BIG RED PAWS

Smartlight your Cave

2020-07-06 08:38:40

SPOILER: C by GE Smart Lights are worse than having a dumb-light.

Known Bias Disclosure: I have a strong preference for privacy for what happens within my lair and don't like even Google having to send what it hears to their servers... so any smartlight that can operate without the manufacturer adding another point of usage disclosure is going to get bonus points from me... unless it sucks.

A dumb light, or what most people call a "lightbulb", is a device that provides light when affixed to a light socket that provides electrical current. Usually, these currents can be active, and called turned on, or broken and called turned off. If you want light, you can usually go to the switch and flip it, which completes the circuit and powers the light to make it emit a constant light.
This is the beauty of the simplocity. Want light? Turn it on. You will always get light that, depending on your bulb, is usually white.

But lets take lighting to another extreme.

I want control of my light. I don't want white light, I want any color. I don't want to get up from my Hot-Cheeto-Horde and turn the light off. I just want to bask in the red glow of my lighting in the crunchy lair and shift it in intensity depending on light of day by voice. This... is the beauty of a smart light.
So far, I have three brands of smartlights that I have tinkered with.

1. Geeni by Mercury
2. Kasa by TP Link
3. One so bad it only appears in the first line of this post as a warning, and at the very bottom of the post because it blows.

1st Place - 4.75/5 - Exceptional Product: few things imaginable could improve it.
Kasa by TP-Link has impressed me with the vibrancy of the colors and the range of white light. These lights are said to respond to purely local API calls as well which is why I am going to continue to purchase these bulbs for my entire home and any other den/lair/secret hideout/not-so-secret stomping grounds/etc. That, coupled with the fact that I have not had responsiveness issues from this bulb make it the most sought after bulb I have tried to date. The only thing that could possibly make this device better would be the absolute lack of 3rd party platform to support it's common function, but I do not know what underlying systems are in place to keep it reliable and potentially spy on my stuff (a risk any smartbulb that requires 3rd party link has). I'll put my tinfoil hat back on now...


2nd Place - 4/5 - Exceptional Product: Still has room for improvement
Geeni by Mercury has proven itself to be an alright bulb in terms of reliability now that they have caught their stride. A year and a half ago, they seemed plagued by many server issues that would leave your devices unresponsive at the worst of times. Now, they work seamlessly and have yet to cause any real issues in terms of general control. In lighting, however, the multicolor bulbs seem to hate their colorful side. at a tiny fraction of the strength of the white, it feels as if the light turns off until you notice it still has a slight hue. I don't want my REDs to feel like they are retreating, I want them to dominate the room and bting the soothing intensity befitting of a dragon's lair. I suppose with these lights it casts a glow almost as strong as candle light for color, and a good 75-100 watt incandescent bulb for whites.


3rd Place - ?/5 - Unrated
TBD reserved for any other bulbs, be it smart, dumb, plant, etc...


Honorable Mention - ?/5 - Unrated
TBD reserved for any other bulb, be it smart, dumb, plant, etc... that didn't make me want to burninate the countryside, but wasn't good enough for a top 3 listing.
.

...


Dishonorable Discharge - 1/5 - Broken: deserves to be stomped from existance due to fundamental failure to perform basic stated tasks. PRODUCT RETURNED
C by GE is a product that purports to be a smartlight with the capability to connect directly with Google Home devices with its Made for Google Home icon directly on its box. However, I would be less disappointed if I decided to screw a potato into the light socket. At least then, I would expect it to fail spectacularly. This light has worked properly a total of 6 recorded hours in the past 72. Granted, I was asleep for approximately 16 of those, however for some reason these lights repeatedly fail when left to their own devices and, like a pack of unruly kobold, I am happy to watch them come to a swift demise. I've seen these units in the Clearance section of Target, and now there is very little wonder why. The third party app is optional, but it doesn't help these devices to continue working any longer and, if anything, futher frustrated my attempts at getting them to work as even normal dumb lights after making the mistake of thinking the lights could handle being at 'warm white, 10%' for a few hours.
No, these pieces of scrap were not worth the money spent on them, the hours spent troubleshooting them, and the gas spent to return them. I don't know if it is because the Bluetooth standard is obtuse, the hardware within the light is faulty, or the programmers of these lights were lacking in compensation/skill/decency... but at least if I got a dumblight, I can expect that light to turn on and off when flipped at the switch and provide more than the dim reminder that they worked not 6 hours ago.
And if that wasn't all, the employee who came up with the reset schema of "Off for 2, on for 8 cycle, 5 times" needs to have a serious talking to. Unless there is a critical lack of memory that explains the need to constantly power cycle these devices AT THE SWITCH AND have such a long and esoteric hard reset sequence, that human shouldn't be allowed to make any design decisions, and those who authorized this need similar reprimands. Hell, hire me. I'll just sit on a corner of your building and bring my programming and UI skills to your aid... for it seems you need it.
If C by GE would like to have this experience expunged, I'd be willing to run another test... but if it requires an engineer to tell me how to 'do it right' when the instructions fail... or the purchase of a device not disclosed as 'critical for operation' on the packaging, I'm not sure I'd be interested.

Be advised that the rating of 1/5 is due to the fact that it tries to work entirely locally without a manufacturer app supporting it... otherwise, it would be a hard 0.

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