Smart bulb interaction with dumb light switches?

Devices & Integrations
21

These types of decisions definitely can originate from different roots:

  1. Sometimes even the most complex device has major features designed by just one or two individuals who overlook things or have a myopic perspective, such that they don’t consider the “real-world” use cases – they are engineers and/or product managers; not consumers. And, even in mega-corporations, these decisions are not peer-reviewed.

  2. Sometimes it’s the opposite of #1, and features are reduced to a lowest-common denominator due to too many cooks involved in the design and engineering; or, ahem, less than “astute” management overrides.

  3. and Sometimes it’s a very purposeful decision for good or evil. Hours or weeks of market research may have determined that the extra feature was confusing and would make the product seem defective. Or, bean-counters realized that they would sell more add-on remote switches (Tap, etc.) if they didn’t include a basic workaround.

If in doubt, I lean towards believing it is evil; but that’s just me being “anti-corporate”. All the above cases are equally likely, in my experience.

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22

That’s not always ‘evil’. Every feature you wish incurs a cost. Add enough features that you want, and eventually the bulb becomes priced higher than your wish to purchase it in the first place. I know that’s the case with me; if the Cree bulbs were $25 with that added feature, I would not buy them. Even at $15 I am still a bit reluctant.

You simply cannot divorce cost from the overall assessment. Heck, the very fact that you are on ST rather than a professionally installed and maintained system says you are quite aware of that fact :slight_smile:

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23

As an engineer, my general experience has been that, to quote an old saying, hardware is hard. If there’s a feature that would be useful, but there’s nothing in the marketplace that offers that feature at the desired price point, from what I’ve seen (and I’ve worked with some very large companies, Fortune 100 level) the reason is almost always that it would be unsafe to offer it, or it would be illegal to offer it, or it’s just not possible with current technology to offer it at that price point.

Eventually, new safety options are developed, or patents expire, Or new technology is invented.

But if there’s a market demand, companies want to meet that demand if they can do so profitably. :sunglasses:

I can’t tell you the number of times somebody has said “it would be so easy…” when there’s a hard engineering reason for why that isn’t true. I see this all the time in Kickstarter campaigns where people without an engineering background offer a product description without really having any idea of how they’re going to deliver it. And usually fail to deliver it.

If you live in a capitalist country and you’re just waiting to give your money to the first company that comes up with X, the odds are really high that there are a lot of companies trying to deliver X at that price. They just haven’t figured out a way to do it yet.

Hardware is hard. :wink:

Note, however, that that applies to the feature in general. If it can be done, some company will do it.

That doesn’t mean that every company will do it, because different companies have different philosophies and business models. A lot of companies are looking to make their money from investors, not customers, and their motivations are different.

If no one, not even Chinese knockoff companies, are making zigbee bulbs that work with ordinary light switches as toggles, there’s probably an engineering reason.

If some companies offer the feature but one in particular one doesn’t, there may be other factors at work.

In this case, it’s not that other companies do and Phillips doesn’t – – at present the feature is not available on zigbee bulbs. So my guess is there’s an engineering reason. We’ll see.

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24

I apologize… My answer was confusing…

Item #3 was in 2 parts… I consider this second motivation to be a little evil :smiling_imp:…

Or, bean-counters realized that they would sell more add-on remote switches (Tap, etc.) if they didn’t include a basic workaround.

25

You can make the dumb switch smart by installing a zwave relay in wall switch behind it. They make zwave relays very small these days. Only you must not connect the zwave relay to the bulb(s) wiring. And you must wire the bulbs to continously have power on. (Independent of the dumb switch position) So the zwave relay will basically act as a sensor. Toggle the dumb switch and your hub will register the on off status. Once you have achieved this you can simply tell your hub to switch the lights on/off depending on the on/off status of the zwave relay. Would work great with hue lights and would solve the problem of them returning to default status instead of the last scene.

26

When the dumb switch cuts off power to the smart bulb, does it affect the mesh network? In other words, does the system keep on updating mesh network with every switch on/off?

27

If the smart bulb is a Zigbee repeater, then powering it off will screw up the Zigbee mesh network.

Sengled smart bulbs are designed as non-repeating Zigbee devices (known as endpoints). Thus, turning these off via a dumb switch will not hurt your Zigbee mesh network.

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