My mission is to automate the lighting in my house. I don’t have to have every light connected to the internet, but I would like to have WiFi-connected and controllable bulbs in certain rooms in my house. I got the Hue Starter Kit for Christmas last winter, and I use them in my living room in some vintage Mid-century Moderne spaghetti lamps. I love how the various color schemes look in those special lamps, but I don’t need or want to have such “fancy”, expensive bulbs in all my rooms. I have some table lamps connected using Belkin WeMo Switches, which works great with regular CFL bulbs. I’d like just some white bulbs for my foyer, long hallway, and the bathrooms. I don’t want to use more color-changing Hue bulbs because they cost $60 each. Adding the Belkin WeMo LED Lighting system would mean I’d need another WiFi-connected hub. Using Hue bulbs would be very convenient and cheaper, though, because I already have the Hue bridge hooked up and connected in my house. Luckily, Philips now offers the Lux bulbs, which are compatible with the color-changing bulbs system but aren’t color-changing themselves.
Lux bulbs are 9W LED bulbs that produce 750-lumens of “high quality, dimmable warm white light” (2700K color temperature). (They use 0.5W of standby power and are only dimmable using the Hue app.) If you don’t already have Hue lights and a bridge, you’ll need to buy the Starter Kit. It contains two Lux bulbs and the bridge for $99.99. If you already have a Hue system set up in your home, you can add Lux bulbs for $29.99 each – still not cheap, but better than $60 each. Best Buy has the Hue Lux starter kit and the individual Lux bulbs ready to ship within 1 day. Learn more about the Hux Lux and the other components of the Hue Personal Wireless system at Philips’ Meet Hue website. You’ll need the Hue app for your mobile device to control the lights. The app is available for devices running iOS 6.0 or later, or Android 2.3 or later.
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I love, love, love Philips Hue lights! I guess they decided to make a warm color for everyday use and slightly cheaper price.
I love my Hue color-changing bulbs, too, Elizabeth. I wish these Lux weren’t warm white, though. I like bright, white, cool lighting instead of the reddish, warm white. I do like that they are cheaper, so I can use them where I want a bulb I can just turn on or off with my phone or use a timer with. I can save the fancy, expensive, color-changing bulbs for the living room and dining room.
While those Hue light bulb are good for simple upgrade, I find smart light switches such as the ones by SmartHome Insteon (http://www.smarthome.com/) more flexible.
Yes, it cost a little more if you just want to do a single light, but if you have several lights, or a big room, the ability to control things from a switch as well as your phone, plus the ability to add remote motion sensor for any light, is really awesome.
For example, I can walk through my house at night and have the a few strategic light comes on at low level without having to touch a switch. And I can set up scenes for my big room (kitchen, dining, sitting, desk, all on one floor) to suit the activity that I am doing (cooking, dining, work, lounging) so I can push a button and get the right lighting mode, or do the same from my phone.
Plus, with those switches, I can use any lightbulb I want.
I think Congress should pass a bill to force LED bulb manufacturers to sell LED bulbs at much cheaper prices. Philips lobbied Congress to phase out incandescent bulbs with arbitrary efficiency requirements, so Congress should determine price points via legislation….arbitrarily. How much profit do greedy LED bulb companies like Royal Philips need?
FYI – the system does not use WiFi. It uses an ethernet cable to your router, and the wireless protocol it uses to communicate with the lights is ZigBee.