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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

What kind of features beyond those that a normal dimmer provides do you add when you have a wifi/bluetooth enabled dimmer? Does that translate into 'you can control the light from your phone'? Or are there other things that I haven't thought of that a light can do other than being on/off or somewhere in between?

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Responding to various conditions and sensors (in my case a legacy Kinect), sequenced timers, coordinated scenes across multiple lights, etc. My devices don't connect to the Internet to do it, but the local network is required. I use Hue and DMX-512 myself, but any Wifi-enabled light could benefit.

Nest-like machine learning (the thinking on which predates Nest) can later be added in a cloudless way that starts to anticipate what lights to turn on together, what actions should trigger what scenes, etc.

Presumably Plum has similar ideas.

Lighting which slowly increases in intensity in concert with an alarm clock.

Home lighting which is activated by a motion sensor but doesn't blind you or awaken others but helps prevent you from stumbling through the home in the middle of the night.

Lighting which could be coordinated with media controls.

Simply more economical way to move or add an additional light switch than hiring an electrician to do it the old fashioned way.

Schedules for when and how long to turn a light on, artificially intelligent schedule or scene recommendations based on data from the motion detection sensor (recos first because poltergeist lights are more irritating than your thermostat occasionally thinking you're not home when you are), integration between our led light ring and security products, scenes for different moods triggered via phone or via AppleTV or an alarm clock / schedule, integration with Amazon Echo to control lights, rooms, and scenes via voice; geo-fencing of mobile phone to control lights or scenes based on whether you're coming home or leaving, etc...

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