices through other ZigBee devices as they aren't at all compatible. There is now a reasonably well-standardized spec for ZigBee lights (Light Link) that only saw adoption after Philips released Hue. Finally, ZigBee is the low power champion. The Hue light switch thing, while being crap, is interesting in that it is able to send ZigBee commands using the power generated from the user pressing the button alone. No batteries required. That's seriously low power. Expect to see more ZigBee in the future, but I wouldn't invest much into it right now until the application layer standards are worked out.

Bluetooth 4LE Bluetooth 4LE is bluetooth as you'd expect but with significantly reduced power requirements for low bandwidth communications. BT4LE is already in widespread use for low power applications like the fitbit poo poo you see fat spergs wearing everywhere. The thing about BT4LE is that it doesn't support mesh, so everything needs to be within ~100ft of a BT4LE hub (or gateway) for it to work. Like WiFi there is no standard application stack on top so p much anything goes. Apple is pushing this poo poo hard because their phones and ATV already work with it. I don't like the lack of mesh networking but otherwise BT4LE has a lot going for it.

Other stuff:
Thread Essentially IP over ZigBee, currently only used by Nest/Google.

KNX Older standard used entirely by dirty europeans.

OIC 3 giant companies got together to create a new IoT wireless standard in 2014, and one has already bailed on the project. I don't expect to see an actual thing with OIC on the market ever.

Smart lights vs smart switches
There's a lot of talk about Hue because Philips was the first major company to offer a straightforward way to control lights with your phone. I have 5 Hue lights of one flavor or another plus a couple GE Link bulbs that are compatible but without color change (so dimming only). A Hue set comes with a bridge that will bridge wired ethernet to ZigBee (note "WiFi" isn't on this list, despite Philips selling these as WiFi Connected Bulbs). There are apps from Philips and third parties for most platforms. These talk to the hub, the hub sends commands over ZigBee to your lights.

Here's the problem with smart lights: they are plugged into your existing light socket, and that socket has a light switch at the other side. You plug in, turn on the switch, and you can get it paired to your hub pretty easy and take over. Wheee, I can change light colors from my phone! What fun! OK now turn off that switch, the light turns off like you'd expect. Now grab your phone and ... AWWWWW, you can't control poo poo because you've cut the power to the lights. Smart Lights become dumb not-lights once you turn the switch off. This doesn't sound like a big deal but it sucks in practice. You either a) leave all your light switches on and then try and fumble around for a goddamn cell phone every time you walk into a room, or b) use the switches and now you can't turn on lights without the switch and you should have just bought a regular goddamn bulb.

Philips recognized this problem and has solved it with a horrible wall switch thing that you stick on to your wall. It's interesting in that it uses the force of you pressing the button to actually power the device (so no batteries), but it feels clunky and cheap and isn't what a person would expect to interact with on the wall to turn on lights. If you're a shut-in with no friends or guests then I guess it's OK, but people have expectations around how switches work, and smart lights and the Philips Tap do nothing to address this.

A better solution is to replace your existing wall switches with "smart" switches (Z-Wave currently, maybe Insteon if you like dead ends or someday maybe ZigBee). You can get a switch for ~$35 (practically free in the Smart Home world), replace your existing switch, and now the lights controlled by that switch work just like they used to, but have the added ability to be controlled from elsewhere via your hub. If your hub shits the bed, no problem the switch works locally just as you'd expect. No, you don't get fancy changy colors, but you get a light that turns on every time and doesn't involve fumbling for your cell phone.

i read all of this and it was good

i had some x10 stuff when i was in college; it was useful-ish i guess but then again i was a dirty college student

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:51

newreply.php: Dec 24, 2009; Pillbug

if you click the ? next to visual GNUdios username this thread reads like that ted the caver story except with a guy who reports increasingly weird home automation mishaps until all of a sudden the posting stops

# ? Mar 5, 2015 13:19

theadder: Dec 30, 2011

wish ur postin would stop

# ? Mar 5, 2015 13:27

newreply.php: Dec 24, 2009; Pillbug

ouch, birthday cake safety candle burn

# ? Mar 5, 2015 13:35

Assepoester: Jul 18, 2004; Can't post for 10 years!; Melman v2

Visual GNUdio posted:

