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I live in a 300sf studio in a tenement building built in 1917. There's a single overhead glass dome fixture for each room, but with 10ft ceilings they don't shed much light at all. I've added several hue lamps around aimed at the walls so there's plenty of light (I've also added some under-counter ikea halogen lights on a tp-link smart plug). If I had added these bulbs as regular bulbs, I would have to go around turning on/off each bulb every time I wanted the lights on/off. Instead, I can say one command to my google home (picture: walking into the apartment with hands full of groceries -- "ok google lights on" - done) or tap a button on my phone. I've also set up a cron script on a spare raspberry pi to change the color temperature when the sun sets (like flux but for the apartment lights), which helps with sleep cycle and eye strain. By this point, all but one of the dim overhead lights has burned out (I'm responsible for changing bulbs per my lease, but also since I'm living in a small apartment I don't have room for a 10ft ladder, so it's always a hassle to replace them) and I just don't use the wall switches at all.

Is this a major life improvement? Nah, not really. But having lived here for almost a decade, I can say that I like having a reasonable level of light, and the convenience that comes with the smart lights makes that less of a pain. Not like my lease would let me put in more outlets or light switches (the whole apartment is on a single 15A slow-blow fuse circuit).

But thanks for the _order_ to stop buying smart bulbs. Not like anyone has slightly different use cases for these things than the "_horrible_" replace-a-light-already-on-a-switch case that you demonize.

> Stop buying smart bulbs. It’s an absolutely horrible idea from beginning to end. What people want is a way to switch a lamp on and off. For that you need a smart switch. For it to work you can’t have a dumb switch in your wall first - because when the dumb switch is in the “off” position, the smart lightbulb doesn’t work!

While I agree, a large part of the challenge is that people live in apartment buildings, where replacing light switches is out of the question, but replacing lightbulbs is doable. I personally use smart bulbs for exactly this reason.

That said, if I had a house I would either:

* use smart switches

* use smart switches + smart bulbs

This also ignores a huge reason for having these bulbs in the first place- the ability to dim or change their colors. As someone who gets migraines having the ability to turn off white and blue light at will is pretty life changing.

About having to leave light switches in the on position…

Your pain has been felt. Searching the web for "smart light switch cover" will find secondary switch plates which snap on top of your existing switch. They prevent anyone from turning the physical switch off, and instead present a switch or dimmer control for your smart home to use.

Much cheaper for people not comfortable with swapping a light switch, and probably much safer for anyone that doesn't want a piece of low end garbage grade electronics from a mystery vendor inside their walls. Actual UL/CE approved in wall smart switches through a trusted supply chain are still kind of pricey, especially since the compatibility wars are still being fought.

I have a bunch of smart bulbs, and actually, I really like them.

For starters, the Hue bulbs are fairly high quality LEDs. They don't flicker excessively, they distort colors less than cheaper bulbs, and I haven't had one burn out yet. Oh, and the default color is apparently now programmable.

We normally run ours off of old-fashioned switches, with the exception of one or two rooms where the switches are badly positioned and I'm too lazy to reopen the walls.

But even years after installing the bulbs, we still use our phones to override the colors on the bulbs, or set up custom lighting configurations.

The biggest downside is that after a power outage, every light turns on. That's happened once or twice at 2am, and it meant a grumpy search for the nearest phone.

>The biggest downside is that after a power outage, every light turns on.

Set your lights to return to the last state after power recovery.

I prefer to have ours default to on. It means the "dumb switch" (as the grandparent puts it) still works as expected, which is really important for .. everyone else in the house.

(It does make outtage recovery inconvenient, but that's much rarer than the day-to-day inconvenience)

Fair point. When I bought my Hue lights, this turned out to be an unexpected pain point. Not only did guests routinely used the switch, I myself had a really hard time unlearning the habit of using it.

