Tom Salinsky

It seems it was nine years ago that I was writing about sticking Philips Hue bulbs all over my flat. Well, it doesn’t actually seem like nine years ago, but arithmetic confirms that it was very nearly. A lot has happened since then. Most of the bulbs are still working (one conked out and another met with an accident) but I don’t know if I really ever got the most out of them. They’ve also switched from WiFi connectivity to the more reliable and less router-dependant Zigbee for their communications and they are still very popular despite a huge array of (usually cheaper) alternatives.

In the interim, we’ve also converted our loft, giving us another floor to play with – oh, and there’s been a bit of a flap on about some sort of bug that seems to be going round. Being stuck indoors the whole time with no house guests and very few visitors, I decided to take another look at the Hue situation. I made sure all the bulbs were correctly named in the now-upgraded Hue app. I thought of something sensible to do with the dimmer switch magnetised onto the fridge. I set up rules to slowly dim the lights in the evening and to turn them on in the morning. I made sure that Alexa knew where all the lights were and could turn them on and off as I commanded. And I replaced the existing candle-style bulbs in what I was now using as my study with Hue versions, complete with a little magnet-y Smart Button to control them, adhering to one corner of the existing metal switch.

Upstairs, with the low-ish ceilings which are part of the deal with loft conversions, there were no dangling pendants, only flush spotlight GU10 bulbs. We wanted them dimmable but the touch-sensitive panels which we had installed had always been unreliable and had steadily been failing. First the light at the top of the stairs wouldn’t turn on, then the set of six lights overhead in the TV room. Finally my reading light went. Enough was enough. We hadn’t asked for Philips Hue bulbs when we had the loft done – because the one thing I knew about Hue bulbs was they only came in E27 Edison Screw flavours.

Except – wait. After all this time, could Philips (actually it’s now a company called Signify which has taken over the brand) have come up with compatible GU10 bulbs? Actually, they had. And – in common with much of the rest of the line – you can push the boat out and have all the fancy colours, you can go the cheapskate route and have just white, or you can have what they call “white ambience” which is somewhere in the middle cost-wise and gives you a range of whitish tones from warm gold to icy bright.

Okay, so… Supposing we rip all of those bulbs out and replace them with Philips Hue? The white ambience ones wouldn’t be too expensive. The old switches would be able to give them power but not dim them. Could we replace the switches as well? Probably the easiest solution is to buy some more Philips Hue dimmer switches (oh, and they’ve just come out with a fancy new model) and mount them in covers designed to fit over existing switches. That way if the system throws a fit (or when we move out) we can take our fancy dimmers and leave ordinary switches behind.

And while I’m at it, why don’t we do the same thing downstairs? We have these fancy dimmable bulbs, but turning the dimmer knobs on the existing switches no longer dims them. Replace all of those switches with straight on-off affairs, put covers over them and have Philips Hue dimmers everywhere! I tried this out just inside the front door, where I have a regular ordinary white plastic switch and set up my existing Hue dimmer to turn the stairs lights and and off. It looks smart and works like a dream.

Before I put this plan into action (which would in any case require the services of an electrician) I did a bit of Googling, and I quickly found one possible flaw in the plan. The “bridge”, which plugs into the router and acts as a central hub for all things Hue, is only an itty-bitty little computer, and even if it wasn’t – at a certain point, the airwaves would get clogged with Zigbee signals. The recommended load is 50 bulbs and 12 switches. Downstairs I only had 12 bulbs, even with three in the study. But I would need something like 7-8 dimmers to control them all.

Upstairs, there were a couple of dozen little GU10 bulbs in the ceiling. With both floors, I’d certainly approach the 50 bulb limit and I’d go sailing past the 12 switch barrier. Should I just keep adding devices and hoping? Well, I really want this system to be reliable and pass the wife-compatibility test with ease (this is made more probable since the existing lights very often just don’t work at all) so I didn’t want to take any chances. So, having found some appropriate light switch covers, I decided to test out a second bridge.

