“The ‘Internet of things,’ the ‘Connected Home,’ the ‘Smart Home,’ whatever you want to call it, it’s just a fancy way of turning your stuff on and off with your smartphone,” Roberto Baldwin reports for TNW. “Now GE has introduced a cheaper way to stay on the couch and control your lights.”
“The low-cost connected Link lightbulb from GE will set you back less than $15. The bulb is controlled by the Wink app (available for iOS and Android) from Quirky,” Baldwin reports. “In addition to switching lights on and off from anywhere (not just your couch), the app lets you schedule things like on/off times and brightness.”
“The Link comes in three flavors: A 60-watt replacement LED bulb for lamps; an LED indoor floodlamp and an LED brighter indoor/outdoor floodlamp. The $15 price is for the LED bulb for lamps. No word on what the other two lights will cost,” Baldwin reports. “The lights will be available for pre-order from Home Depot on Monday, June 30 and available at Home Depot stores this fall.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
It’s interesting to see so many “Smart Home” products being released. Are these meant to get a first mover role or to create a barrier for Apple customers before Apple’s products are released. We’ll see if this gets Philips to lower their prices. How many contraptions can be plugged into one router?
Roughly 253 devices exact…
Cool! But they need a brighter than 60-watt “replacement” LED bulb to be usable in most homes.
Include the 60-watt replacement to splash the $15 price, then upsale to what people need.
What do you use? We mostly use 60W bulbs, one or two 75W bulbs. I don’t think we have any 100W bulbs.
Ideally, the measurement to use is Lumens. The wattage of bulbs is meaningless these days except regarding power consumption.
Yes, but it is what people know.
Marketing doesn’t care what is right, just what works.
Not all marketing people are made the same, thank goodness. I’ve worked with marketing mavens. Godsends.
lumen
The plural of which is…
Lumen
There is a plural, lumens, like there is a plural for people. But one does not say 20 peoples, unless one refers to multiple sets of people. I mean not to “correct” you, Derek, for I hold you and your knowledge in high regard, but a lot of people run with whatever they read and before you know it….etc.
Wild. I never knew that. I completely understand your point. I didn’t look into the word etymology or usage. Doing so now…
Lumen \Lu”men\, n.; pl. L. Lumina, E. Lumens.
Thus my use of the plural with an ‘s’.
the SI unit of luminous flux, equal to the amount of light emitted per second in a unit solid angle of one steradian from a uniform source of one candela.
This explains to me your point: If something is luminous, the light emitted would be measured in lumen. Lumin -> lumen.
Compromise: I like the world “lumina“. How about we all settle on that word! I’ll let Hannah be the final ‘decider’. 😉
Deal ! 🙂
The industry standard conversion appears to be:
100W = 1600 lumens
75 = 1100
60 = 800
40 = 450
TY!
One 60w bulb to light up an entire living room or family room is kind of depressing.
I agree. We use 100w bulbs all the time.
We like well-lit home and we never use anything less than a 75w. Plus I insist on getting the white light/natural light bulbs, they are so much better than those old yellow ones that make everything look so dingy.
We use 45w floods for the in-ceiling can fixtures of our home theater room — 60w floods and LEDs are way too bright and just don’t dim low enough when we start a movies. We also need 15w or 15w-equivalent for accent lights too. Also, the LEDs we’ve been buying all Are over-priced and keep failing. And Home Depot keeps changing stock and model numbers. If you do buy LED floods, when they fail prematurely (and many do) you can’t replace them with the same bulb when your return to the store three months later. So. We keep ending up with different bulbs en every can — and very unbalanced room lighting. So far, LEDs have been a major fail in my view.
Why don’t we just have wifi enabled wall plugs? That way we can control ANYTHING plugged into them. Not just light bulbs…
I have insteon products. Controlled outlets , light switches and more
Because you can’t dim a light/lamp if it is just a dumb one plugged into a smart plug. Or change the colours. Etc…
WiFi enabled wall plugs!!! That will be great! I can turn down the thumping music a neighbor is playing. I’m sure someone will write an app for that.
“Im sure someone will write an app for that.”
Yup. It’s called “911.” 😉
Imagine if a downstairs Superintendant put wifi-enabled outlets in your apartment?
“No loud music for you!”
What a shame it’s GE. I avoid their junk like the plague. I’ll wait for Philips. (Where I live, we have an intimate relationship with this history of GE. Hate them).
I thought Philips already has Bluetooth 4/LE bulbs and they sell it even at Apple stores. Though those are pricey (however, those bulbs save a lot of money and last very long, so it makes sense).
Is Philips using Apple’s APIs yet?
I have had terrible luck with many different types of Phillips products.
I will never buy Phillips.
I will buy GE.
Although GE Capital was financing for Apple and charging people 23% interest on new Apple purchases until I informed Apple and then they were fired.
What we need more than connected lightbulb is a connected *socket* that screws into a lamp socket and then accepts any damn lightbulb we choose. As bulbs burn out they’re replaced easily and the connected socket technology remains…