... and then I realized that using a phone instead of a switch is much less convenient. Because on poweroff, Hue bulbs revert to ugly, warm color (I bought the color ones to have some mood lights), I wrote a script that repeatedly queried the Hue bridge for color values of all bulbs and changed them according to presets I liked whenever it detected that a bulb has default color values. The script ran on always-on Raspberry Pi, which was plugged in solely for that purpose. Unfortunately, in order not to saturate the bridge with API calls, this script polled the bridge only every couple of seconds, which still made the accidental reset annoying.

All in all, my experience with smart lights turned out to be pretty disappointing. You really need a smart switch for them to make sense. An ideal smart switch would be stateful and have an actuator built in, so that its mechanical state always reflects the software state of the bulb. Unfortunately, I've never seen anyone make such switches.

The smart switches I'm used to are the wide paddle style and sit in the center, not the on or off positions, so you can always press either side. They also have a status light that shows on/off/dimmer positions as well.

Insteon 2477D is an example you can look up, though I don't recommend people go with the Insteon protocol for a new build.

A somewhat recent update to Hue bulbs lets you set up what they should do when they receive power, including the ability to tell them to just revert to the previous state. As stated in another comment however, I prefer them just turning on at (almost) full brightness, as I use the regular switch for turning them on when coming into a room.

Thanks for letting me know. I still have one Hue bulb in operation at our current place, though I unplugged the Hub and just deal with the ugly orange. This will be a good motivation to finally update the firmware (which I was avoiding for the past year), so that I can just fix the default color.

What do people that buy smart bulbs do, tape their light switches in the “on” position so you can no longer use the most convenient way to switch off?

You seem to assume that every lamp in every home maps 1:1 to a wall switch. This is far from true.

No but nearly all lights have a switch, that may be in the off position if the wall switch was used. Of course you can dim 10 smart bulbs individually that sit behind a single switch and that’s a great bonus - but for that to work properly you need one smart switch and 10 smart bulbs. I’m not saying smart bulbs are bad, it’s just that the most important feature (switching on and off) isn’t solved without a smart switch, and with a smart switch you don’t need a smart bulb unless you have niche uses (multiple bulbs to dim, color changes etc)

This is an almost perfect solution - but they've gone and put a proprietary application protocol on top of Zigbee instead of using a common profile. Nonetheless, very cool smart moving rocker switch:

https://getden.co.uk/products/switch/#1G

1) we have one in our bedroom - wife loves to crotchet in bed, but of course then inevitably I'm the one being kicked out of the bed to switch the light off. Smart bulb solved that issue, I can just switch it off from my phone.

2) yeah smart switches sound great but it's physically impossible to get them installed in the UK thanks to the unique way our electrical wiring is done - the switch on the wall only has the positive terminal in, the ground is wired directly into the bulb socket. So smart switches just don't work as they don't have anywhere to pull their own electricity from.

There's Philips Hue compatible smart switches that don't require any power.

I believe the Lutron Caseta switches work in this scenario. Instead of shutting off completely, the power flow goes down to just enough to keep the switched powered, but not enough to actually light up the bulb.

> the switch on the wall only has the positive terminal in, the ground is wired directly into the bulb socket.

This is the standard practice in many countries. Wiring the return wire is unnecessary.

> So smart switches just don't work.

This is false.

There are remote controlled switches that are designed to work with a single wire. I have one right now in my room, they utilize an energy-harvesting circuit to obtain energy from the changing magnetic field surrounding the AC line to charge a capacitor to power itself. Also, it uses 433 MHz RF, so it means it doesn't have Linux and IoT craps embedded inside, no firmware upgrade, no factory reset.

Yet, I can capture the control sequence using RTL-SDR, and use a 1$ RF transmitter from my Raspberry Pi to control my light programmatically if I want, though I never needed to, fortunately.

Interesting, but I suppose I got something wrong then, as there must be a reason why pretty much no company offers smart switches in the UK market even when they have smart switches in other markets.

> no company offers smart switches in the UK market even when they have smart switches in other markets.

Honestly I don't know, I'm not sure about the UK.

