Hi, i have been using smart lamps from aliexpress for awhile now. But these lamps force me to connect to an android app that phones-home to Beijing. Without the chinese yeelight app, i cannot change the color of the lamps. I find that kind of creepy.
Is there a good smart lamp system that is privacy respecting and hopefully opensource?
One that is locked to my local lan instead of a chinese trojan horse that spy’s on me 24/7.
I’m an arch linux user and i know some basic python scripting.
Buy a zigbee stick and use zigbee lamps; they are widely available (Ali, Ikea, Philips etc) and this solution doesn’t cost a fortune. It also prevent you from needing to throw the lamps away whenever the app stops working or the manufacturing company goes bankrupt.
I second zigbee. Fast, local control, with the added benefit of not clogging up your WiFi network.
Isn’t ZigBee just a standard? What makes it more private?
ZigBee is low-power radio (think Bluetooth but simpler), so there’s no Internet involved at all unless you connect it to an Internet-based device, and there you have many choices including open source or home-grown solutions.
Most Wifi bulbs work locally with home assistant for example. And you can stop their communication with the internet with some basic network administration. Otherwise, Zigbee bulbs do not communicate over the internet, they can’t. You will need a zigbee router, but there are open source solutions for that.
zigbee and/or zwave with a self hosted router like HA is the way. It even works if your internet is out snd nobody can just shut down the servers if they dont feel like paying for them anymore
Anything that is flashed with tasmota is fine. You can also buy them preflashed. https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
That or ESPHome.
Shelly makes smart bulbs. They can be used only locally if you want or connect to homeassistant.
I have some Shelly plugs and they’re great. If I ever buy a house, I plan to populate it with Shelly devices. I do want to try out Zigbee, but I don’t have a need yet as I rent right now.
Anything Zigbee or Z-Wave.
If you don’t mind “dumbing down,” the bulbs with an infrared or RF remote don’t require any apps. I prefer those for that reason
definitely would agree. the less things connected to the internet the better. same goes with using a timer unit in a heater instead of an app
IME those can be unreliable though, and they’re barely cheaper than Zigbee bulbs
Eh you get what you pay for. I have a “kamija” branded one that I use on my nightstand daily for about 5 years now. Has an aluminum base and weighs a ton. Looks like they didn’t survive covid though, RIP
I won’t be adding anything to the conversation but I have to ask: why does a light bulb require internet/network access?
Right now I’m feeling very old. It feels a bit too much.
If you’re really old, odds are you have experienced physical pains that have made “forgetting to turn off the light/appliance/device” a difficult experience rather than just inconvenient. I never liked the idea of IoT devices until chronic pain fucked up the whole mobility thing for me, now I realise it’s a total necessity. Especially for societies with rapidly growing older demographics, increased rates of chronic illness, and inadequate social and medical systems.
I’m not that old but I grew surrounded by older people with several degrees of mobility and other painful conditions amd none ever required go to such points.
Issues with lights were solved by moving the height at which the switches were placed. Certain potentially dangerous appliances were placed with timed mechanical sockets or a special purpose circuit breaker was put in place. Low power night lights for safety during dark hours.
Simple, very cheap and as safe as possible solutions.
IoT is not a solution for me, unless you can make sure your entire network can live fully disconnected. Otherwise, no thank you.
I’m glad your relatives were able to make permanent modifications to their living spaces that sufficiently accommodated their accessibility needs! Many of us do not share those circumstances, and the number of people with a huge variety of different medical problems is steadily increasing. I, for one, am very happy to have some implementation options to choose from.
The notion of home automation is not something that aggravates me per se but solutions have been made for some problems that never existed before.
This is even worse when we factor that many accessibility issues are addressed through simple measures that many times must be accomplished when basic maintenance is done, like rewiring or fittings renewal.
The timed sockets I mentioned I got acquainted it when I first saw an electric water heater. At 3000W, it could be an expensive beast to maintain. A €15 mechanical socket watch made possible to have the equipment only run at preset intervals, thus saving power and avoid possible overheating. These very basic tools can be used to do the same work IoT does at a fraction of the work.
And the most extreme solution, to provide help to a nearly bedridden relative, which involved setting up a complete subsidiary jumper box inside a room did not involve destroying or permantly altering a house that wasn’t self owned; it wasn’t pretty to look at but 2 days of work could be done with in less than twenty minutes to return the house to the original condition.
