A Review of Phillips Hue Lights

About two months ago I was talking with a friend about wireless lights, wanting Bluetooth or WiFi LED bulbs mostly just for the fun of it.  Most of it was just talk as we did not know anything like that currently existed, but thanks to the internet we found something pretty quickly.

We found a few items that would possibly fit the bill.  The LIFX, and the Phillips Hue are the ones that come to mind at the moment, but I know there were already a few more out there around the time of purchase of the Hue.  The LIFX at the time was only available online, as it was just completing its round on Kickstarter, and the Phillips Hue which was available at Apple.

Update: I think both of the bulbs are extremely expensive in terms of light bulbs, and more of a luxury even with the suggested life span of up to 25 years.  The LIFX goes for 99$, while a Hue bulb goes for 60$.  Now the Hue sounds cheaper, but remember you need a base station for it, which comes in a starter pack costing 200$ (3 bulbs included).  LIFX uses WiFi and Mesh to talk between the bulbs and does not have a base station, while Hue uses WiFi at the base station and ZigBee to talk to the bulbs. That about ends what I know about LIFX.  And as of today there are a few other companies coming out with smart bulbs (LG, Samsung) that I know about.

We decided to go with Hue, and purchased a starter pack. The base station like stated earlier uses Zigbee to talk to each of the bulbs, and each bulb from there can act as a repeater.  Initial setup was a piece of cake, we had about 6 to start with a grew to about 12 over a short period of time.  We use the Android apps to access the lights, and one PC has WinHue installed to access the lights.  The basic phillips app is OK, it does what it needs to do to access the lights, but no bells and whistles really.

To really see what these bulbs can do you have to purchase some of the other apps on Google Play/Itunes.  One app lets us play fireworks, another app turns it into a disco party, and another will set the lights on in random colors.  I use an app called LampShade that allows me to group the bulbs, and then set up alarms to turn on/off the lights at certain times.

Geo fencing is also enabled on a few of the apps but have not played with it to much at this point.  It would be easier then opening the app every time I get home to turn on the lights.

About a month into using the bulbs they all disconnected from the bridge, and would not reconnect unless we setup a lamp about 2 inches away from the base station and reconnected each bulb one at a time.  This took about 30 minutes, and we were back up and running.  Not exactly sure why that happened, and the other day I hit the on/off from the wall, so now the bedroom light does not register through the app anymore.  It will probably take a bit to get this one back running.

Our outside light that is also a Hue is also hit or miss, no rhyme or reason why some days the app will make it work, and other days it will not.  We moved the bridge away from the WiFi, and away from the cable boxes, speakers thinking maybe interference.   It does say that Zigbee works on the 2.4Ghz.  That helped a little, still iffy with the outside light.

Even with all it quirks, and price it still is a great light, and a good conversation point.  When you tell someone you have WiFi smart bulbs they take a second look and ask to say again.  One thing I am hoping for is having a light switch of sorts for those lazy days you don't want to pull out your phone.

In future posts, I will talk about other things we are planning to do with our Hue, how we are expanding, and possible "hacking" of the system.  Maybe incorporating other companies lights, ect.  Also I might try and pick up some of the other companies bulbs to try and compare them to the Hue.

Dark detecting LED Ghosties have been created

Earlier tonight my daughters and I created the two LED Ghosties that I have been working on for about a week.(one for each daughter).  I was planning on making three, right now I am kind of glad I only made two.  I thought I did enough pre staging of the parts but nope took a bit of time.

The first part in building of the Ghosties are in the previous posts:
Evil Mad Scientist (Dark Detecting LED Pumpkin)
First circuit build
Second circuit setup

Now that you are caught up on the initial stages here is the link from EvilMadScientist about the LED Ghosties.

Second Dark detecting LED built

I started this one at about 9pm tonight right after I finished eating dinner, and finished by 11:30pm.  Not to bad, getting better at this maybe soon I will get them done in a reasonable time frame.  If I had better skills and better accommodations where I was working I could have probably gotten it done a lot quicker.  Who's counting anyway the important thing is that they are done.

I think I did a better job this time with the soldering, not 100% better but better anyway.  I will have to take a class or something.  I also need to pick up so different color wires, everything is black again so it will be a guessing game were what goes to what, but hey it only really needs to work for Halloween right?

Its late and I need to get started

I got a flu shot today so I decided to take a nap after work, it was 7pm when I woke up.  But I needed dinner so I threw together some jambalaya, but I still need to get started on the second dark detecting LED.

With only a few more days I need to be prepared and ready to go with them to make the ghosts with my daughters.   I will try and start tonight hopefully it wont take to long to do it this time.  Might be an issue though that the tip is no where near pointy anymore, guess I will see.

