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Smart bulbs 
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Has anyone upgraded their bulbs to these?

Philips and Lifx do wireless enabled LED bulbs that can be turned on/off via smartphone/computer. I've been researching these as sometimes we go out for the day and may not always be back early. It means the house is dark and looks unoccupied. I've been more concerned since my brother-in-law had his house broken into.

I know that Lifx had an issue with giving out wifi usernames and passwords when hacked.

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Thu Sep 15, 2016 10:50 am
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Yes, I have a couple of the Belkin Wemo bulbs. They're fairly useful as you can do things like set schedules when they come on and off, set lighting levels etc. You can also link them to IFTTT which is very useful. Nothing you can't do with 'dumb' electronics but it's useful to have it all 'in the bulb', even though half of it is actually 'in the cloud'.

The only issue with them is that they're actually quite old technology (relatively speaking) so they can't be upgraded to work with Apple's HomeKit. As that looks actually rather useful, I may have to replace them with a set of Phillips Hue bulbs, which are HomeKit friendly.

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Thu Sep 15, 2016 2:32 pm
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Security is poor, so you should never put them on the in-house network, you should put them on a separate network (E.g. guest network on a Wifi router).

Also the Philips once turn on to full brightness if you have a power outage, when the power comes back.

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Thu Sep 15, 2016 3:38 pm
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big_D wrote:
Security is poor, so you should never put them on the in-house network, you should put them on a separate network (E.g. guest network on a Wifi router).

Oh no, somebody could switch my lights on and off without my permission...

big_D wrote:
Also the Philips once turn on to full brightness if you have a power outage, when the power comes back.

They all do that. You have to leave them switched on at the wall (because if you don't, they have no power to work from) and I assume 'full on' is considered a 'better 'fail state' than 'off'. IMO, that's a pretty reasonable choice to make.


Thu Sep 15, 2016 5:05 pm
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I would probably try and isolate them from everything else if I can. I would also really only use them when we go out so i'd probably use the wall switches as normal. I basically want lights to go on/off but without the predictability of a timer.

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Thu Sep 15, 2016 5:23 pm
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cloaked_wolf wrote:
I would also really only use them when we go out so i'd probably use the wall switches as normal.

Try remembering every time if that particular bulb is off because you switched it off, or because it's 'smart' and is off to a schedule. Note if you switch the switch and get it wrong, it now won't work at all until you flip the switch again. The whole point of 'smart' bulbs is they're not 'dumb' bulbs. Treating them like 'dumb' bulbs kind of defeats the point.

if all you want to do is switch a lamp or two on and off when you're out of the house, you'd much better buying a few 'smart switches' instead. Cheaper, simpler and just as good for that function.


Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:05 pm
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The porblem with smart switches is that they cover the switch (at least the ones I've seen). I wouldn't mind switching off the landing lights via smartphone but TBH I pass each one on the way to bed, so it takes very little to turn them on/off.

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Thu Sep 15, 2016 9:18 pm
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