this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
1583 points (99.3% liked)
People Twitter
6689 readers
777 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
- Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've had my Phillips hue bulbs for over 10 years now. I own like 20 bulbs and have only had a single failure. Never had any issues with the bulbs. Google Assistant however has let itself go.
"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
Hue hue hue hue
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?
In my experience they don't. I didn't even have a hue account when I set mine up... Maybe that's changed, but I wouldn't know. I set up an account because I wanted to control the bulb from outside my house, in case I forget to turn off the lights when I head out.
There's also three generations and at least two different series of light bulbs with the "hue" brand. One series is entirely Bluetooth, which doesn't require the hue hub; I only have experience with the hub-required bulbs, and I'll say that they can be a bitch to get working if you need to associate the bulbs to the hub. I set up a table lamp next to my hue hub, and sat there, phone in hand, adding the bulbs by screwing them into the lamp and going through the process. If the bulbs were too far away, pairing would fail.
It was a pain, but once they were in the app, I never had to think about them again (besides the usual of turning them on/off/Green/Blue/purple/whatever...
Yeah, it's not all roses, but compared to dealing with home assistant and using a ZigBee or zwave dongle, and all of that stuff, it's downright a walk in the park by comparison. I would assume the average consumer could set up a hue system in an afternoon. It would cost them a grand or more to do a portion of their home, but it wouldn't take too long to do. Then they would work, problem free for 8-12 years or more, then whoops, the bulbs start dying and you have to fork out a hefty amount to replace them.
It's not cheap and it's not plug and play, but once you get it put together it "just works".
Navigating the array of what's available and trying to figure out which ones work with which system is probably the most painful part of the process IMO.
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
Since I've worked with the tech for so long, my philosophy is: wire when you can, wireless when you have to.
To expand: if you can run a wire, in any way, shape, or form, then do that, when that's impossible or impractical, use wireless.
One device that walks the line between whether it should be wireless or wired is laptops.... Do you use it on a dock or is it always in the same location when in use? Wired. If you're moving it about and using it on your desk, bed, couch, wherever, wireless.
Stuff like tablets and smartphones are mostly obligated to be wireless, there are some cursed methods to get wired Ethernet to work on some mobile platforms; I've gotten a few to work on Android, but they're not pretty and very hit-and-miss as to what's going to work and what is a waste of money.... Also the device usually doesn't have a lot of control over the wired interface since the OS isn't expecting it, so it frequently doesn't show up on any control panel, you just have WiFi/LTE off and you're still online. Do not recommend.
Anything that doesn't move like TVs, desktops, etc, find a way to run a wire, whether that's Ethernet, or MoCA or even shudder powerline.
Powerline Ethernet to me, is in a very interesting place. It can be good, depending on your power situation. For European electrical systems, there's only one phase AFAIK, so that will likely be a lot easier and more successful, with anything split phase, like what's in use in North America, as long as you're on the same circuit, or at least the same "side" (or leg) of the split phase, you'll probably be fine. If the two outlets you want to use are across the sides of the split phase, you're in for a rough time. It'll be slow, if it works at all....
So powerline sits at this weird intersection of knowing enough to be dangerous with electricity and knowing enough to be dangerous with networks. I know enough about both that I could probably make it work and it would probably be ok, but, nahhh. I'd rather run an Ethernet wire.
For anything IoT, get off my wifi. Ethernet is fine, but I can probably count the IoT devices that use Ethernet on one hand. So you're stuck with either ZigBee or zwave. And yes, there's matter and whatever.... But those new protocols run on top of either Wi-Fi, ZigBee, or zwave.... Not independent from them.
I bought Ikea bulbs and the only time I've ever had an issue with them is after a brownout nuked the gateway/hub device.
If you let the wireless remotes run out of battery you have to re-sync them, but beyond that they're the easiest IoT thing I've ever used.
Google home assistant has gone to total shit. That new Gemini crap will not recognize commands the the old assistant has no issues with
Yea is Alexa any better than Google Assistant? It used to be great but I think they are actively making it shit to get people on Gemini? But Gemini doesn't support smart home stuff, that why the hell do we need an LLM for assistant.
Alexa skeezes me out. I have a single Google home mini I keep in the garage so that I can control music and stuff hands free, but that's about it. I've stopped using it on my phone because it's garbage now. I have to assume Alexa is equivalently enshittified.
We've got a few Echos, but these days they are mainly used as a bluetooth speaker (bedroom), kitchen timer (kitchen), and the kids' one (basement) is used for music... and that's about it.
I have one in the garage, too, but I'm about to throw it against the concrete floor and run it over a few times for how often it only plays one fucking song from my Spotify playlist when I'm working on my motorcycles.
Lol... Yea I feel about the same amount of affection for my Google Assistant. If there was a paid version that hasn't been left in 2016 then I'd be down.