Smart lighting can light up your life. Too cheesy? I meant that literally. Smart lighting is awesome – you can either get ‘white only’ bulbs that can be smartly dimmed and turned on/off, or you can buy color bulbs which can be set to millions of colors. Fancy a home disco? Smart lighting is where it’s at.
After working out that using Philips Hue’s Lightstrips for my kitchen would cost £170+, I set out to build my own smart light strips that cost me less than £40. Plus it’s still fully controllable in the Philips Hue app! This video covers all the steps required to do this yourself, including: DIYing your own … Read more
The Philips Hue indoor motion sensor is quite a useful device: when it detects motion, it allows you to automatically turn your lights on to pre-set colors and brightness levels, configurable for different times of the day. However if it’s positioned or installed in the wrong position, it can either miss people walking past, or … Read more
Picture the scene: you arrive home after a long day’s work, and as you walk through the front door, your Hue Lightstrips automatically illuminate – as do your hallway Hue ceiling lights – gently welcoming you into your home. Bliss. That’s one of the benefits of Philips Hue’s motion sensors. But picture another scene: all … Read more
If you’re looking to add smart light strips to your home but you find that Philips Hue’s Lightstrip Plus options are too expensive, what options are open to you? This is the question I was asking myself when planning to add smart light strips to my kitchen. I firstly wondered whether ZigBee or WiFi would … Read more
Home working has never been more popular. Whilst just 8% of the global workforce worked from home in 2019 (around 260 million people), the 2020 global pandemic has seen the number of home workers increase to 50% or more in many countries – with billions of people now routinely working from home. This substantial rise … Read more
This video explores adding smart lighting within your kitchen, looking generally at what you need to consider and different ideas based on other people’s kitchen smart lighting projects. I also touch on what I’m planning on doing for my own kitchen’s smart lighting: Video Transcript Hello YouTube, I’m Tristan from Smart Home Point. So today … Read more
Smart light strips are an awesome invention – they can instantly add interesting yet subtle lighting to various areas around your house, and their color can be quickly changed or dimmed to suit your needs. ZigBee (not Wi Fi) smart strips have added benefits too, but with so much choice, which one should you get? … Read more
One of the nice features of smart bulbs is that not only can then change color (and be dimmed), but since they’re a digital product, they can be programmed to do other interesting things such as ‘dance’ along with music or change color to reflect a movie on TV. Philips Hue have great support for … Read more
When I first moved into my house, it was fairly dark due to it just having two simple, A19 bulbs at either end of the kitchen-diner room. Whilst I have since changed these to spotlights to provide more light, I avoided buying smart spotlights due to the cost (up to $50/each for Hue or LIFX … Read more
Smart light switches seem a bit of a contradiction when you first think about them, because an electrical switch has two states: on or off. But yet, any smart devices must always be ‘on’ in order for it to be smartly controlled. So how does a smart light switch stay ‘aware’ (and ultimately powered on) … Read more