Smart home options

Sandtree

BUFF said:

ashe said:

I've no experience with LifX bulbs but I've had a lot of experience with their LifX Beam's and they were incredibly frustrating. I eventually returned them and got the Govee versions and they were half the price and far more stable.

I have no experience of Lifx Beams but the bulbs that I have have been fine over several years

I like the Lifx bulbs most the time but they go through periods of losing connection, particularly with HomeKit (they sometimes stop with HomeKit but work ok with their own app). The bad one is the Z led strip that frequently has problems but is also more difficult to reset when it has a problem as there is no switch.

Have tried their light switch too and like it but makes reseting smart bulbs more difficult and doesn't come in UK dimensions (they say they've no plans for a UK launch

BUFF

Sandtree said:

BUFF said:

ashe said:

I've no experience with LifX bulbs but I've had a lot of experience with their LifX Beam's and they were incredibly frustrating. I eventually returned them and got the Govee versions and they were half the price and far more stable.

I have no experience of Lifx Beams but the bulbs that I have have been fine over several years

I like the Lifx bulbs most the time but they go through periods of losing connection, particularly with HomeKit (they sometimes stop with HomeKit but work ok with their own app). The bad one is the Z led strip that frequently has problems but is also more difficult to reset when it has a problem as there is no switch.

Have tried their light switch too and like it but makes reseting smart bulbs more difficult and doesn't come in UK dimensions (they say they've no plans for a UK launch

I don't use Homekit nor the Z led strip so can't comment on those but the basic E27/B22 bulbs have been fine for me. I note that they are clearing out the previous generation of Mini bulbs at what I consider fair  prices https://lifxshop.co.uk/collections/clearance-products

Cash-Cows

Network cable your house. Best time is when your carpets are not down and decorating still to do. 

Ibrahim5

Cash-Cows said:

Network cable your house. Best time is when your carpets are not down and decorating still to do. 

Not a bad idea but I don't think there is a single item discussed here that would work on ethernet except a Hive hub.

ashe

Ibrahim5 said:

ashe said:

Ibrahim5 said:

When we leave the house we always turn off the heating and put the alarm on so a geofence would waste energy as it would leave the heating on for longer when we weren't in. We would then keep checking that the geofence had worked. When you are on the way home where do you set the geofence? If you are driving and it's freezing say 3 miles the house would still be freezing when you arrived home. Best just to manually turn it on when you think it's necessary.

But if you've turned it off, you've already turned it off. If you didn't manually turn it off, its there as a backup. if you're going to manually distrust it every time then yes there is no point to it. If we are driving home we will often put the heating on if we are mindful to do so, otherwise having it come on as we get near home saves us the job and the house will be warmer faster than it would if we werent 3 miles away from home, or whatever distance it checks at. 

collinsca said:

ashe said:

I've had Nest and Hive and of the two I would take Nest. The smoke alarms are good peace of mind for when you arent home as well, but not cheap. We dont use the smart stuff in nest in terms of the learning thermostat - we are better placed to decide if we want to be warmer or not, especially with current bills! we mostly just use it to pop the heating on remotely when we are about to head home, or to make sure its not on while we are away. 

We do use geofencing to turn the heating off if we have left the house

things like doorbells, house alarms, locks etc imo the tech is too early to be reliable so I keep an eye on it but don't use it yet. 

For home automation I have found alexa far more customisable than google home. Alexa is frustrating for some things but just so much more you can do with it. 

We have the nest video cameras as well. not perfect, but in the same app as smoke alarms and thermostat. they have facial recognition so we know if its the postman or one of our parents at the door etc. 

we have hue lights in every fitting, and have a harmony remote although we dont use the physical remote, just use it's hub to control everything. e.g if we want to watch the TV it will turn on the receiver, set it to the right input, turn on the TV, set to default channel and set the standard volume setting we use. If its after sunset it will turn on the living room lights and set them to our preferred settings.

We don't use light switches although they are there for decoration/emergency use. everything controlled by routine, motion sensor or voice assistant. 

Do you have any experience of Tado?
I like the simplistic design of Tado and im keen to get the Tado thermostats - which i do appreciate i wont necessarily need the Tado thermostat for.

re Nest - the self learning feature looks to me to be the biggest difference... as you dont use that feature, what is it you prefer Nest over Hive for?

Hue really interests me - how complex is it to install? 


thanks

Hue is incredibly simple you just get a starter pack and away you go, it links in to loads of smart home systems. they're not the cheapest but they a have a huge range of bulbs and fittings, indoor and out, and it is very stable. I wouldn't trust smart lighting to cheap wifi bulbs etc

I was reading an article recently about the similarities between the Hue fanboy and the Apple fanboy. Both very expensive systems that can be bought for much less elsewhere. WiFi is perfectly capable of transmitting the signal needed for a lightbulb. Nothing wrong with the Hue but nothing wrong with WiFi lightbulbs either.

