Lightbulbs of the future will come with wireless extenders and speakers There was a lot of clunky technology, standards fretting, evangelizing and platform promotion going on at the Internet of Things World 2015 conference in San Francisco this week, but a few bright ideas. Sengled is a Chinese lightbulb manufacturer based in Shanghai with offices in Europe and the US and it has traditionally sold …
I think it's an idea that could work for somebody. Especially in rooms with a couple of light fixtures. Put it several rooms, pair it with some detection system to pump music/radio in when you are in the room. Or just turn them all on at the same time.
If you have a six figure income, IoT World products sound great.
One thing they seem to overlook, people turn lights on and off as needed, and they do so via a light switch that cuts all power to the light concerned.
Does the device have a battery that allows the light's other functions to carry on for a limited (maybe a few days) period? Or do these have to be constantly left on to work?
Not that I'm rushing to buy one. I can't imagine the sound reproduction being great from such a small space, and the Wi-Fi connectivity in this house is just fine: I put an access point (not a router) up high on a shelf in my room upstairs, and it reaches pretty much the whole house. Worst signal is out at the road, even then it works.
A feature that might be useful, is if the internal battery could power the light for about 8 hours, and have the thing being able to be turned on wirelessly. Then in a black-out, you use the remote controls to turn the lights on/off and you still have lights.
That said, we don't have that many power cuts here in Brisbane, so I doubt it'd catch on.
Dimmer switches do not cut the power to the light bulb. It just lowers the power to a point that the light cannot shine. The light bulb is always 'on'. But having tinny tiny mono speakers in a bulb does not interest me at all. I've got two ears and quite like bass.
...we can see with this bulb is that you may not have a lightsocket pointing in the right direction for what you want to achieve.
This would seem to be a problem with all their products as light fixtures and lamps aren't currently designed with these features in mind. I would not imagine these will have much take-up in private homes, but there could be interest in the commercial sector as they could offer relatively low cost drop-in upgrades to amenities. Too, hotels and convention centers are not concerned with the security of their networks. I didn't see any mention as to any sort of built-in security these will support (the bit about the missing APIs, at least in part), which makes them on par with the rest of the IoT. Who knows? Perhaps Sengled will become an innovator in IoT security and capture a big share of the market by doing so, but judging from their solution in search of a problem approach, I suspect not.
"Had a look at the user manual on their website for the Bluetooth speaker as an example. No mention of being able to protect the device from other people pairing to it, no pairing pin at all in fact."
Usually, Bluetooth speakers have to be intentionally put into pairing mode by way of a push-button control (like how WPS PBC works). When you turn it on normally, it usually goes back through its pair list starting with the most recent pairing.
I'm curious as to what's the longevity of these bulbs? I've embraced the LED lights as soon as they appeared but it seems rather hit and miss even from the same maker. I've got some that are chugging right a long but I've also had failures. Would there be a warranty for any of the "features" failing before "x" time?
I do agree the other commenters, it would seem the features are better suited to the fixture than the to bulb.
BTW, so far what I've seen come out in media from this "meeting of the minds" has been fluff... Nothing that I would call a "must have" product.
"A smart thermostat knows when you are out". "Smartlocks mean you can let people into your house without having to physically open the door"
And they will also let n'er do wells know when you're out and mean that they can let themselves into your house without the keys...
Hey, IOT looks a good market.
Lightbulbs are everywhere and easy to fit. Go, product team!
There you go. Does exactly what you asked for. Lots of way cool technology!
They are a bit big.....can't you make them a little smaller?
Smaller??? Show me where it says that in the requirements!!!
Oh, shit, all that research and development and it's fugly. Nobody will buy this stuff. We can't afford to redo all the development, and think of the time it would take!
Hey, it just needs bigger light fittings.
They can't be that difficult to make.
Problem solved!
Which is how a wireless technology manufacturer suddenly finds itself in the business of manufacturing over size light fittings with no prior experience and no market research or business case.
"The big problems for IoT products are three-fold:
Firstly, the third item on that list is duplicated in the first as "easy to use".
Secondly, the list somehow misses some points that I would consider more important when it comes to iOUT* products:
* Internet of Unwanted / Unnecessary / Untrusted / Unsupported [delete as appropriate] Things.
It is all very well installing all these 'features' into the light bulbs but the BIG question is, when will they actually make a reasonably priced LED bulb that has the same spectral output and number of lumens as the old incandescent bulbs, and while they are at it the same all over coverage.
Until they have that cracked all these 'features' are just a coverup for poor light output.
LED is a narrow band emitter.
