It was time for a lighting upgrade at home. Before I left for the store my wife sweetly suggested for me not to come home with any of those “horrendous compact swirly thingys” that take forever to warm up and make her look bad. Being an early adopter for all things lighting, my family has had to suffer through many trials and errors including the magnetically ballasted CFLs (flicker, flicker, more flicker, start!)
Home Depot had three basic choices for wireless controllable LED: Connected by TCP, GE Wink or Link, and the Philips hue. As best as I could tell the TCP and GE were not color tunable, which is why I went with the hue. I purchased the $199 starter BR 30 start kit which works with something called a hue bridge. The App was easy and quick to install on my iPhone. The only hiccup came when I attempted to log in using my google ID as it was not accepted. Therefore, I set up a new userID/password and it worked great. Assigning names to the lamps was easy, as the specific hue lamp blinked during the naming process, so I knew which lamp was being named. Setting up the hue was as simple as setting up Apple TV.
The wife came to see the new lights and before she entered the living room, I quickly clicked on the “fluorescent” button. “Oh my goodness, these are worse than the others.” She went on to exclaim, “They are even uglier than the ones you picked up at the tradeshow in China.” Appearing disinterested and playing on my phone, I clicked on the “sunset” button and within half a second the room was transformed. So was her mood. Then I clicked on “candlelight” and she sat in her chair staring at the lights in amazement. Next I went to the “moving clouds” button and she was at a loss for words (given the football games, that was not a bad thing.)
Because the experience with the starter kit went so well, I returned to Home Depot for more. I wanted lamps for the kitchen and the clerk recommended the A-19 starer kit, but since I already had a bridge, no need for the entire kit, just the lamps. Fortunately, Home Depot sells A-19 hue lux lamps at $39.95 and I bought all they had. The total amount I spent on lightbulbs this weekend was more than my first paycheck at GE Lighting in 1983. That is a statement.
Unfortunately, when I installed the hue lux, I learned that they were in black and white (meaning not color tunable). The clerk incorrectly explained that “hue” was the name for the kit, and “hue lux” was the name for individual bulbs. The hue lux dimmed easy, but as the humble editor of the EdisonReport, I should have known about the color.
On Sunday, while sitting in my favorite chair I used my iPhone to: flip channels using the Comcast app, control the temperature using my Nest app, and warming the color temperature while lowering the light levels as my wife fell asleep watching the NFL playoff games.
My teams won, life is good and the Hue is one of the biggest things to hit residential lighting in my career.