Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/08/phillips-wireless-dimmer-switc.html
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The prankster qualities of this gadget are endless.
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I love that you can assign multiple lighting profiles to it and cycle through them easily. I’ve got around 20 Hue lights in my place and they’re no end of fun. I do wish there were apps that allowed you to easily create your own dynamic profiles.
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Very interesting solution. I live in an '68 custom built home where everything is non standard and the wiring is atrocious or non-existent. It will be extremely expensive to wire conventionally in some places the way it should have been in the first place. This looks like something that just, just might solve allot of head aches.
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I have two of these in my house, one in the living room to control all of my lamps (the single overhead light suuucks), and one in my kitchen to control the lightstrips I put on top of my cabinets (I can’t speak highly enough of these. They’re pricey but really great). Then I also have a Tap switch next to my bed on the night stand, which controls another lightstrip I attached to the back of my headboard (bouncing light off the wall, it does a great job illuminating the room).
The color bulbs are expensive, but I’ve been really pleased with Hue so far.
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Four buttons to control what should be done with one dial or slider. when will people learn!
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dim sum who wouldn’t hack that
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Could you use it in conjunction with a wall switch to control an individual light? I have the same problem as Akimbo, where our older house has wacky custom wiring. I replaced my old dead ceiling light with a fan + light combo, and wanted to install a dimmer for the lights. I expected to replace some of the old wiring with new Romex to control the lights separately, but discovered I would have to pull all the way out to the house breaker box and loop back, practically creating a new circuit; ain’t gonna happen. If I can use the hardwired switch to turn the fan and lights on and off, then control the lights independently with this dimmer, that may solve my problem.
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It depends on what you mean by expensive. It would probably be cheaper to go wireless like this than to hire an electrician to run romex.
But I just keep running wires. Gives me a good workout, so I don’t need a gym membership or an expensive mountaineering bike to keep fit, Increases the value of the house when done well, cuts down on my carbon footprint and energy bills, leaves more wireless bandwidth for other purposes, gives me another set of fallback career skills, there are lots and lots of reasons not to count the hours I put in. And once you aren’t counting the hours, buying wiring turns out to be incredibly cheaper than buying batteries over the lifetime of the wire.
If you rent, none of the above applies - unless you can get the landlord to pay you for the work, which I used to do when I was a renter.
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Absolutely! One can buy a few hub and bulb kits for what it would cost for an electrician just to stop by. In my neck of the woods electricians are making bank. And rightly so, especially in old house retrofits and repairs. I’ll let them run 220v lines and do outside pole and line work. Wireless remote control for indoor lights I can handle!
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For bonus points, any time you open up a wall or fish though a wire, feed through a line of Cat 5e. 802.11n is great and all, but physical cable still can’t be beat for lack of interference and low latency.
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I’ve got 6 Hue White bulbs and 3 dimmer switches scattered around the house (bedroom, office and kitchen), having 3 in the kitchen area makes for some impressive lighting scenes by linking multiple bulbs to a single switch. The dimmer switch can be programmed to do different actions on multiple presses (e.g. 1 press turns it to the last state, 2 presses sets it to dimmed, 3 presses to night light, etc.), that comes in handy in evenings.
Adding the Hue Bridge really opens you up to home automation and from there a downward spiral to endless accessories.
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Yessir, I only use wireless for things I can carry around with me. Bandwidth is precious,!
I run cat6 these days, though. I used to drag a cat5, a cat3 and coax to every room, now I run multiple cat 6 instead.
The house was built without plumbing, heating, or electricity, so it really is a workout to put the stuff in without damaging the structure.
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More IoT DDoS-bots waiting to happen.
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The ‘On’ button is more of a ‘Lighting Profiles’ button. Right now mine cycles through different shades of white light (Really Tungsten, Bright Tungsten, Sunset, Daylight), but they could be just about anything. The dimmer then controls the brightness of those profiles.
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