GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece of modern techno-insanity
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
Anyway, about a month after the project got handed over, my brother gets a call: the computer had somehow worked itself into the state of "beyond fucked", the new computer brought by the vendor was refusing to talk to the controllers, parts were backordered, long story short, the house had been unlivable for a week with no end in sight, and could my brother come over and save it somehow. I think he was able to turn on a few of the most critical things on in manual mode, but obviously he couldn't wire up the hundreds of electrical devices in the house. Not sure what happened later.
Congratulations, somehow this house's lighting system is less ergonomic than my great-grandfather's house that was lit by kerosene lantern.
Yeah, the whole thing was pretty dumb.
Someone tried to sell me Lutron Homeworks. It’s a computer to control lights and such. Want to add a new light switch? You need to reprogram it, and end users don’t get copies of the programming tool. Want to control lights if the computer dies? Nope.
- My first thought is that many light bulbs are not easily accessible. They could be high up, or in a casing that requires a tool to open. So being able to reset them remotely is a practical benefit.
- If you google "accidents whilst changing light bulb" it seems that it's not impossible to injure or even kill yourself whilst changing a light bulb. So minimising the amount of times you need to physically access a light bulb has safety benefits.
- It is possible that the bulb is turned off but the power to it is still on. In that scenario getting a consumer to reach into a powered on light socket to press a button on the bulb, near the electrical connections, is not considered safe.
That's my 5 minutes worth of reasons. Any more?
But our world is becoming more and more like a Doglas Adams novel - I seem to remember in one of the H2G2 books that they considered their civilisation so advanced that they did away with TV remotes, and the TV could detect that you wanted to change channel when you make a gesture. The upshot being that if you didn't want the channel to change or the volume to suddenly shoot up, you had to sit completely rigidly still for the duration of your programme.
PS: That being said, I would still listen to stuff I don't like to discover something, but that's beyond the point - wasn't automation supposed to make our lives better in some way? :)
We used to have a great solution for this: disk jockeys. Some stations still do employ them as actual curators of music, not just a pleasing voice over the Clear Channel Top 40 feed.
The problems of today are strange.
These folks are pros, with vast experience, and they can put together a show by theme, or to tell a story, or to set a mood, or to challenge you with some new things. Most of them now press the button on whatever they're told and read the title out.
But, every once in a while they sneak in a late night show now, maybe when mgmt isn't looking.
I wonder if this would be a good format for streaming, like the old days but global, with a live DJ and fans interacting live.
I have a great site for you: check out https://wfmu.org
Utopia Skye Discord: https://discord.gg/hScth5T
This is exactly why I've been working on a live streaming site for DJs and music lovers [1] where DJs can play whatever we like LIVE while also interacting with our listeners via a well-working chat (not those pesky shoutboxes most of radio stations seem to use). This differs from Twitch and other platforms being only focused on music and having lots of features for the DJs to engage and grow their fanbase.
I'm obviously biased but live streaming DJ sets and radio shows to a live international audience is very exciting and getting to listen proper oldskool DJs play awesome sets live feels always special. Internet FTW! :)
[1]: Slipmat.io - https://slipmat.io/
I like Spotify and there's a place for it. But I wouldn't call it fun. Listening to a good DJ was fun and sometimes informative.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329
>A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
The obvious placement for a reset button is somewhere that it cannot be accessed while the bulb is powered, such as near the screw-in Edison base, accessible only from the direction of the base. If the bulb is still screwed-in, you just can't align your paper clip with the pinhole, because the socket hardware is in the way. So the user has to remove the bulb, maybe also letting it cool off, before performing a pinhole reset.