Wired is miles ahead of us: THE NIGHTMARE ON CONNECTED HOME STREET

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/internet-things-dystopian-nightmare-everyone-everything-will-monitored-internet

Why don't we have more EMERGENCY FOODS and SURVIVAL SEED ads in YOSPOS anyway?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 14:33

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

newreply.php posted:

if you click the ? next to visual GNUdios username this thread reads like that ted the caver story except with a guy who reports increasingly weird home automation mishaps until all of a sudden the posting stops

If you click the ? next to your name you get your posting history.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 14:51

Elder Postsman: Aug 30, 2000; i used hot bot to search for "teens"

duckfarts posted:

i read all of this and it was good

i had some x10 stuff when i was in college; it was useful-ish i guess but then again i was a dirty college student

my dad bought a box of x10 stuff back in like 2000 because he wanted like security cameras or whatever for our mapstore. i never really had time to set it up. now i have all of it in a box. there are thing with antennas, and a control panel with a bunch of buttons, and some cameras with antennas. i tried setting it up once but the software was p bad.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 16:05

duckfarts: Jul 2, 2010; ~ shameful ~; Soiled Meat

Elder Postsman posted:

my dad bought a box of x10 stuff back in like 2000 because he wanted like security cameras or whatever for our mapstore. i never really had time to set it up. now i have all of it in a box. there are thing with antennas, and a control panel with a bunch of buttons, and some cameras with antennas. i tried setting it up once but the software was p bad.

i had a serial port dongle for the pc that worked p decent, though this is kinda relative to software at the time which all had a certain clunkiness

# ? Mar 5, 2015 17:34

TerminalRaptor: Nov 6, 2012; Mostly Harmless

poty posted:

im starting to think life at a smart home is a good premise for a sitcom

Think the old Looney Tunes cartoons about "The Home of the Future!"

# ? Mar 5, 2015 18:09

Hed: Mar 31, 2004; Fun Shoe

Elder Postsman posted:

my dad bought a box of x10 stuff back in like 2000 because he wanted like security cameras or whatever for our mapstore. i never really had time to set it up. now i have all of it in a box. there are thing with antennas, and a control panel with a bunch of buttons, and some cameras with antennas. i tried setting it up once but the software was p bad.

I think the best controller for X-10 I've ever seen is a clock radio sold by Radio Shack of all places, back when they were branding X-10 "plug n' power" or something like that. My parents used it to control some bitchin' Christmas displays inside and outside, and it seemed to work fine. Really even though it didn't have feedback or security it wasn't too bad and works better than some of the Z-wave controllers I've used. Only real problem nowadays is trying to pass signals between the two phases of your house wiring and having to sink current to allow the relays to keep LED light strings and other low-power devices truly "off" when they're switched off.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:41

Hed: Mar 31, 2004; Fun Shoe

I really want to get some hue bulbs for the nursery so that I can ~*hack babby's life cycle*~ or just have some stuff to dick around with... now I'm worried it's going to be a pain in the rear end to turn on at 3am or whatever.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:42

GameCube: Nov 21, 2006

caveman babies didn't have f.lux in their caves and they turned out just fine

# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:44

Silver Alicorn: Mar 30, 2008; 𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮

huehuehue

# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:52

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Hed posted:

I really want to get some hue bulbs for the nursery so that I can ~*hack babby's life cycle*~ or just have some stuff to dick around with... now I'm worried it's going to be a pain in the rear end to turn on at 3am or whatever.