Perhaps those "smart" switches can't be powered by this technique due to their higher power consumption? But then, why can't one just use dumb RF switches, and put the heavy-duty digital "brain" inside a separate unit as I suggested? Because the encoding scheme doesn't scale? But it should...

In all possible ways, the same principle should be fully applicable in the UK... Sorry, I don't understand, it should be answered by someone who knows better than me...

I bought a few Hue smart bulbs out of curiosity, and liked it so much that I bought more. I did not buy a smart switch.

First, let’s talk about switching on instead: It turned out that there are a lot of situation where I really want to switch the bulb on using the button. However, you can set up what the bulb should do when it starts getting power, and I set it up to turn on at reasonable brightness. So when I come into a room, I just quickly switch the switch twice (off-on). This works very well.

As for turning off, which was your complaint, it turns out that even as an energy conscious person, I rather want to turn off the light when I reached my destination. Usually, I will at least quickly be on my phone, iPad or laptop anyway, and it’s very easy to flick the control center to turn the light of the room I came from earlier (plus a few others maybe) off.

And while I don’t have a smart switch, I don’t see why you would “remove” any reasons there. One great thing I like about the smart bulbs is that they turn on when I come home, and turn off when I leave. I also have smart sockets by now, and they conveniently cut power to all my entertainment stuff when I leave, eliminating standby power.

The other benefit is sitting on the couch at evening, realizing that everything is too bright right now, and just turning most lights off and dimming the remaining ones from where I sit, not having to get up and go through the entire house.

A few additional points:

I don’t have smart bulbs in the bathrooms. I don’t think they add anything. Bathrooms are usually turn light on, stay for a (relatively) short time, turn light off. This is the same reason why when I originally switched to energy saving bulbs, back when those were still very slow, I kept normal bulbs. I want the light in the bathroom to turn on fast, and I spend a short enough time in it to not waste too much energy.

As for guests: Not a problem. If they stay overnight, they will likely use the regular switch and turn their bulb into a dumb one. That’s okay and make sense. If they don’t stay overnight, they are usually not roaming around so much that they have to worry about lights. In the rare cases that they do, the lights temporarily turn into dumb lights, until I make them “smart” again. I don’t remember when this last happened.

Finally, especially if you don’t live alone, lying in bad and just being able to turn everything off, and not just your lights, was worth it so far.

I've got smart bulbs and they're great. We recently did a reno and wanted dimmable leds. The cost to properly rewire the existing circuitry to support low voltage dimming exceeded the cost of the smart bulbs. "Normal" leds with a traditional dimmable switch would have worked, but flickered. Additionally, the cost difference was minimal. So we swapped everything to smart bulbs (2), under-cabinet lights (2), and cans (5).

My dumb switches works fine. I can turn it off when I leave the kitchen. When I return and flick it on it sets it to a default brightness/color. If I am entertaining I can have it pulse with the music or set the mood with a specific brightness/color. When guests visit/stay they have no idea it's a 'smart bulb' and it works as a normal light switch to them.

If I forget to turn it off at night I can turn off the bulbs from my phone. If I'm not in the kitchen and the light switch is off, yeah I can't turn it on, but who cares? A normal switch would be off anyway. When I actually go into the kitchen I just flip it on and it returns to a pre-set brightness/color.

Additionally, the Hues in particular support a wide temperature range. So if I want 'warm' or 'cool' light I can set it. With a normal LED I'd have to pick at the time of purchase.

The reasons I have a small number of smart bulbs are:

1. I want to be able to turn them off without getting out of bed to use the switch on the wall or the lamp, for the case where I fall asleep reading in bed.

2. I want good dimming. The dimmable LED bulbs I've found that work with regular incandescent dimmers have not been very good--they don't go as dim as I'd like and they often flicker a lot when dim. There are dimmers specifically designed for LED bulbs that may work better, but I don't want to replace my lamps.