I will post some pictures of the second one, hopefully it will look a little better then the first.  Will probably still be messy, but at least it should work.  I picked up some more "sheets" for the ghosts, and will have my daughters draw circles for the eyes so during the day you can see eyes.  At night the eyes will light up yellow, or maybe red if I can find the red LED's.

I figured out the dark detecting LED

With a constant eye on Evil Mad Scientist website, i sat down on a crude makeshift desk and started to try and piece together the dark detecting LED.  Mind you I don't remember the last time I tried to solder things, so I already knew this was going to be a long day.  I started probably around 5pm, and finished around 9pm (yes I know I am slow).

Its pretty crude looking and using the same color wire for everything so yea I would get pretty confused but I had to work with what I had which was not much I guess.  After initially putting in the batteries it light right up and I figured it was messed up.  But I decided maybe my room was not bright enough (hmm wonder if the first project might not have been a failure).  So I took it directly to the light and turned it on and what do you know the LED's stayed off.  Brought it off the light source and the LED's turned on.

Only one more of these to make (and I was planning on three of them) Three little ghosts.  First have to finish making the second LED setup.  Hopefully tomorrow's will go a lot quicker then today.  A few things I learned along the way.

1.  Tips of soldering irons burn away (yea I know its been a while)
2.  Its a pain to solder on the small perfboard.
3.  I need a real desk
4.  Need those alligator clip hands that I saw at other sites.
5.  Need a better camera to take pictures with.

Digikey box in the mail.

Tonight I received the package from Digikey to make the Dark Detecting LED.  I wonder if I should start with a bread board first to make sure I know what I am doing.  I am far from an expert with soldering.  I will have to check the website again to see if there any straight directions.

I can see the picture of the board, but I'll see if I can work it out.  I wish there were more detailed directions as I learn to solder.  O well, it will still be fun.  Once I get three of the  boards built I will get with my daughters and we can work on putting them together to make the dark detecting LED ghosts.

That should be fun, hope to have it all done before Halloween, not to many days left now.

Dark Detecting LED Failure

Today was not so much of a good day that I would have hoped for.  I was able to find most of the parts locally for the dark detecting LED, but not the exact photo transistor LTR 4206E, not sure if I will be able to find that one locally to begin with.

Even still I decided to try my hand at making one of them.  I think the last time I tried to solder anything was up 15 years ago at least.  Not to mention that my room and table was probably not the best place to try and solder something.  I had everything connected correctly but even with the battery the LED still lit up even when the lights where on in the room.  Not sure what I did wrong in any event I found another one that looks to be from the same site and a little easier.

So tomorrow I will go out back to Radio Shack and pick up these extra parts, hopefully wont cost to much more to try and get at least one of these up and running.  Besides the new design is made for two LED perfect for a set of eyes.

On a side not I also melted plastic garbage bag when I was moving my soldering iron, cant stand the smell of that, but a little air freshener, fan on high and out of the room for a bit and it was cleared up.  Tomorrow I can worry about cleaning of the melted plastic from the iron.

If anyone has any idea of where to get the parts in the San Diego area please let me know.  (mainly the photo transistor)

Here's a list of parts for the basic design (with two LEDs):

• A phototransistor (we use type LTR-3208E)
• 2N3904 (or similar) transistor, QTY 2.
• 5k ohm resistor
• Yellow or red LEDs, QTY 2. (We used 10 mm diffused yellow LEDs)
• 50 ohm resistors (one for each LED)
• Battery holder with 2 AA-size alkaline batteries

Scaring up some LED Ghosts

I was once again looking for some projects for Halloween and came across Evil Mad Scientist building ghosts.  I went out over the weekend and picked up a few more LED's at Radio Shack and an on/off switch as I was thinking of having them strung up in a series of say 3 ghosts on a tree and would like on button to turn them on.

After more research I found another post over at the same website about dark detecting LED which I think I will try and use on the ghosts instead.  I will have to make another trip to Radio Shack and pick up the rest of the parts to test it out.

Battery Powered LED

This project was a simple five minute put together to show the girls basic electricity.  The concept was easy, have an LED powered by a 3V battery (size for say car alarms).  I went to Fry's Electronics to pick up the parts as they are going to be used in a future project.

I wanted a light weight batter that would fit in a rocket tube and not be to heavy, so I picked up 2 of these batteries and two red LEDs.  

I did the basic setup before I invited the kids over to try it out. I connected wire to the positive and negative sides of the LED with electric tape.  Next I taped the positive wire to the positive side of the battery with a strip of electrical tape, and left the negative side open.

I showed my daughters how to touch the battery and the light will come on and then under supervision I let them move the wire over the battery and watch the LED light up.  A nice simple project to spend some time with my daughters.   And just do everyone knows the extra red wires at the bottom of the picture are not connected to anything they are just two strips that I did not move from the picture.