Philips hue

[ClassicHasClass]

I picked up the Philips hue wireless lights to play with, and, well, they're not cheap, but they sure are cool. Especially since they can be directly manipulated through HTTP, so I threw together a command line tool for that.

http://www.floodgap.com/software/huepl/

It's really fun to control your lights over ssh.

 

[PowerPup]

Haha, that's so cool. I'd be half tempted to do morse code and see if anyone replies. That or set it up so it does different hues for different hours of the day.

 

[olePigeon]

Those are pretty cool, but why is it so expensive?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Sure, you can do scheduling in cron, or from the mobile app.

The price is because not only are they LED bulbs (which are already $25+ a pop), but they have multiple LED colour elements and 2.4GHz radios in them. There's a lot of stuff crammed in those bulbs.

 

[James1095]

I found a teardown for those who are curious about the guts & gore.

http://friendfeed.com/herf/f556fabb/philips-hue-bulb-teardown?embed=1

I haven't seen a Hue in person yet, but I can vouch that the other Philips LED bulbs are fantastic. The L-Prize winning bulb in particular is amazing, expensive but worth every penny. 94 Lumens/Watt, 93 CRI, it absolutely blows away anything else available for a standard light socket at any price. After seeing the first Philips LED bulbs I bought one and was so impressed that I decided to replace the CFLs in my house with them as I used up my existing stock. After using it for a few days I got impatient and started buying more as I could afford them and giving away my old CFLs instead of waiting for them to wear out.