In the context of the numerous announcements this week, one little thing has unfortunately been somewhat overlooked. However, in case of an emergency, this little thing could be worth its weight in gold for all of us. From October, Philips Hue will finally offer spare parts for its products.
“Lose a power cable in a move? Need new mounts for your Play gradient lightstrip? ” writes Philips Hue on its website. “Find the replacement parts you need to extend the life of your Philips Hue products.”
I played around with a lot of smart bulbs when if first started making my house a little smarter. Almost every one was plagued with issues - too bright on 1%, weird color balancing, connectivity problems, no transition time, etc.
Hue bulbs just work and are now in most of my fixtures. The only time they don’t make the cut is when they don’t work aesthetically.
Yeah I had a house full of those Costco colored bulbs but Wi-Fi bulbs really fuck up your network and they don’t always respond well. Hue is fucking expensive but now I have something like 75 hue devices and I don’t have any issue. I did have one problem with one of my bulbs that wouldn’t connect no matter what I did, but not a bad failure rate overall.
Its the advantage that zigbee devices have. Although wireless protocols like wifi, bluetooth and zigbee use the same wireless band, their implementation works better in some usecases over others. Zigbee is designed well for coverage (as it can daisy chain between devices) and connecting a shit ton of devices to a single hub that requires low data input/output.
They do need to update the app so you can see all your bridges and devices at the same time. It’s annoying to have to switch bridges in the app. Voice command works well enough however but you can’t really switch between scenes unless you make a bunch of shortcuts