And adding a reset button does not preclude a switch-controlled reset procedure, either. Press the reset button OR switch off for at least 15 seconds, on for two beats, off for one beat, on for three beats, off for one beat, on for five beats, off for one beat, then on again to receive the reset feedback flashes. Allow some percentage variance in the timing, so the slower the tempo, the easier it is to trigger the reset. "Off-one-two-off-one-two-three-off-one-two-three-four-five-off-reset." No one is going to do a sequence of primes by accident. And if you adjust timing on the fly, a machine-controlled bulb-resetter could reset a bulb in less than a second using a clock pulse generator, while a human could still do it in less than ten seconds by switching to a steady musical beat or by watching a timepiece.
Really, the only reason we want a button is because their timed power-cycle reset process is so ridiculous. Your reasons for not putting one in are valid, mainly under the assumption that a reset button would be mutually exclusive with a reset process. There's no reason why a bulb can't have both.
Light bulbs that get installed ARE accessible -- accessible enough to be installed and changed, at the very least, and that's all that's needed.
Remove the bulb, put it in a lamp, turn the lamp on, and push the button that should have been installed for a firmware update.
The "power on, wait, power off, wait," repeated 12 times or whatever should be a LAST RESORT only, imo.
Hmmm... Nope, I can't see a problem with getting people to stick a paperclip into holes around mains electricity! Sounds perfectly safe.
Seriously though, this is bonkers. Power cycling patterns are by far the best method for initiating a reset - and no, sending a reset command via apps is not feasible (what if you've lost the account password and you've accidentally paired it to your neighbours wifi?)
But all bulbs have a "first-use" setup procedure. So a simple power cycling routine (e.g. on-off 5 times with no more than 5 seconds in either state) - indicate with a flashing light when it's in the first-use state. Save the previous settings so that if the kids have done it (because they like the flashing lights) a simple power cycle will restore the previous settings.
Assuming you would have to unscrew the bulb to get to the reset, which seems likely, yes it would be perfectly safe.
Until you get a small kid that has just learned how light switches work, probably around 2 or 3 years.
Unfortunately, ours made the mistake of just forgetting everything when placed in reset mode, not being recoverable. Still, thankfully the phase was short-lived.
I have a lot of different brands of smart bulb, and I appreciate the GE procedure. The people complaining about it dont see why its the less bad alternative that 3-5 constantly timed power cycles.
Hubs save all the pain with smart lighting system. No need for an account, system works locally. If you wanna control them remotely, you can (but you don't have to). Connected to the wrong wifi? Reset a hub instead of individual bulbs. You pair bulbs with hubs and have just one device spamming traffic to your router.
Ikea and Philips Hue seem to be the only systems that got this solution down properly.
So I'm left thinking: I already have a wireless signal hitting most of the house, why complicate things? I'm not sure ability to reset is worth it...
The hub only speaks WiFi to the app.
All the smart units (hub included) use Zigbee mesh-networking for cross device-communication, which is self-extending and only gets more reliable the more units you add.
At no point in time does IKEA or Hue bulbs depend on WiFi to function.
Instead of a simple 8/2 second cycle they should tell the user "play the song 'Tubthumping' and turn the light off when you get knocked down, and turn the light on when you get up again!"
What say it needs to be in the socket? A battery or a capacitor is all you need to make sure it can still a bit outside its sockets (you don't need much to clear the memory either).
It could be a physical button too, no need for a pin.
I would still use a capacitor personally, but I said batteries because they could certainly work and Ikea does have a battery-powered light bulb with a button on it [1].
I have much less faith in any lightbulbs ;).
Apparently doing simple mundane tasks gracefully and carefully without feeling irritated is quickly becoming a way to signal to other rich people. Self regulation, education and taste has always been part of the upper class lifestyle. It's something that money can't buy. Tastefully understated lifestyle and restricting gadget usage is how the rich signal to their peers.
Nonsense. X10 devices cost a bit more than regular outlets/switches/fixtures, but not much more. I know many people that added dimmers/timers/remote-control to their lights for a few hundred dollars in the late-80s/90s.
Home automation has been a solved problem with cheap and easy solutions for decades.
> 50 NT-servers
That was mostly Gates "eating his own dog food"[1]. Using anything other than NT could have been bad optics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_%28Bill_Gates_b...