Nothing fanboy about it. Wifi lightbulbs are just that - lightbulbs. Hue is an interoperable system which covers bulbs, light fixtures for indoor and outdoor, media syncing products and a hub system, as well as accessories like motion sensors and light switches - tied together by software, both first party and using API's. The size of the userbase means that not only is the first party software excellent, but there is a lot of third party apps created to add advanced functionality.  The key part for me is if I buy a bulb today, and need a new one in 5 years time, it will still be available and still work the same way. it will pick up the same settings, same scenes, same colours and can be included in the same automations and behave exactly as expected. 

Yes you can buy systems for less, even just a couple of pounds, but having been down that road you run into issues with colour consistency, timings on bulbs being off, differences in brightness etc, as well as no guarantee that an unestablished product is going to be around later. I started off with wifi bulbs and when my living room lights had one fail, I went to order another one and they were no longer sold. I bought one that looked similar and the functionality was different and it was obvious, so I had to buy a second one for the other fitting. 

In my house we have lights by Innr, Hue, LifX, Govee, Onkis, Hue, Twinkly, Elgato and a few things which are only "Smart" because they've had a smart WiFi USB connection or a wifi plug enabled, so I am pretty far from a Hue fanboy, however I would for all main lights that you rely on day-to-day use absolutely advocate for Hue. I've tried many cheaper products and always found them inferior, but there are many things where cheaper products do make sense. Lidl smart home products are compatible with Hue so all our bathroom GU10's are from there and cost us £3 per bulb - the colour range isn't as good as Hue, and you cant use some features, but for bathroom lights its a no brainer as all sits in the same infrastructure. Similarly for smart plugs we use Lidl's ones at a cost of £7 each instead of £30 odd. No difference in function. For LED light strips Hue lights are a bad choice for most use cases unless you want to use Hue Entertainment apps/Sync, in which case they are your only option. I would prefer Govee RGBIC Individually addressable light strips for those as they are cheaper and can be more than one colour at once. 

The big issue for me is if one of those bathroom lights stops working, I have to hope Lidl restock them again in future as we were only able to get enough to do the room as it was. You can get them on eBay but an inflated price of £14.99. Worth the risk though at £3 a bulb on clearance, but if you cant get a replacement, its back to the living room situation where if you change one, you will have to change them all - such is the issue with WiFi bulbs as generally unknown companies. You're also loading up your router traffic with many wifi devices - hue hubs use their own Zigbee network so the traffic goes via that instead and each hub does about 60 lights. We currently have 55 I think, and when we do the kitchen and main bedroom that will be well over the limit for one hub - but with the amount of devices we have on our router already, I don't want another 80 devices vying for traffic. 

For outdoor lights Innr do some products compatible with Hue, but it is quite a small product range. 

As mentioned by poster above, LifX are well known for having connection problems. I would say they were probably the most annoying lights I have used, although I liked the effect. Nanoleaf lighting is probably in second place in that regard. I only stick with recognised brands these days that have good support because the cheap wifi bulbs I have tried have been a worse experience even than nanoleaf and LifX. Govee have been quite refreshing in that respect, however I still wouldn't want to use it for my main lighting. The API to things like Alexa is quite limited in terms of turning on scenes, so I still have to load up their app to do some things that could otherwise be automated with Hue.

Hue support is also first rate. We've used hue for 6 years and only had a few minor issues in that time, all outside of warranty. Each time they have sent us a replacement anyway, so its good that they stand by their products. 

Haven't really seen any wifi bulb companies that do a full range of bulbs in various fitting types, on top of light fittings and indoor/outdoor lights?

I was curious about the article you mentioned however, so I googled Hue Apple Fanboys and can only see one article, written at the launch of Hue in 2012 which seems to find itself on the wrong side of history around if it would be a successful product or not. The size of the smarthome industry, and Hue's sales, suggests so anyway. Interestingly the article writer is an actual apple fan and puts it quite well " The truth is, Apple’s products are awesome, and I just don’t feel the need to switch brands just yet." When he was writing that article, hue had announced bulbs. He even seems to like the features of the product, but complains about the price at launch. I don't think I've ever paid anything like those prices, most bulbs bought through deals or sales or through marketplace. 

ashe

Sandtree said:

BUFF said:

ashe said:

I've no experience with LifX bulbs but I've had a lot of experience with their LifX Beam's and they were incredibly frustrating. I eventually returned them and got the Govee versions and they were half the price and far more stable.

I have no experience of Lifx Beams but the bulbs that I have have been fine over several years

I like the Lifx bulbs most the time but they go through periods of losing connection, particularly with HomeKit (they sometimes stop with HomeKit but work ok with their own app). The bad one is the Z led strip that frequently has problems but is also more difficult to reset when it has a problem as there is no switch.

Have tried their light switch too and like it but makes reseting smart bulbs more difficult and doesn't come in UK dimensions (they say they've no plans for a UK launch

Yeah that was largely my issue with it. I was having to reset my lights regularly and smart home things should make things easier, not frustrating!

ashe

Cash-Cows said:

Network cable your house. Best time is when your carpets are not down and decorating still to do. 

or failing that, just do an external run.