I'd totally pay even twice as much for these if the prominent bezels were more uneven than they already are.
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Nanoleaf Now Taking Limited Pre-Orders for Hexagon-Shaped Smart Lighting Panels
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The bevels are even bigger than on the current 13" MacBook Pro!
I like them. No, that's not right. I like the idea of them. I already use Hue Lights, and my house is smart, I guess, so I am the target market for this sort of thing. And yet, no. I won't try them. My reasons are:
1. They are expensive.
2. The different kits aren't compatible. How hard would it have been to make triangles whose sides match the squares? 3. Product support. Their website says "A re-engineered modular lighting experience designed for a variety of future shapes." Did they re-engineer the new product to support future products? That sort of commitment to customer satisfaction tells me what you care about is the next sale.
4. The kits are small. Don't show me demo's with 3-5 kits. Show me what you expect us to do with one kit. Look at Lego. They mastered selling different kits with the idea that you could do something entirely new, once you try the idea on the box. But you gotta show me something with the pieces I'd get.
1. They are expensive.
2. The different kits aren't compatible. How hard would it have been to make triangles whose sides match the squares? 3. Product support. Their website says "A re-engineered modular lighting experience designed for a variety of future shapes." Did they re-engineer the new product to support future products? That sort of commitment to customer satisfaction tells me what you care about is the next sale.
4. The kits are small. Don't show me demo's with 3-5 kits. Show me what you expect us to do with one kit. Look at Lego. They mastered selling different kits with the idea that you could do something entirely new, once you try the idea on the box. But you gotta show me something with the pieces I'd get.
They look rubbish, the white borders around the edges ruin the look. Helios Touch hexagons look nicer.
If I recall correctly, this was demoed at the electronic expo show at Las Vegas back in January. I think it’s for a very ‘niche demographic‘, but really the key concept here is customization for a specific design the way the individual wants it
To be. Really, that’s about it. But like anything In this specific category, it comes at a price point, but it definitely has a unique factor, I just think it’s for a very small demographic of consumers.
To be. Really, that’s about it. But like anything In this specific category, it comes at a price point, but it definitely has a unique factor, I just think it’s for a very small demographic of consumers.
Nothing millennial needed. But a telling post.
Relevance to topic of article is zero. They’ve been around for a while.
Great that these are finally coming. We have plenty of the triangle shapes in the house but I was unimpressed with the square shaped ones.
These on the other hand have a nicer look to them and I might just get some in a bit. Best Buy Canada has them on sale on a regular basis and ones you program in your scenes they control nicely from the Home App.
A terrible company? How so? Expensive, sure but I’ve not encountered too much of a buggy software. What’s your experience with them?
Some comments:
- Yes they are expensive. BTW have you looked at the cost of non-Ikea lamp fixtures... High end house furnishings are crazy expensive. The issue is not "they cost so much", it is "can I figure out a way to make them look nice in my home".
- If you want something cheaper, look at Yealink on Amazon. BUT the Yealink hexagons are quite a bit smaller (about the size of a fist) and quite a bit thicker.
- The BIGGEST problem with these devices, no matter who is providing them, is that not one of the companies involved has a single brain their entire corporate organizations. Not one of these devices comes with any sort of usable programmability. So you may start with grand ideas of using them as status lights, to indicate the expected temperature tomorrow, or the humidity, or the AQI or whatever. But as soon as you try to do anything you'll find it ranges from impossible to just so damn difficult and fragile it's not worth the effort.
You want to program them in HomeKit? HA HA HA. Ever tried to use variables within HomeKit routines?
You think you can do it with a HomeKit-based shortcut? HA HA HA. Same problem that variables don't work, AND with the extra joy that Apple appears to have broken these with tvOS 13.3 and they're not fixed yet.
You think you can use the native app? HA HA HA. Look at EXACTLY what the native offers, not what you hope it offers, or what you think it should offer.
You think you can use IFTTT? Now you're starting with something that MIGHT work BUT
- how do you plan to bridge the gap between the scripts running at home on your hub and IFTTT communication? You can't make the webhook calls in a HomeKit routine, and for a Shortcut, see above -- it won't run right now on tvOS.
