Extending Circuits

Same here, keep it simple.

Well, I know of that way too, but while I'll do the work the County has now requirement for inspection (just discovered that last week actually, it's pretty recent and I wasn't aware for anything except septic was need) so we did pull a permit so that's out...of course, one could always go back later... :)

To each his own....my phone couldn't run the app, even.

I tend to hate automated stuff that does its thing independent of me and cars that talk back, etc., etc., etc., ... :)

Much simpler not having to fart around with any wired switches at all.

No, just have to fart around w/ phone apps and firmware updates forever...and hope the manufacturer doesn't quit supporting it 20 year down the road. :)

Then you get to fart around wiring light switches.

More fool you with modern cars that require no work at all anymore.

Only once...

????

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Or simply when phone technology moves away from the current protocol as it has before and you need to keep an old obsolete phone around, just to turn on the lights.

Wrong again, you get to fart around with the damned things every time you switch a light.

They do their thing independent of you so you never have to fart around with the timing etc ever again. Are its much easier to replace a sensor that the engine maintenance system says has failed that to work out which has failed when that happens.

Don’t need any manufacture support if it breaks, just replace the bulb or sensor. Those are standard zigbee so will always be replaceable just like conventional bulbs and switches are.

You don’t need the phone at all, the system is independent of phones and any of the echo and home devices will still control the lights etc fine.

In fact you get the opposite effect. The house we rent out has two bathrooms each with its own combined light, fan and heater which has no physical switches at all, just a remote for each. You can no longer get a replacement remote. If they had done it using blue tooth or wifi, you could use any cheap phone you like as a replacement remote. Those protocols wont be going away.

Also, much of this IoT stuff requires communications to go through the company's servers. That is NOT right. Having to go through some server you don't control hundreds of miles away to turn on the lights five feet away in your own house.

Especially so completely automated you have no idea what's going on when it fails.

Much better than having your lights controlled through some company website in another city, that's probably stealing your personal info too.

Are you sure? How do you turn these lights on and off? If it's smartphone, it's likely that the phone has no direct contact with the lights themselves. It works through the company's server (necessary, since you're not allowed to know the secret protocol of the lights themselves).

Sit in the dark wishing you had real switches, that aren't part of such a fragile system. A 33*-step process:

• - for example

Yep.

Various ways. The kinetic switches tell the light to turn on and off. The movement sensors do too. You can use any of the phone, tablet, echo google home devices to do that by voice commands. You can have that happen automatically by time of day, light levels, the system sees you turn the TV on etc etc etc.

Yes, that happens over wifi via the bridge.

No it does not.

There is no secret protocol, its generic zigbee.

Nothing fragile about the system.

Doesn’t work anything like that.

What can I say? When you're hot, you're HOT!!!!

Mark Lloyd snipped-for-privacy@mail.invalid wrote

I do know that the command goes nowhere because it works fine with no internet and its trivial to log what leaves my system when the internet is available. Nothing ever leaves my system from the bridge reporting anything to Philips.

Trivial to prove that it doesn’t.