The Philips Hue bulbs dim excellently. The TP-Link/Kasa bulbs and the Merkury Innovations bulbs, which I first experimented with (they are a lot cheaper than Hue, so I used them to check out the basic idea of smart bulbs) don't dim as well as Hue--their dimming is smooth and free of flicker, but they don't dim as much. 1% on an 800 lumen Kasa is quite a bit brighter than 1% on a Hue.

3. I want to be able to change the color temperature to match what I'm doing and the time of day.

Getting a smart switch, as opposed to a smart bulb, would only address #1.

A smart bulb solves the “turn off from bed” problem, but I just feel it’s limited if you can’t solve the “turn on remotely” problem because there is a 50/50 chance of the walk switch being in off position.

I don’t mind smart bulbs at all - I do mind the combination “single smart bulb behind dumb switch” which is the most common scenario and yet completely broken.

You need some basic electrical knowledge to change the switches, and the insurance company might have a clause that electric wiring need to be done by a professional. but anyone can handle a bulb.

Smart bulbs allow the automation of controlling the full color spectrum and intensity of the bulb. Buying smart bulbs only to use them as binary on/off lights is a humongous waste of money.

> Stop buying smart bulbs.

I must confess when I read statements like that I am inclined to do precisely the opposite. My favorite comments on HN are those expressed with less preaching and more reason.

It was a rant for sure - and obviously I shouldn’t care what others do, but the smart bulbs seem to have limited the market for what we really need which is the smart switch.

One of the reasons I hate them is when you e.g enter an AirBnb and find the switches taped and a manual for how to switch on the lights using your phone. This really is a thing.

Agreed. It’s worse than figuring out TV remotes!

From the comments it seems like smart bulbs are a good choice for people are not capable of or not willing to replace wall switches.

Good news is there are ways to integrate smart switches with open source home automation systems.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/8apv64/hue_t...

I have a button on my keyboard (F16) that turns on every smart light in my apartment. I also have a button on my keyboard (F17) that turns on the two lights in my "bedroom" in red colour and then fades them out in five minutes. This allows me to still see around when I turn off the monitor, but doesn't require me to go hit the light switches in the bedroom before and after.

Ok, but let's talk about your keyboard. Why does it have so many function keys?

It's just a standard full-sized Apple keyboard. Nineteen (19) function keys. And since the small Apple keyboards only have twelve (12) function keys, you can use them pretty freely to bind your own stuff.

Our house is old. There are three separate switches to turn on/off three separate lights in our kitchen. Having an electrician fix this would have been thousands of dollars, so instead we bought three smart bulbs. Similar story in our living room, except with 5 lamps because we have no ceiling fixtures there.

I have a single switch that controls 6 recessed lights in a room. I want to control them individually. Replacing the switch won’t help. I had to get Hue lights and use Alexa to control them. I will cover the existing switch, but I won’t disable it. It’s useful to reset the bulbs.

I think smart bulbs had a nonobvious way into our homes - pioneering, younger folks with less or no regular income would treat a 30 dollar bulb as a significant investment, a great way to get some social buy-in by augmenting one key area of a locale, one they probably don't own - as a cool place.

And then as the look became popular to have a couple of bulbs sprinkled throughout various dorm rooms, nerd spots, lairs, et cetera, maybe parents relented and bought more for uniformity or even just the same social buy-in with their kids. Whatever it was, it was done a light bulb at a time, and rarely as a lighting improvement project. A smart switch is something rich people buy, but a smart bulb is something everyone can buy.

So we're stuck with this lousy inverted model for a while yet.

Damn right! Smart bulbs go in out-of-the-way lamps so I can turn them off when the kiddos leave them on. Smart switches for the porch lights. The rest of the house is “smart enough”.

my house was wired by drunken baboons, which means that the stairwell to my bedroom has three different lightswitches in it, and my bedroom itself has four different lightswitches.

What i want is a simple way to turn all the lights on and off, and by far the easiest way to accomplish that is smart bulbs. Especially since i'm renting, and landlords typically frown upon tenants rewiring their properties.

I agree, but you can't resell smart switch over and over again. ;)