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Have we overcomplicated everything?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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I've had my Phillips hue bulbs for over 10 years now. I own like 20 bulbs and have only had a single failure. Never had any issues with the bulbs. Google Assistant however has let itself go.
"it just works!"
I've had a similar setup, and bluntly, their not the brightest bulbs, and they're not the best bulbs, but they are one of the easiest to set up and get working. They mostly just fire and forget....
I hate the saying "it just works", but hue, despite all of its shortcomings, just works.
I've had at least one bulb fail outright, started illuminating "white" as an off purple color? It's hard to describe. I have no idea why, but that went into the bin. I also had one bulb that was in-between uses, fall and smash, I think it still works but it has sharp glass on it, so that's probably going to the bin. I have one other bulb that's failing right now... This one is... Different. It blinks. You'll have it at a steady, full brightness (or whatever) and the bulb will just shut off for 1/10th of a second every few seconds. No idea why. It's probably headed to the bin. Luckily it's in my hallway, so I don't see the problem most of the time.
They're expensive, and you don't get a lot of light per bulb considering what you pay for them, but they are easy. That, in and of itself, would be the main reason I would suggest to anyone who isn't a complete nerd, to get hue. Anyone with enough technical prowess and the willingness to set up home assistant, should probably go to different options. Anyone too busy to bother with their lights and just wants something that they can control with their Google home/Alexa/Siri.... Hue is a good option.
Not saying there aren't other good options, but hue is the one that I know and would suggest.
I had issues with it from the get go. It wouldn't accept my pairing, it was blinking on and off all the time, etc. I threw it out as soon as I didn't need it for a couple of hours. Why do they need so much info to run a bulb?
In my experience they don't. I didn't even have a hue account when I set mine up... Maybe that's changed, but I wouldn't know. I set up an account because I wanted to control the bulb from outside my house, in case I forget to turn off the lights when I head out.
There's also three generations and at least two different series of light bulbs with the "hue" brand. One series is entirely Bluetooth, which doesn't require the hue hub; I only have experience with the hub-required bulbs, and I'll say that they can be a bitch to get working if you need to associate the bulbs to the hub. I set up a table lamp next to my hue hub, and sat there, phone in hand, adding the bulbs by screwing them into the lamp and going through the process. If the bulbs were too far away, pairing would fail.
It was a pain, but once they were in the app, I never had to think about them again (besides the usual of turning them on/off/Green/Blue/purple/whatever...
Yeah, it's not all roses, but compared to dealing with home assistant and using a ZigBee or zwave dongle, and all of that stuff, it's downright a walk in the park by comparison. I would assume the average consumer could set up a hue system in an afternoon. It would cost them a grand or more to do a portion of their home, but it wouldn't take too long to do. Then they would work, problem free for 8-12 years or more, then whoops, the bulbs start dying and you have to fork out a hefty amount to replace them.
It's not cheap and it's not plug and play, but once you get it put together it "just works".
Navigating the array of what's available and trying to figure out which ones work with which system is probably the most painful part of the process IMO.