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Comment by throwaway420 | Hacker News Reader

I was literally about to make a purchase but now I'll be considering other options. Good timing on your part hue.

Do these idiot companies not learn anything from backlashes against Keurig and others?

Me too. Hue gear is absurdly expensive, but I was sold right up until this. To make matters worse, it looks like the apps I wanted to use the bulbs with (sleep as android, f.lux) only work with the Phillips hub. I hope the developers of those apps use this as an opportunity to learn about the dangers of vendor lock-in. This is just the FTDI debacle all over again.

If only there was other bridge hardware that could communicate in a more open manner. Unfortunately, Hue is one of the only companies that even OFFERS an SDK—most other systems are completely closed down.

https://github.com/LIFX

I didn't research smart bulbs at all before walking into best buy and purchasing a pair of LIFX 1000 color bulbs using the light intensity as the only metric between brand selection. Getting home, I realized that LIFX doesn't really plug and play with the other technologies. Their cloud service is not very reliable, and so it was a very bad experience upon arrival.

Then I discovered the lightsd package, which is a service daemon that runs on anything with python. It exposes a json api on the network that any client can easily send programming commands to your lights. You can tag each bulb, so you can target any subset you can come up with. I made my own ruby client in a single night, and I barely code. Lightsd turned the LIFX bulbs from an obvious store return into something I am willing to keep. Barely.

Didn't Keurig just get valued at $shitton BN? If anything, this case teaches us that being customer-hostile and abusive pays off. Which is sort of obvious if you think about how the market works, but people still act surprised.

They did, but they were worth double the shittons a year ago. That's why they got bought.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/coffee-machine-maker-...

Oh. Good.

Maybe, but: http://www.reuters.com/article/keurig-green-results-idUSL3N1... Keurig quarterly profit falls 27 pct (Aug 2015)

I unfortunately just got my Hue Bridge 2.0... I guess I'll just return it back, but what a pain in the ass that is.

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