"White" LEDs use a Blue LED to pump a yellow phosphor.
Thus, no Red and very little Green - and so pigments look strange, especially ones involving red, like skin for example.
They are a couple of UV-pumped ones that are excellent, but £££££
There have been experimental RGB, RLB and RLW mixes, but I've not seen them on the market yet.
"Does the device have a battery that allows the light's other functions to carry on for a limited (maybe a few days) period? Or do these have to be constantly left on to work?"
Light light bulbs incorporating a battery has been available for years. Fully charged it lasts for about 5-8hrs. In a power cut or other emergency you can remove it from the fitting and use it as a torch (you can extend the screw thread part to use as a handle). Some models come with an IR remote control complete with dimming functions.
I'd have thought with the move towards 3D sound systems / atmos etc the idea of an easy to install central high speaker would be quite useful for home cinema. Sure it's not going to be bass heavy but it should be possible to make a reasonable mid-high range speaker in the space up there for those rain sounds? It's not like most of us have the space for an IMAX setup.
I'm reminded of a SciFi story where the 'poor' people were the ones who lived in huge mansions with loads of gadgets, and had to fill a regular usage quota before they were allotted a smaller house and fewer gadgets. This was because manufacture far exceeded demand and was automated to the point that it was impossible to reduce the output.
The hero of the story was a guy who's job was to design machines with as many parts as possible for the simplest operation. My only question is:
"Are we there yet?"
I think the network extender would be useful. Since the light is positioned to light the room, it should have a cleaner line of site to whatever it's repeating than having a repeater up on a shelf or whatever. I would, however, need some way to actually turn the light on and off without resorting to an app.
Great! Speakers at random locations on the ceiling. I know most of you don't have an acoustic background, but in most situations that is a terrible place for a speaker, especially a small poor quality speaker, unless it just used for alarms and announcements.
A lot of people have noted that this won't be of much help if the power is out.
I can think of uses for this kind of appliance if the light was controlled remotely, and the power was always on. I just don't think there will be much of a market, at least not until many houses have central control systems.
Camera in a lightbulb = end of privacy as we know it
Imagine....every hotel bedroom would have a camera-bulb for security
Every home would have a camera-bulb in the kids bedroom "for security". Bulbs in the visitors room, in the daughters bedroom, in the bathroom........
Businesses would put them in the offices, staffrooms, toilets... "for security"
Once the technology becomes available it will be used, misused and abused
I don't want smart bulbs.
I just want to buy ordinary 60W incandescent light bulbs that cost a few pence, last for years and are compatible with all my existing fittings.
But due to the upcoming power shortages (caused entirely by governments wasting public money on renewable energy schemes while failing to invest in updating our nuclear power stations), I can only get low-energy bulbs that cost 5 quid each, only last a few months, and don't work with my dimmer switches.
"The big problems for IoT products are three-fold:
They have to be easy to use and easy to install
They have to constantly communicate without using much power
You have to be able to control them simply and easily"
Erm, they're four-fold - it would seem that very few people, if any, actually want to use IoT products.
As for AC above, I'm surprised if you;re having that much problem with energy-saving light-bulbs, I've been using them for years, and all of them bar one has lasted for years - certainly way longer than old incandescent bulbs, and given the lowe ramount of electricity used, they've easily paid for themselves.
"But due to the upcoming power shortages (caused entirely by governments wasting public money on renewable energy schemes while failing to invest in updating our nuclear power stations), I can only get low-energy bulbs that cost 5 quid each, only last a few months, and don't work with my dimmer switches."
Perhaps you should find a new place to buy your bulbs if they're conking out that quickly. The ones I've had since I've gone CFL have lasted several years at least (compared to months with the old bulbs, enough to make it worth switching out from incandescents, especially in the stairwell where the only way to change it is with a scaffold), and they make dimmer-compatible bulbs now.
The wifi extender would be the most useful except for the fact that it needs power, and most people turn their lights off when they aren't in the room.
Of course you could also replace the power switch with one that communicates wirelessly with the device and doesn't really turn the power off... But now you can't safely change the bulb... So a replacement switch that does a 'soft' and a 'hard' off, just don't get them confused and touch the pins whilst replacing the £150 bulb when it's blown...
Bluetooth as an audio option is a terrible solution in a house IMO, not to mention the power problem again and the limited size that means quality will be poor.
What was the last one, IP camera, meh... Maybe, if that's on wifi and not bluetooth, although personally I like my cameras to point out of the house, not into it. Presumably this function will mostly be used by pervs to spy on guests in the spare room.
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