- HomeBridge? No way. Right now HomeBridge is basically read-only --- it can provide fake sensors and devices for HomeKit BUT it cannot read HomeKit values (so you can't get at your humidity sensor or whatever) AND it's not a scripting hub, so right now at least, you can't put node-red or JS scripts on it.
- addressability of the individual lights is a major PITA
- the IFTTT service always looks good when you finally get to skim it (and you CAN'T skim it until you have registered with Nanoleaf...) but these services are always poor cousins that the company just doesn't care about.
So the Hue IFTTT service, for example, offers extremely limited ways to set colors, and ZERO support for either color temperature or their White Ambiance bulbs...
What about going really low-level? Yes, you can talk to these types of devices via a REST-like API. And that kinda sorta gives you full control. But at that point you're not just a hobby scripter, you're a full-on developer. You have to do discovery yourself, figure out the devices of interest, manage a persistent store mapping the user-level names to the device addresses, write the app in full-on C/Swift/JS, and find an appropriate place to host it. Of course all this is doable; but it's now a project taking a month or two, not one day of play and fiddling to try to get them to do what you want.
And, like I said, NO-ONE in this space has a clue. Phillips Hue is just awful for a developer. All the Chinese stuff (Tuya/Smart Life/Yealink/Govee/...) is both a random crapshoot as to HW quality, the API stuff is REALLY rough, and they have paid even less attention to RAS than the Western companies. (So maybe you don't care that every interaction with your lightbulbs goes out over the internet, it's not handled locally -- but you probably will care when they stop working because your internet is down.)
And Apple? Apple should fire every single person involved in HomeKit and start again from scratch. That team has had five years to work on it, and after five years the app is perhaps the lousiest 1st party app on iOS (a field with some pretty serious competition!), it's riddled with both UI and lower level bugs, it provides less support for programming than shipped with an Apple 1 (not even comments, FFS!), and it's riddled with incomprehensibly moronic design decisions: eg is the target action of an automation rule a scene or a collection of actions -- how about we make it one thing in the API, something different in the UI, and then leave it up to the user to slowly go insane as we randomly toggle between the two?
So bottom line, IMHO:
- if ALL you want is pretty lights synced to your TV, get govee light strips with a camera. Whole shebang for around $70, no fuss, basically works.
- if you want nice panels on the wall that change colors, but don't need them to be very large or provide much light, look at the Yealink. A LOT smaller, a LOT cheaper, maybe do what you want.
- if you want something that looks like the nanoleaf photos (and don't mind the white edges), man up and pay the nanoleaf cost. Ain't no-one selling anything in that size and thin-ness for a lower prices. But, do us all a favor, and do a web search for "how to hide cords" and hide the damn power cord! Your pretty lights shouldn't lose appeal from such an obviously visible power cord. Paint it the wall color, stick in the wall, run it through a copper or stainless steel vertical pipe (think curtain rail) or decorate it in a very obvious way; don't just leave there as a visible white cord!
- if your dream is to control the panels on your terms, not just accept whatever canned color scenes nanoleaf (or hue, or yealink or ...) provide, give up now. Yes, you CAN make something happen today, if you are smart, determined, and willing to try fifteen things before one finally works. But it will take you weeks to get there, and along the way you will frequently alternate between profuse crying and clinical rage at the stupidity of every single person involved in these %$#@ing lights and their APIs.
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Those are quite a bit smaller and, I believe, thicker. That may or may not matter to you...
- Yes they are expensive. BTW have you looked at the cost of non-Ikea lamp fixtures... High end house furnishings are crazy expensive. The issue is not "they cost so much", it is "can I figure out a way to make them look nice in my home".
- If you want something cheaper, look at Yealink on Amazon. BUT the Yealink hexagons are quite a bit smaller (about the size of a fist) and quite a bit thicker.
- The BIGGEST problem with these devices, no matter who is providing them, is that not one of the companies involved has a single brain their entire corporate organizations. Not one of these devices comes with any sort of usable programmability. So you may start with grand ideas of using them as status lights, to indicate the expected temperature tomorrow, or the humidity, or the AQI or whatever. But as soon as you try to do anything you'll find it ranges from impossible to just so damn difficult and fragile it's not worth the effort.
