how smart has your home gone?

[Semple]

they aren't 100% reliable

What bulbs are you using? I haven't had a single outage on my hue/tradfri bulbs. So i'm rocking 100% reliability.

The market is flooded with a lot of cheap Chinese variants - typically wifi or bluetooth, so i'd imagine reliability isn't so great there.

 

[robj20]

What bulbs are you using? I haven't had a single outage on my hue/tradfri bulbs. So i'm rocking 100% reliability.

The market is flooded with a lot of cheap Chinese variants - typically wifi or bluetooth, so i'd imagine reliability isn't so great there.

Philips Hue, Hue Bridge and Hue motion sensors.

With respect, that's a personal/setup thing. They're certainly not rubbish.

I have them in every room, in transit areas they're controlled by smartthings motion sensors which work 100% of the time and then in rooms there's an echo and you just say "alexa turn the lights on" and the lights come on.

The only area not like that is the garden and then it's "alexa turn the garden on".. you'd need to be special not to be able to work them

Or have children that can reach and use a light switch but not yet do the whole voice coupled thing.
Or my mum that constantly forgets.
Or my wife that hates voice control.

Of course it's a personal thing, what else would it be! Please don't presume people are special, what a horrendous thing to imply.

They certainly don't suite our house.

 

[Semple]

Philips Hue, Hue Bridge and Hue motion sensors.

Phillips/Signify are pretty good with warranty. If you've got some faulty bulbs and they're under warranty then get them replaced.

Or have children that can reach and use a light switch but not yet do the whole voice coupled thing.

Have a look at Shelly or Sonoff modules that go behind the light switch, that way if your kids/wife/mum does switch them off accidentally, they don't lose connection.

 

[robj20]

Phillips/Signify are pretty good with warranty. If you've got some faulty bulbs and they're under warranty then get them replaced.

I don't mean they're faulty just gremlins that means sometimes the lights don't work how they're set.
For instance i came home to the front outdoor light on at 2pm.
It's on a sensor and set to only at at night so why was it on had to switch it off manually which defeats the point.

Those Shelly things require a neutral don't they only two live wires on all my switches.

 

[matt100]

Philips Hue, Hue Bridge and Hue motion sensors.



Or have children that can reach and use a light switch but not yet do the whole voice coupled thing.
Or my mum that constantly forgets.
Or my wife that hates voice control.

Of course it's a personal thing, what else would it be! Please don't presume people are special, what a horrendous thing to imply.

They certainly don't suite our house.

So what you meant was that your usage scenario doesn't fit, not that they're rubbish?

I mean how could they change to fit your pattern? Become able to read the minds of children and pensioners?

 

[robj20]

So what you meant was that your usage scenario doesn't fit, not that they're rubbish?

I mean how could they change to fit your pattern? Become able to read the minds of children and pensioners?

Philips could actually release the switches they've been promising since the dawn of time, it would sort all my issues out. So yeah I mean rubbish in that they have even made a product that doesn't suit the UK on the current wireless switch and holder.

 

[Semple]

Philips could actually release the switches they've been promising since the dawn of time, it would sort all my issues out.

I suspect they'll be exactly the same as the shelly/sonoff modules and require a neutral wire, so you're probably out of luck there until your house has a modern rewire.

 

[robj20]

I suspect they'll be exactly the same as the shelly/sonoff modules and require a neutral wire, so you're probably out of luck there until your house has a modern rewire.

No they were supposed to be the ones where the act of pressing the mechanical switch generated the power so no neutral required.

Or even the proper UK version of the standard battery operated switch they have rather than horrible 3d printed ones you can get.

 

[TangoEchoAlpha]

Next time I have an electrician in to do any work, I'm going to ask about getting neutral wiring taken to some light switches for exactly the reason described previously, stuck with the old pre 2004 colour live/switched live and earth. Adding a neutral line seems to open up a lot more possibilities for switches etc, particularly the Sonoff Zigbee switches which I like the look of.

Particularly if they can gain access to the attic and the wiring to existing ceiling fittings, I can't imagine taking a neutral to switches would be a massive endeavour for someone with decent experience?

 

[utajoker]

I'm having issues with amazon alexa and phillips hue.

I have a household set up with me and my wife's amazon accounts but she is unable to control any lights and has to switch to my account to control them.
I set it up to allow her to use her own Spotify and listen to her music on the amazon units.

I've set up both our voices and was hoping it would play our own individual spotify when we ask it to.