Even if this was technically within financial reach, my personal experience was that the knowledge of how to do it was intentionally obfuscated because installers wanted to make money.
The point is that lighting automation (and similar home automation features) is not a difficult problem, that doesn't need anything as powerful as a microcontroller or a dependency on the internet. A simple local-only control protocol is much more appropriate.
It did make me realize that class is everywhere, and I'm constantly signaling it despite thinking I'm above caring about it.
Cut it to 15, move to cheaper residence and cut out gadgets, buying useless shit and owning lots of things. This frees up huge chunks of time and creativity and freedom. The freedom you thought you were working towards toiling 40 hours of your life per week.
Note: the world started producing a surplus of food a while ago, and still we let many starve, and even today many people live with shortages and food insecurity.
Honestly, if you take a step back and look, a large portion of our economy are just bullshit jobs, or outright cronyism.
I mean, I worked in private sector fin tech (nothing fancy, more-pedestrian stuff) and I'm extremely confident we contributed close to nothing to society, while making good money. Some other work experience was with consulting government and that was just complete bullshit. Then there's books written on the "Rise of the Healthcare Administrator," which correctly point out their numbers have grown by 1-2 orders of magnitude while healthcare costs are up, quality is questionable and by the way, shouldn't technology have the opposite result? And finally, I'm not surprised to see GE as the culprit here. I know they have some brilliant groups, but that company is also infected with crazy politics and insanity from within.
You work in technology. You are, in all likelihood, capable of moving to the country, cooking at home, and telecommuting for 15 hours a week. Have you? Why not?
I don't think GE consumer products are related to GE, the American company, for several years now. They sold the appliance business to Haier, I believe. Not sure if that would include things like smart bulbs.
Alan Watts predicted our overabundance of goods in the sixties and the problems we will face (and are facing).
https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/alan-watts-basic-...
The bottom line is:
who should pay for the basic income?
machines. they do it already.
You can't tax a machine, you can only tax people, because people operate machines, they can't generate fungible resources (money) themselves. There will always be a market between resources and individuals.
You're implying that costs are mostly physical effort and automation is a "tiny effort". That's a really weird thing to say on a forum called Hacker News, and why on earth do you think food production isn't "almost entirely automated"? Any prediction of a sudden change in the rate of a trend needs to explain why the change didn't happen more gradually and sooner, as soon as it was possible.
You can arrange your life around riding the bike and taking public transport, get a roommate, cook your own meals, etc. etc. and live on $20k/yr or less. Not in an expensive metropolis (easily), but there are plenty of other places where you can live.
Look at how big houses were in the early 1900s. And how often people ate meat.
Having a procedure allows you to reset bulbs in hard-to-reach places or a whole set of lights in one room can be reset using the one lightswitch.
I can't think of any user friendliness benefit for this. Are you thinking about component cost?
A simpler solution is to have ordinary plain light bulbs. Probably friendlier to the environment due to less electronics. It’s hard to hack ordinary light bulbs so they are secure.
Reset button makes sense though. Reset button are costlier for bill of materials so manufacturers save on that.
The big failure arguably is not testing the firmware sufficiently (or building in recovery algorithms) to necessitate a reset procedure in the first place.
As to firmware, cosmic rays for example randomly flip bits. Which means for any large scale deployments you want a reset option.
Edit: a source https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4082030_Flash_memor...
any solution has to cost less than a penny ...
A capacitor that is kept charged during normal operation, and that powers the reset circuit which you close with your metal pin once you unscrew the bulb. The circuit flips some bits in persistent memory of the bulb.
It’s a heat sink that gets hot to to the touch, though not that quickly as your talking ~10w of waste heat. Sill several ways to do a reset switch just after power is off.
These are "smart" light bulbs, so I am guessing you are not supposed to control them by cutting of their power with a physical switch.
Or, you could play that video and follow along and flip a switch a few times.