The thing with Hue is that it probably works best as an accent light. It doesn't integrate into a whole-house setup well just because it doesn't integrate with conventional light switches. If you want a crib-side lamp that you can control from the phone then Hue is a perfectly reasonable (if expensive) solution. This is what I meant in my OP about Hue working well alone but not in groups.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 14:16

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Silver Alicorn posted:

huehuehue

I'm shocked it took yospos this long to reach for this stupid joke.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 14:17

duckfarts: Jul 2, 2010; ~ shameful ~; Soiled Meat

Visual GNUdio posted:

I'm shocked it took yospos this long to reach for this stupid joke.

it's a good joke though

# ? Mar 6, 2015 14:21

newreply.php: Dec 24, 2009; Pillbug

Silver Alicorn posted:

huehuehue

# ? Mar 6, 2015 14:23

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Yay somebody posted updated code and now my office lights work! What a miraculous future we're living in!

# ? Mar 7, 2015 09:35

Trashman: Sep 11, 2000; You trash eating stink bag!; Fun Shoe

Visual GNUdio posted:

The thing with Hue is that it probably works best as an accent light. It doesn't integrate into a whole-house setup well just because it doesn't integrate with conventional light switches. If you want a crib-side lamp that you can control from the phone then Hue is a perfectly reasonable (if expensive) solution. This is what I meant in my OP about Hue working well alone but not in groups.

what about the bloom? I was thinking bloom and the strip lights might be pretty cool but I dunno about spending the money to get the starter pack since I would need the hub from that. I guess instead of the bloom it would be easier to just get the bulbs and through them in a lamp.

# ? Mar 7, 2015 10:02

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

Trashman posted:

what about the bloom? I was thinking bloom and the strip lights might be pretty cool but I dunno about spending the money to get the starter pack since I would need the hub from that. I guess instead of the bloom it would be easier to just get the bulbs and through them in a lamp.

I think I said in my OP that I had 2 x Hue Iris which was a filthy lie, I actually have 2 Blooms (I can't keep this poo poo straight). One of the two failed completely within a week. I called Philips and they didn't even have me troubleshoot it before offering a return which took a few weeks. Apparently a lot of them will fail fairly quickly, so good luck. The Bloom is like a Hue with a quarter the light output and half the color gamut. They might be the stupidest things I own and I hate them.

# ? Mar 7, 2015 10:53

Trashman: Sep 11, 2000; You trash eating stink bag!; Fun Shoe

Visual GNUdio posted:

I think I said in my OP that I had 2 x Hue Iris which was a filthy lie, I actually have 2 Blooms (I can't keep this poo poo straight). One of the two failed completely within a week. I called Philips and they didn't even have me troubleshoot it before offering a return which took a few weeks. Apparently a lot of them will fail fairly quickly, so good luck. The Bloom is like a Hue with a quarter the light output and half the color gamut. They might be the stupidest things I own and I hate them.

ok that was the general impression I got. I don't really know what the advantage of those is over a hue bulb in a lamp, seems like the only thing is the bloom does blue but the hue doesn't and the hue does white but the bloom doesn't. really for $250 three hue bulbs and a hub seems a bit redic but could be cool...

# ? Mar 7, 2015 12:15

fart simpson: Jul 2, 2005; DEATH TO AMERICA

hue is kinda neat at first but do you really want purple lighting in your home?

# ? Mar 7, 2015 12:23

r u ready to WALK: Sep 29, 2001

Yes? I like to imagine I'm living in a Quake map i downloaded off the internet in 1999

http://www.somethingawful.com/hosted/cranky/index.php?game=1

# ? Mar 7, 2015 12:34

Visual GNUdio: Aug 27, 2003

fart simpson posted:

hue is kinda neat at first but do you really want purple lighting in your home?

It is actually kinda nice if you have relatively reliable scene control with a wall switch of some sort. This is the problem I recently had in my office (scene controller going tits up). When it's working, it's nice to have a button I can push for a dim, warm tone, another at full on and bluer white, and a third somewhere in the middle. Purple isn't super useful, but with effective scene control it can be something like f.lux for your room. It's the control options that are a problem.

# ? Mar 7, 2015 17:53

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 20:31

Smythe: Oct 12, 2003

im going to install hue lights in my cafe at work so i can have it change based on the theme of the show and then also so the fucker cafe attendant cantfuck with the dimmer and make it too bright inside. always with the too bright. go in there and its like a loving hopsital.

# ? Mar 7, 2015 17:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > smart homes are cool

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