I’m not getting younger but unless IoT gets to a point where it can be fully self contained, with no hidden call-back-home features, I’m going fully mechanical.
This is even worse when we factor that many accessibility issues are addressed through simple measures that many times must be accomplished when basic maintenance is done, like rewiring or fittings renewal.
I completely agree. I would love to have the option to use non-networked solutions. But for multiple reasons, tinkering with the electricity supply and residence is outside my control.
I can still control my networks and lightbulbs though. So here I am, somewhere I never anticipated, looking at networkable lightbulbs and foss repos. Like I said, I’m just happy to have an option.
May it work well and always accomplish your needs
How would you turn them on and off if they weren’t smart?
Nothing absolutely needed, it’s just a convenience factor. For example you can program them to turn on when your phone connects to the wifi, which will probably be a couple meters from your home. So the light is already on when you get home. Or you can program them to turn on and off at certain hours when you’re off vacationing to simulate a presence.
Controlling them remotely from a phone, scheduling on/off times, exact RGB controls
Automation. For example, The lights for my entire house are connected to Home Assistant. Essentially a smart home server that will let you manipulate virtually anything you can turn on and off. By using sensors (light levels, time of day, movement sensors) and you can have ‘smart’ lights… so, for an example using these sensors, in the middle of the night if you get up, it detects movement in a room and puts the light on, but because it’s night they are at 30% brightness…
Another thing you can do is turn the lights on and off rapidly in a room when you’re at work and know the missus is home but hasn’t seen your message. Failing that turn the TV off, turn the fans on, close the curtains and boil the kettle
It’s a fun having automatic smart lights right up until people use the actual light switch to turn it off and then you have to get up… or the fact that it takes time to get your phone, unlock it. Open the app and change the lights,rather than getting up of your fat arse and doing it yourself
The night light thing sounds useful, I’ve walked into a half open door on several occasions while proudly thinking that I know my way around the house
Other than that though, idk. As long as you can manually override it, that’s fine I guess.
I’m like the person you replied to: many of the lights in my house are automated. I also have motion sensors in most of the ground floor rooms, and have hooked the had fireplace up to the system.
We don’t touch light switches anymore. You walk into a room, the lights come on - but only if it’s near or after dusk, and before sunrise. If there is noone in the room, the lights go off after a few minutes. All of the lights go off after 9pm, because we’re in bed by then. When we come home after dark, the lights in the entryways come on, so we don’t come home to a dark house.
This also serves as part of the security system: after 9, or when we’re out, if the motion sensors detect motion, all of the lights come on in the house (in addition to sirens, etc.)
I think every smart bulb is dimmable, and many change color - either warm/cool or full spectrum. We use this on the holidays, with some of the lights changing to green during halloween, and a combination of red, green, and gold during christmas. The dimming is also intentionally used: the lights are brighter during crepuscular times, and dim as it gets darker.
Finally: I have a little novelty desk lamp my wife bought me: a sisal moon wound through with fairy lights, with a dangling globe filled with more fairy lights. It’s cheap, mostly plastic, and I love it. What i don’t love is that it’s battery powered, and the switch is located on the bottom of the base, so to turn it on I had to pick it up. I put in a wired AA replacement pack that plugs into the wall, and put that outlet on a smart switch; now my fairy lamp turns on a bit before I start getting ready to go to bed, and turns off automatically when I usually put my book down. I don’t have to get out of bed to turn it off, but can have it on while I’m reading.
There are other ways we use these smart lights, but those are the main ones. Yes, it’s all just convenience and ambience, but so are light bulbs… why not just use candles or oil lamps instead?
But are the light bulbs and blinds smart enough to detect when I’m overstimulated and want darkness, no matter the time of day?
“Smart” is like “AI” - all marketing, no real smarts.
In a well-set up automated house, you could tell it with a couple of words that you’re overstimulated, and it would shut everything down for you. No walking around closing everything up. So, yeah, that might be a pretty good use case.
Check out the IKEA ones, ZigBee - meaning there’s absolutely zero internet connectivity required.
A simple network sniffer is enough to figure out what sites the app is connecting to, then you can just block them on the router.
If you are using Android, you can do that easily right on your phone with PCAPdroid, it’s on the play store. No root required.
Why not just stick with dumb light bulbs? Why does everything need to be smart?