It cant be that only 1 person can control lights through alexa in a household

 

[andy_mk3]

They're not exactly cheap but Aqara do some nice no neutral switches now.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aqara-Neut...9Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

 

[matt100]

I'm having issues with amazon alexa and phillips hue.

I have a household set up with me and my wife's amazon accounts but she is unable to control any lights and has to switch to my account to control them.
I set it up to allow her to use her own Spotify and listen to her music on the amazon units.

I've set up both our voices and was hoping it would play our own individual spotify when we ask it to.

It cant be that only 1 person can control lights through alexa in a household

Genuine question, why would you need to use 2 different accounts?

 

[utajoker]

Genuine question, why would you need to use 2 different accounts?

i dont like her music and she dont like mine, so when we share a spotify it messes up play lists etc. to get 2 seperate spotify accounts to work i believe you have to use the amazon household, which means 2 amazon accounts.

i think atleast, unless there is another way!

 

[matt100]

You can have Alexa work off one account then when you want to use a different Spotify grab your phone. Say "Alexa Spotify connect" and then pick the speaker you want from your phone.

Similar issue but it throws the problem to Spotify not Amazon.

 

[ash_scotland88]

Is there an out door thermometer that links with hive?
Or even a third party software that will graph the outdoor temp Vs the indoor.
Just curious how house inside may drop compared to outside, delays, sudden decreases etc

 

[NeilF]

Is there an out door thermometer that links with hive?
Or even a third party software that will graph the outdoor temp Vs the indoor.
Just curious how house inside may drop compared to outside, delays, sudden decreases etc

That's one good feature of the Netatmo system. It shows outdoor temp along with indoor temp. Plus amount of heating on time.

In fact the prediction system uses the outdoor temp to start the heating the appropriate amount of time before hand to reach the desired temp at the specified time. I thought they all did that these days?

 

[Mysterae_]

Is there an out door thermometer that links with hive?
Or even a third party software that will graph the outdoor temp Vs the indoor.
Just curious how house inside may drop compared to outside, delays, sudden decreases etc

Hive cheat a little on this. If you subscribe to their Hive Heating Plus service (£3.99pm or £30.99 a year) they use "Integrated Weather" for the outside temperature monitoring. I presume it's local temperature data collected from the internet, hopefully not BBC Weather!

Using our Hive Heating Plus service, you can see weekly and yearly overviews of your usage and how changes in behaviour impact your spending with Cost View. Plus, with Integrated Weather, you can see how changes in the outside temperature affect your consumption and how long it takes your home to heat up.

Please note: multizone setups and first-generation hubs don’t support Hive Heating Plus.

I have a multizone setup so I won't be trying it.

 

[NeilF]

Hive cheat a little on this. If you subscribe to their Hive Heating Plus service (£3.99pm or £30.99 a year) they use "Integrated Weather" for the outside temperature monitoring. I presume it's local temperature data collected from the internet, hopefully not BBC Weather!



I have a multizone setup so I won't be trying it.

Naughty! That should be standard behaviour! So the unit heats the house the same when it's 12 degrees outside as when it's -2?

 

[ash_scotland88]

Cheers, we have multizone so looks like we won't be able to.

Even some cheap thermometers I can plonk around the place that will record and log?

 

[HangTime]

Not very:

• I've got 2 Philips Hue bulbs that I got free from British Gas iirc, and I quite like the actual bulb brightness etc, but I haven't plugged in the wifi controller thingy for years. I ought to dig it out tbh, because it would actually be quite useful for my son's room to be able to dim the light, turn it off remotely etc.
• I've then got an original Echo that is heavily used for playing music/radio in the kitchen, and an Echo show I use as my alarm clock. These are pretty much the only smart devices I use as smart devices. The Show is kind of annoying, just a bit clunky on interface / lacking the right apps. It's basically like a really heavy mobile phone with better speaker and rubbish OS that has to be plugged in.
• Also got an Echo Dot that I bought to hook up to my bluetooth speaker but the battery on the speaker seems knackered (dies very soon after charging) so the Dot has been unplugged for a couple of years.

A year or two back I almost bought a Ring doorbell on black friday or whatever but I decided it would probably be a faff to install etc.

I bought the Echo originally thinking it would be a bit of a gimmick I'd use for a couple of weeks and ignore but it's actually very good and is largely responsible for me adopting music streaming instead of mp3s/CDs