Which one sounds like a better UX?
It’s infuriating!
Also this reminds me I need to put all my lights on a DMZ.
Some features I love; # When I come to my home during the evening, lights are automatically turned on. # When I leave my place, they automatically turn off. # You can set up alarms, like 30 minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning, lights are starting turn on slowly. By the time the alarm goes off, the room is completely lit.
The problem is badly designed interfaces, not the underlying technology itself.
No one is forced to buy this type of smart bulb.
Well, maybe I have done that somewhere in the past ten years. If that's the case then I probably got out of bed, turned it off and went back to bed again. And immediately forgot that it happened, because it is only a very minor inconvenience. Really a lot less hassle than dealing with this IoT tech.
Well for the rest of us its very huge inconvenience :)
I want the LEAST amount of complexity possible to control all my critical living functions, from fridges to windows to lights to cars.
That is indeed the default behavior, but they can recall the previous state or another setting altogether after losing power. See “Power-on behavior” under Settings in the app.
The two choices are:
• Philips Hue default – Warm white, full brightness
• Power loss recovery – Last used color and brightness
Which smart door lock doesn't allow a key to unlock? Even if it malfunctions horribly, it's not as if the lock is powerful enough to prevent someone from twisting using the key. Most use AA batteries.
The same would apply to other appliances and HVAC, just simple data to know everything is working correctly.
If your power goes out you'll need aux power for whatever is reading the signal, otherwise it also won't work. You are making a huge project with all kinds of failure modes when this problem has been solved for ages. Kind of like the house with no mechanical light switches that you are responding to!
If the thermometer had more thermal mass attached to it (or simply had a low pass filter on the readout), it would have worked great.
I also had an analog thermometer at one point, but obviously the problem here is if the power goes out, then comes back on and returns to the proper temperature.
It should be a simple thing I agree!
Put it in some water?
It's on packaged meat in Norway I believe.
If you went the full on $50 route and bought a pre-integrated board with wifi and a full linux stack, you could even have a push notification to twitter or email or whatever when the temperature goes out of spec.
Maybe not exactly this one, but something like that:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61jmAUQ70pL...
It would have been more handy if the thermometer's min and max responded more slowly to reject these short fluctuations.
Luckily the power is reliable here, but as they say, winter is coming!
[1] https://www.lascarelectronics.com/data-loggers/all?type=usb
edit: no commercial connection, just a happy customer
Physical reset switch would be great, unless you've got 20 lights all installed in a chandelier 30 feet up.
Tangential useful information: Which smart bulbs should you buy (from a security perspective) https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/51910.html
The bulbs have a serial number on them, you just input that serial into the app synced with a new bridge.
I find waking up with the light slowly brightening so much better than an alarm, but just as effective.
1. If possible, put your bulb in white (hot or cold no matter ...). The reset procedure works better when the bulb is white rather than color.
2. In the steps below, the power is turned off. It is not ON / OFF done using the remote control or the application, but electrical ON / OFF.
3. Your light bulb is off. This is the beginning of the procedure.
4. Turn it on briefly (one second) and turn it off
5. Allow 6 seconds
6. Turn it on a second time briefly (one second) and turn off
7. Allow 6 seconds
8. Turn it on a third time briefly (one second) and turn off
9. Allow 6 seconds
10. Turn it on for a fourth time (12 seconds) and turn off
11. Allow 6 seconds
12. Turn on the fifth time (12 seconds) and turn off
13. Allow 6 seconds
14. Turn it on. The bulb will then reset and flash green. Then it will return to its initial red state.
I never managed to get the bulb to flash green, however somehow I managed to reset the bulb anyway.
So it doesn't just work or not, it works better.
The use-case is not clear to me either. Is it to create atmosphere with the various colors? Have them turn on automatically to give the impression the home isn't empty when I'm on vacation (à-la "Home Alone")?
