It's nice that you mention because we inspired both our API and architecture to Philips Hue: the REST api is served by both our cloud servers and by the device locally.

The app connects to the unit via wi-fi when you are home, which means you can control the product even if the internet (or our service) is down.

Opensourcing a lot of our stack is part of the plan, we take a lot from OSS and we want to give back. As far as the hardware, we'll make sure it's a pleasure to hack on, remember that we have to do it every day :)