I need to replace an LED lightbulb in my home office. I’ve been umming and ahhing about moving to smart lighting for a while. I’ve got Google Nest devices in various rooms, so I’d use that to voice-control the lights.
Having done some research, I’m leaning towards the Phillips Hue system, since it seems to be widely compatible and well-regarded. They do a starter pack that comes with two bulbs and the bridge, which would do to get going.
I’m open to any comments or thoughts, but I have a couple of specific questions:
Are there any issues using the main light switch when a smart bulb is in the socket? I get that the thing to do would be to leave the main switch on and control the bulb, well, smartly - but I’d want to turn off the main switch when I was out the house for any reasonable length of time. Also, I’m pretty sure Mrs Snowman won’t adopt this tech as quickly as me and will keep hitting the light-switch. This thread suggests it’s fine, but if anyone knows different…
I’d also look to add smart plugs to otherwise dumb lamps to allow voice control for them. Are there any safety considerations in leaving lamps turned on all the time and controlling them in this way? Again, I’d expect to turn them off at the wall (all our wall outlets have switches built in) if I was going to be out the house for a while.
In case it’s not clear, I’m not even remotely an electrician!
I have had very good experience with the Hue lights. I use Alexa to control them, but Google I’m sure would work just as well. I also have a Google Mesh system, but do not have a controller in that room so I haven’t tried it.
Your thread links to my question about this, and I have not had any more information since then. My lights are still working perfectly even though the housekeepers turn them off at the lamp switch when they come.
A dumb lamp sees a smart outlet the same way it sees any switched outlet. Either power is supplied to the lamp, or it’s not. There is no safety consideration because there would be no safety consideration in just leaving a lamp turned on 24/7*.
*Unless you used an incandescent bulb with a wattage that is too high for the socket rating. The reason for those ratings is because of the heat generated by an incandescent bulb. But if you are using LED or even CFL bulbs in your dumb lamp, there are no safety issues.
It’s technically fine, whether it’s satisfactory in practice will depend on your use case, which you’re obviously considering. If other people are frequently using the area, they will be unaware of your system and go to the switch and that won’t work, they will just turn the power completely off.
A much better solution is to install smart switches rather than smart bulbs. That’s what I did. It’s much more work, but then you have the option of using voice control or the manual switch.
This is fine. Leaving the lamps turned on all the time is not an issue, but I believe there have been isolated instances of cheap smart plugs overheating. Get a decent brand.
The only issue I had is with a couple of fancy bedside laps I have that use capacitance “touch” switches. They cannot be left on and controlled by a smart plug. If they lose power, they revert to the off state. They are really beautiful lamps, so I had to overcome my OCD desire to make everything smart-controlled. I guess I could take them apart and replace the touch switch, but rolling over in bed and reaching out is not such a hardship. I apologize to Alexa each time.
With Hue, you can define what you want the state of the bulb to be when you power it on with the switch…so you can set that to “Custom” – to say a warm color temperature and 75% brightness – and every time you turn the switch off and back on, it will default to that setting, even if you change it in the meantime. Or you can set it to default to the state it was in when power was turned off…or to full brightness. That is to say, a) they certainly expect people to control them with light switches and b) they allow you some flexibility on what exactly the bulb will do when you switch the light on.