Most wall timers can only turn lamps on and off on schedule, but they make a mess of the light's functionality if the light is not in the state you want it outside of that schedule, and they can't control ceiling fixtures. Smart lights make both tasks easy.
Old apartments don't have dimmer switches, so if you want less light you're out of luck. Smart lights are dimmable on any circuit (though less effective if dimmers already exist on said circuit).
They're worth less if your home already has custom lighting options installed, uses bulbs that don't have a smart option available, or are badly designed like this GE product (though others aren't that much better). Otherwise, the cost per light upgraded with a good smart light bulb beats the cost of that same light + a timer + bulbs that emit other colors and the non-financial costs of how inconvenient those things are.
I'm not saying it isn't a luxury product, because it very much is, but if you have any of those goals/constraints there's nothing else on the market that can do that.
* Wake timers. I can wake up with light shining in my face even with the curtains drawn, which makes it easier for my body to sense that it's time to wake up and harder for it to fall back to sleep. Bonus points if it's green or blue on a grey day, which the more expensive bulbs allow you to choose.
* Security and timing. Lights can be programmed to turn on and off at semi-random times to simulate the appearance of someone being home, and normal wall timers only control lamps, not ceiling fixtures. Those timers are also a terrible programming experience compared to a good smartphone app, and they flat out disable the light when off (smart lights on a timer can be overridden by cycling the fixture's power, which cheap wall timers don't detect).
* On-the-fly color shifting. Certain colors of light help me focus when I'm up late at night wrangling code; others help sleep. A dim red light at night means you can easily find your way to the bathroom around possible obstacles without fully waking yourself up.
* Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness.
The only thing that smart lights don't do is come in 100W-equivalent models- at least, not Hue bulbs, which make the colors and maximum light output dimmer than might be desired.
That said, the GE thing is clearly a "feature" that some engineer was either forced to implement (or worse, thought it was a good idea) because they didn't want to shell out the 5 cents per unit for the reset button. Which is a valid point, but the fact you have to do that in the first place betrays larger and more fundamental problems with their product.
My father and I implemented all of those features trivially and cheaply in the late 1980s with X10 switches/outlets/fixture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_%28industry_standard%29
X10 devices also featured:
* No internet (or other network) access. It worked as long as the mains power was on.
* Putting the control in the outlet or fixture allowed any type of light or device to be controlled. (My father used this to remotely control a CCTV camera)
* Plugging a X10-enabled dimmer lamp into a standard outlet (like any other lamp) allowed remote dimming without the need for any modifications to the existing electric outlets/etc.
(full-range color LED lights didn't exist yet, but controlling color could have easily used a similar protocol).
This type of feature doesn't need and shouldn't be implemented with a "smart" controller. If the design includes a "reset" procedure, it's overengineered and overcomplicated for basic automation of simple devices like lights. If the design requires internet access, it's a broken design that unnecessarily introduces an external dependency and risk of remote attack.
For me that's the only "smart" feature I wanted and I discovered that there are some light bulbs with an integrated dimmer like Philips SceneSwitch or Osram Duo Click Dim.
Ikea smart outlets have a pin hole reset though, and absolutely no buttons other than that, which I've found makes them pretty toddler proof (the fish tank lighting kept getting set to random by our toddler when using a traditional timer outlet...)
Just do this:
On-off a bunch of times puts the bulb into a receptive state for 30 seconds, where it will stop everything else (other than the light being on) and listen for admin commands from a controller, one of which is "reset".
Kids messing with the lights? If no admin command gets sent, it returns to normal operation after 30 seconds.
Problem solved.
This thread is full of dumb ideas that don't hold up to two seconds of scrutiny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo
It reminds me of the 'cinco' product line:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSwqnR327fk
I was happy to do it since nothing annoys me more than that beep!
I read that typically pressing the button several times or holding it down should shut the engine off. Which I'm sure seems to an engineer like a clever solution because isn't that what a person who's panicking would naturally do?