Adding a second bridge can create problems. The official app only allows you to access one bridge at a time, although you can switch back and forth with no problem. And I’d heard mixed reports about adding a second bridge to Alexa. The official Hue position is that this can’t be done, but plenty of people on the Internet seemed to have managed it.

I’d got a couple of Philips GU10s at what I thought was a bargain price, until I realised they were white – not even white ambience, just white. But I decided to use them as a test case. I bought a second bridge, plugged it in upstairs, using the hardline from the router that also goes (via a switch) into my Apple TV. I replaced the two GU10 bulbs above our bedroom mirror with the white Hue ones and I set everything up in the app. Then, as the Internet told me I should, I made sure to press the button on the second bridge before inviting Alexa to find new devices. And it worked! Alexa found the two new bulbs and so with the Alexa app I can see all my Hue devices at once.

Then I tried to set up a light group in Alexa called “Mirror Lights” consisting of just these two bulbs – and Alexa kept adding one of my new bulbs and one of my kitchen bulbs from downstairs. I don’t seem to be the only one who has had this problem, and it almost defeated me. I must have tried to set that up half-a-dozen times. Eventually, I found the work-around. You verbally tell Alexa to move the errant light and to add the one you do want. That worked. Okay. I can install new lights and set up apps and switches myself. What I need now is an electrician who can get the recalcitrant loft lights working at all, and then to have that person replace all of the existing switches with ordinary on-off affairs which I can cover with smart dimmers.

 
To be continued…

The website Kickstarter has been coming in for a bit of a, well, kicking recently.

On its face, it seems like a marvellous idea. Launched in 2009, it’s a crowd-sourcing platform, initially focused on creative or artistic enterprises but increasingly with a heavy gadget and especially iOS bias. In case you don’t know, here’s how it works.

I am an inventor, artist or other creative individual and I have thought of a thing. Ideally, I’ve reality-checked it, prototyped it, got it to the point where I can explain it, demonstrate it or pitch it. If I knew that there were 10,000 people out there who would all pay $50 to buy one, or come and see it, or download it, then I would know that the income would be there to justify a full production run, or staging it, or producing it. But I don’t have the funds right now to start that process, making me somewhat stuck.

Enter Kickstarter. You describe your project and set levels at which people can invest. Back the project for $50 and when it’s ready, you’ll get one, or a ticket, or a download. If I get enough people promising their money by the deadline, then credit cards are charged and I get the cash to start making my dream a reality (after Kickstarter gets its cut) and then pretty soon you should get what you’ve paid for. If not enough people invest, then nobody pays anything and I’ve done some pretty useful market-testing which may be enough to convince me to abandon the project.

I’ve got at least one really excellent product through Kickstarter – my Zooka Wireless Speaker bar which connects to my iOS device (see?) by Bluetooth and amplifies my music or video soundtracks. But I’ve also got carried away once-or-twice. “Wow, shooting 360 degree video on an iPhone – that is so cool. Here’s $40!” (Six months later) “Why has somebody sent me this useless piece of plastic in the post? What? Shooting 360 degree video on my iPhone? When would I ever want to do that?”

But that’s not the worst problem with Kickstarter, not the problem which has forced the site to substantially change its rules recently. With my Zooka, I plunked down my money and some months later, I received the speaker bar I wanted in the mail. Just like shopping on Amazon, if Amazon’s warehouse was on Mars.

But Kickstarter is not a shop. You aren’t buying a product, you are investing in an idea that might eventually turn into a product, but equally might all go up in smoke.

Kickstarter’s biggest success in terms of funding to date has probably been the Pebble. This smart watch with an e-ink display pairs with your iPhone, so with your phone in your pocket you can see who is calling you, get calendar alerts, see email messages and so on. It launched in April 2012 with a funding target of $100,000 and has actually raised over $10m, but despite an estimated ship-date of September 2012, so far no-one has actually got their $99 watch yet. And they may never.

