I’ve had a similar setup, and bluntly, their not the brightest bulbs, and they’re not the best bulbs, but they are one of the easiest to set up and get working. They mostly just fire and forget…
I hate the saying “it just works”, but hue, despite all of its shortcomings, just works.
I’ve had at least one bulb fail outright, started illuminating “white” as an off purple color? It’s hard to describe. I have no idea why, but that went into the bin. I also had one bulb that was in-between uses, fall and smash, I think it still works but it has sharp glass on it, so that’s probably going to the bin. I have one other bulb that’s failing right now… This one is… Different. It blinks. You’ll have it at a steady, full brightness (or whatever) and the bulb will just shut off for 1/10th of a second every few seconds. No idea why. It’s probably headed to the bin. Luckily it’s in my hallway, so I don’t see the problem most of the time.
They’re expensive, and you don’t get a lot of light per bulb considering what you pay for them, but they are easy. That, in and of itself, would be the main reason I would suggest to anyone who isn’t a complete nerd, to get hue. Anyone with enough technical prowess and the willingness to set up home assistant, should probably go to different options. Anyone too busy to bother with their lights and just wants something that they can control with their Google home/Alexa/Siri… Hue is a good option.
Not saying there aren’t other good options, but hue is the one that I know and would suggest.
The flashing one sounds like a ballast issue (these are LEDs right?) and the weird purple could be caused by a dead LED in the group that if it was working would balance the color to white.
Since they’re expensive you’d hope they wouldn’t have these hardware issues… But I’m also just guessin.
To be fair, I’ve had most of the bulbs for more than 10 years. I’m pretty sure I picked them up in 2013/2014.
The first failure was about 2 years ago.
So getting 8-12 years of service isn’t bad.
Most of my bulbs are white/color ambiance A19, which run around $40-75 each (currently)… So it’s about $5-10 a year per bulb. Not terrible.
There’s a lot of technology that people should spend more money on, in order to save money.
Home networking, as an example. People generally won’t spend more than $100 ish, to get a wireless router that they expect will service their whole home for years and years. And in some circumstances, maybe that happens, chances are, you’re heading back to Walmart/bestbuy/wherever to pick up a new router in a couple of years.
I have business grade gear or better, and I bought most of this stuff years and years ago, and I have no stability issues nor any need to upgrade. I expect that will remain the case for many years to come. While others are out upgrading their wireless router because of one reason or another, I’m enjoying stable, and fast, network access.
The insane thing, to me is that people will spend upwards of $100 a month to have high speed Internet to their door, but then won’t spend $100 a year for a way to get that Internet into their devices. Insanity.
Depends on what aspect you’re referring to. I’m sure the online accounts are following standards, and the hue bridge can be used locally or via the cloud account. Local LAN generally doesn’t have any restrictions on usage, anyone on your net with the app can control stuff from my experience. Maybe that’s changed.
The bridge goes out to the Internet, it works without port forwards, so no exposure to the Internet there.
The last point I would think about with security is local bridge-to-bulb security which… Probably isn’t great. But someone needs to be within range with a specific skillset to take advantage of that.
I work in tech and maybe know one guy who might be able to pull that off?
Not sure, it’s ZigBee, and I don’t think they have encryption turned on at all.
I had issues with it from the get go. It wouldn’t accept my pairing, it was blinking on and off all the time, etc. I threw it out as soon as I didn’t need it for a couple of hours. Why do they need so much info to run a bulb?
I think hue works so well because it’s based on the ZigBee standard and the hub which is a dedicated appliance for controlling the lights. WiFi and Bluetooth should be reliable but with cheap lights maybe that’s the issue.
I don’t like Wi-Fi bulbs. I work in tech and I know how much noise is associated with Wi-Fi networks. To me, it is foolish to intentionally add to that when other options exist. I’m okay with ZigBee but I’ll probably go with zwave when I replace the hue bulbs.
I just want everything off of the WiFi channels as much as possible… Except actual Wi-Fi things like TVs, laptops, phones, tablets… That sort of thing (and even then, I want the TVs to be wired of I can figure a way to do it).
It’s bad enough ZigBee overlaps with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, creating interference, Wi-Fi IoT stuff just takes it to a new level.
Anyways, I’ll get off my soap box.
Two big things, IMO, contribute to reliability issues with IoT stuff: relatively inexpensive (and pretty trash) Wi-Fi in the IoT devices, and relatively inexpensive (and also pretty trash) Wi-Fi in a lot of consumer wireless routers.
To put it bluntly: if you know enough about tech to have a network capable of hosting Wi-Fi IoT devices reliably, you probably don’t want Wi-Fi IoT devices.
“it just works!”
I’ve had a similar setup, and bluntly, their not the brightest bulbs, and they’re not the best bulbs, but they are one of the easiest to set up and get working. They mostly just fire and forget…
I hate the saying “it just works”, but hue, despite all of its shortcomings, just works.