Except that people don't necessarily do that; they hit the button once or twice and then decide it isn't working. Or they don't think of it at all because they're more focused on their car being on fire. As documented on a video I saw.
In purely mechanical ignitions systems in cars prior to the 90s, the ignition switch is just a momentary switch that requires the key to actuate it. Once on, the key however can't be removed without triggering the momentary switch again that tells the car to shut off. That why when you see someone hot wiring a car in a movie they aren't tying wires together, they just touch them momentarily.
Since the 90s, most cars rely on transponder systems embedded in the keys. There are various systems from microprocessors with exposed contacts to NFC wireless chips but they work mostly the same. There's still a momentary switch whether it be key based or not but the car won't start unless the transponder successfully authenticates.
Since the transponder system is required to start the car, having the key on the ignition switch became redundant and was replaced with just a push button.
1) You want this to be easy to reset.
2) You don't want this to be so easy to reset that children playing with it will do it by accident.
I feel that a good compromise between the two would be a rule of "flick the switch on and off three times in two minutes, with the on state being longer than 3 sec".
This makes it easy to reset, just flick it on and off three times slowly, but hard to reset accidentally, since children don't tend to flick light bulbs on and off that slowly. For added safety, you can make the "on" time 5 seconds instead of 3.
I don't think "flick it on and off slowly three times, with each flick lasting at least five seconds" is hard to follow.
Long story short, 7W UV LED advertised blacklight bulb. Only one LED is UV and the other four are white LEDs, behind a fake woods glass filter. Yanked out the UV LED, dropped it into my Fermata light (pad/form factor compatible) and turned it into the mineral specimen lamp I was hoping to get from the original bulb.
It might be possible to install return springs in the switches I’m not sure?
They do turn on and off automatically though.
On/off 5 (or 6?) times: 1 second off, ½ second on, repeat.
or even simpler: just unscrew and rescrew the lightbulb to reset!
No, because you might be resetting because you can't connect with the bluetooth device.
> or even simpler: just unscrew and rescrew the lightbulb to reset!
How does the light bulb know it's unscrewed? How is that different from turning the switch off?
it could easily measure this by either:
- a limit switch, or
- a split center electrode: if there is a conducting path between left and right halves between center electrode, then the bulb is screwed in, or
- measuring the capacitance between outer and center electrode: in open air there is the known capacitance, when screwed in both the electrodes of the housing, and the long parallel conductors going to the switches will alter the capacitance
- myriad other ways: electrically there is a huge difference between an unscrewed bulb, and a screwd-in bulb in an open circuit
actually, if the goal is to detect a reset operation by unscrewing: while unscrewing and shortly after the circuit is open, the previously contacting electrodes are still close by, such that it can be powered capacitively while it realizes it is being reset... this is probably noticable by measuring the change in complex impedance
Afterwards, I rationalized that there are those who want the latest hi-tech gadgets and see these as being state-of-the-art without really understanding their impacts.
Finally, after reading the inane steps needed to reset your light bulb, I could only think that I would hope that purchasers keep the owner's manual (for a light bulb?) is a well-known place because after a couple of months, nobody is going to remember the steps.
If Facebook had made the light bulb, you’d have to unfriend the lightbulb for it to reset.
If Google had made the lightbulb, well the reset function would be discontinued.
If Microsoft had made the lightbulb, you’d need to call your active directory admin to perform the reset.
The funny thing is, I can see IoT enabled devices using social media accounts as an interface. You would be required to follow your appliances on Facebook or Twitter or whatever and your refrigerator would PM you when you were low on juice or something.
I remember a time when we were promised smart fridges that would be able to give the user a live inventory and even automatically reorder food when items were running low. Instead we got "smart" light bulbs that give you an epileptic fit when they inevitably stop working and need to be factory reset.
What a time to be alive!
The reason for needing to reset are likely to be the first and second requirement, so that wouldn't work. The third requirement just means you need to buy a new light bulb (at least that is the way the market seems to work for this gear).