So, in September, when I saw the Kickstarter campaign for the LIFX WiFi LED light bulb I was excited but also cautious. When we bought our new flat, we had all the wiring and lighting redone. We had hoped to get dimmable bulbs everywhere, but of course, we also often wanted one bulb operated by two switches and (apparently) you can’t have two dimmer switches operating one bulb or the fight each other and then your house burns down (or something). So we have several lights which are operated by one dimmer and one (or more) on-off switch. Workable, but not ideal.

The LIFX bulb solves this problem at a stroke. These LED bulbs can each be set at any brightness – and any colour!! – and you control them from your iPhone. Neat, huh? Of course, they’re expensive – around £50 each, and for our whole flat we’d probably need at least eight, maybe more.

So, after some discussion, I theorised as follows. Committing to buying eight bulbs now means that by the time they eventually show up (supposedly around March 2013), I may have less enthusiasm for the project, or have found another solution. In that time, various problems may or may not come up – the bulbs may be dim, or unreliable, or the software flaky or who knows what. WiFi LED light bulbs may end up being a “thing”, they may go mainstream or they may not. If they do, then in time the price will come down and the technology will improve. If not, I’ve bought a lemon.

Shortly after I decided not to invest, LIFX was one of a number of Kickstarter projects identified as being particularly likely to be problematic in articles such as this one from Reuters. Now Kickstarter has substantially changed the rules making it harder for pure “vapourware” products to swallow up large sums of other people’s money as they evaporate away.

Having mentally shelved the WiFi LED light bulb project, I was most startled when all over my favourite blogs and websites two days ago I saw an announcement from Philips that they had an essentially identical product called Hue which would be available exclusively through the Apple Store the next day.

The price is basically the same – £50 per bulb, £179 for the “starter kit” containing three bulbs and the “bridge” which connects them to your home WiFi network (the LIFX version doesn’t need the separate bridge which is neater and tidier, but may make initial configuration more fiddly). The bulbs are sleeker without the heat-dissipating fins which make the LIFX bulbs look a little odd, but they’re only available with Edison Screw E27 fittings, so if you have bayonet or downlight fittings, you need an adaptor. But crucially, you can go into the Apple Store and pick them up right now, today and put them in your home (but not buy them online, yet, for some reason). [UPDATE: You can now buy them on-line.]

So I stopped off at Ryness to buy some B22-E27 adaptors and then took myself to Regent Street, walking out of the Apple Store minutes later with a very handsomely presented box. Installation couldn’t have been much easier. Like WPS WiFi systems, the bridge has a physical button on it, so you connect it to your router with the cable provided and then push the button to connect it to your iPhone. Instantly I had full control over all three bulbs.

The software is a little clunky at present (LIFX’s software looks more fully-featured, but of course it doesn’t actually exist yet, so…). In particular, it is very focused on using colour from images to create lighting effects (or “scenes”) which is surely a niche application. Nonetheless, after a bit of messing around, I was able to create some suitable presets, such as a dim warm glow in the bedroom for going to sleep, or a nice bright clean light for reading in the living room. I was even able to create a single button to simultaneously dim the light in the TV room, and turn the light next-door off (for fear of it casting a reflection on the TV screen). Three bulbs is not of course enough, but as a proof-of-concept, I’m sold. We’ll give it a few more days to see how we get on and then stick a few more in.

If you turn a bulb off at the wall, you can’t then turn it back on again with the app – you’ve cut power to the WiFi electronics – but if you then turn it back on again, it returns with a standard warm glow and near maximum brightness, which means it’s always possible to override the tech if need be. A good solution.

Are they remotely worth the price though? Well, being LED bulbs they should last around 15 years. An old-fashioned incandescent light bulb, costing maybe £1.50, will last about six months. So you can easily spend £40 over a 15 year span. Of course, who knows if WiFi will even exist in 2027, but at least I’m not going to be chucking my £50 bulb in the bin this time next year. They’re also energy-efficient, drawing less than 9 watts of power, while creating the equivalent light of a 50w incandescent bulb.

For completeness, a Halogen bulb will last twice as long as an incandescent bulb but might cost twice as much. An LED bulb without the WiFi-ness will cost around £25-£30 and will presumably last as long as the Hue bulbs do.