I’ve had at least one bulb fail outright, started illuminating “white” as an off purple color? It’s hard to describe. I have no idea why, but that went into the bin. I also had one bulb that was in-between uses, fall and smash, I think it still works but it has sharp glass on it, so that’s probably going to the bin. I have one other bulb that’s failing right now… This one is… Different. It blinks. You’ll have it at a steady, full brightness (or whatever) and the bulb will just shut off for 1/10th of a second every few seconds. No idea why. It’s probably headed to the bin. Luckily it’s in my hallway, so I don’t see the problem most of the time.
They’re expensive, and you don’t get a lot of light per bulb considering what you pay for them, but they are easy. That, in and of itself, would be the main reason I would suggest to anyone who isn’t a complete nerd, to get hue. Anyone with enough technical prowess and the willingness to set up home assistant, should probably go to different options. Anyone too busy to bother with their lights and just wants something that they can control with their Google home/Alexa/Siri… Hue is a good option.
Not saying there aren’t other good options, but hue is the one that I know and would suggest.
The flashing one sounds like a ballast issue (these are LEDs right?) and the weird purple could be caused by a dead LED in the group that if it was working would balance the color to white.
Since they’re expensive you’d hope they wouldn’t have these hardware issues… But I’m also just guessin.
To be fair, I’ve had most of the bulbs for more than 10 years. I’m pretty sure I picked them up in 2013/2014.
The first failure was about 2 years ago.
So getting 8-12 years of service isn’t bad. Most of my bulbs are white/color ambiance A19, which run around $40-75 each (currently)… So it’s about $5-10 a year per bulb. Not terrible.
Yeah you’re right, the fact they lasted that long changes my mind about their value
There’s a lot of technology that people should spend more money on, in order to save money.
Home networking, as an example. People generally won’t spend more than $100 ish, to get a wireless router that they expect will service their whole home for years and years. And in some circumstances, maybe that happens, chances are, you’re heading back to Walmart/bestbuy/wherever to pick up a new router in a couple of years.
I have business grade gear or better, and I bought most of this stuff years and years ago, and I have no stability issues nor any need to upgrade. I expect that will remain the case for many years to come. While others are out upgrading their wireless router because of one reason or another, I’m enjoying stable, and fast, network access.
The insane thing, to me is that people will spend upwards of $100 a month to have high speed Internet to their door, but then won’t spend $100 a year for a way to get that Internet into their devices. Insanity.
There is a joke there somewhere
How’s the security on those light bulbs is a weird but valid question
Depends on what aspect you’re referring to. I’m sure the online accounts are following standards, and the hue bridge can be used locally or via the cloud account. Local LAN generally doesn’t have any restrictions on usage, anyone on your net with the app can control stuff from my experience. Maybe that’s changed.
The bridge goes out to the Internet, it works without port forwards, so no exposure to the Internet there.
The last point I would think about with security is local bridge-to-bulb security which… Probably isn’t great. But someone needs to be within range with a specific skillset to take advantage of that.
I work in tech and maybe know one guy who might be able to pull that off?
Not sure, it’s ZigBee, and I don’t think they have encryption turned on at all.
Quick Google search shows that ZigBee is encrypted. So it may not be that insecure.
Yep, I see that too. Looks like it’s baked into the protocol.
Zwave will let you disable encryption or run without it. But it’s definitely still an option for zwave.
Both use AES 128, so there shouldn’t be any significant difference in security between them.
I had issues with it from the get go. It wouldn’t accept my pairing, it was blinking on and off all the time, etc. I threw it out as soon as I didn’t need it for a couple of hours. Why do they need so much info to run a bulb?
I think hue works so well because it’s based on the ZigBee standard and the hub which is a dedicated appliance for controlling the lights. WiFi and Bluetooth should be reliable but with cheap lights maybe that’s the issue.
I don’t like Wi-Fi bulbs. I work in tech and I know how much noise is associated with Wi-Fi networks. To me, it is foolish to intentionally add to that when other options exist. I’m okay with ZigBee but I’ll probably go with zwave when I replace the hue bulbs.
I just want everything off of the WiFi channels as much as possible… Except actual Wi-Fi things like TVs, laptops, phones, tablets… That sort of thing (and even then, I want the TVs to be wired of I can figure a way to do it).
It’s bad enough ZigBee overlaps with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, creating interference, Wi-Fi IoT stuff just takes it to a new level.
Anyways, I’ll get off my soap box.
Two big things, IMO, contribute to reliability issues with IoT stuff: relatively inexpensive (and pretty trash) Wi-Fi in the IoT devices, and relatively inexpensive (and also pretty trash) Wi-Fi in a lot of consumer wireless routers.
To put it bluntly: if you know enough about tech to have a network capable of hosting Wi-Fi IoT devices reliably, you probably don’t want Wi-Fi IoT devices.
Ah for me my server, desktop and movie room in the basement all have Ethernet wired so I only have mobile devices and IoT stuff on wifi.
But totally agree about trying to keep things off the wifi