You want to program them in HomeKit? HA HA HA. Ever tried to use variables within HomeKit routines?
You think you can do it with a HomeKit-based shortcut? HA HA HA. Same problem that variables don't work, AND with the extra joy that Apple appears to have broken these with tvOS 13.3 and they're not fixed yet.
You think you can use the native app? HA HA HA. Look at EXACTLY what the native offers, not what you hope it offers, or what you think it should offer.
You think you can use IFTTT? Now you're starting with something that MIGHT work BUT
- how do you plan to bridge the gap between the scripts running at home on your hub and IFTTT communication? You can't make the webhook calls in a HomeKit routine, and for a Shortcut, see above -- it won't run right now on tvOS.
- HomeBridge? No way. Right now HomeBridge is basically read-only --- it can provide fake sensors and devices for HomeKit BUT it cannot read HomeKit values (so you can't get at your humidity sensor or whatever) AND it's not a scripting hub, so right now at least, you can't put node-red or JS scripts on it.
- addressability of the individual lights is a major PITA
- the IFTTT service always looks good when you finally get to skim it (and you CAN'T skim it until you have registered with Nanoleaf...) but these services are always poor cousins that the company just doesn't care about.
So the Hue IFTTT service, for example, offers extremely limited ways to set colors, and ZERO support for either color temperature or their White Ambiance bulbs...
What about going really low-level? Yes, you can talk to these types of devices via a REST-like API. And that kinda sorta gives you full control. But at that point you're not just a hobby scripter, you're a full-on developer. You have to do discovery yourself, figure out the devices of interest, manage a persistent store mapping the user-level names to the device addresses, write the app in full-on C/Swift/JS, and find an appropriate place to host it. Of course all this is doable; but it's now a project taking a month or two, not one day of play and fiddling to try to get them to do what you want.
And, like I said, NO-ONE in this space has a clue. Phillips Hue is just awful for a developer. All the Chinese stuff (Tuya/Smart Life/Yealink/Govee/...) is both a random crapshoot as to HW quality, the API stuff is REALLY rough, and they have paid even less attention to RAS than the Western companies. (So maybe you don't care that every interaction with your lightbulbs goes out over the internet, it's not handled locally -- but you probably will care when they stop working because your internet is down.)
And Apple? Apple should fire every single person involved in HomeKit and start again from scratch. That team has had five years to work on it, and after five years the app is perhaps the lousiest 1st party app on iOS (a field with some pretty serious competition!), it's riddled with both UI and lower level bugs, it provides less support for programming than shipped with an Apple 1 (not even comments, FFS!), and it's riddled with incomprehensibly moronic design decisions: eg is the target action of an automation rule a scene or a collection of actions -- how about we make it one thing in the API, something different in the UI, and then leave it up to the user to slowly go insane as we randomly toggle between the two?
So bottom line, IMHO:
- if ALL you want is pretty lights synced to your TV, get govee light strips with a camera. Whole shebang for around $70, no fuss, basically works.
- if you want nice panels on the wall that change colors, but don't need them to be very large or provide much light, look at the Yealink. A LOT smaller, a LOT cheaper, maybe do what you want.
- if you want something that looks like the nanoleaf photos (and don't mind the white edges), man up and pay the nanoleaf cost. Ain't no-one selling anything in that size and thin-ness for a lower prices. But, do us all a favor, and do a web search for "how to hide cords" and hide the damn power cord! Your pretty lights shouldn't lose appeal from such an obviously visible power cord. Paint it the wall color, stick in the wall, run it through a copper or stainless steel vertical pipe (think curtain rail) or decorate it in a very obvious way; don't just leave there as a visible white cord!
- if your dream is to control the panels on your terms, not just accept whatever canned color scenes nanoleaf (or hue, or yealink or ...) provide, give up now. Yes, you CAN make something happen today, if you are smart, determined, and willing to try fifteen things before one finally works. But it will take you weeks to get there, and along the way you will frequently alternate between profuse crying and clinical rage at the stupidity of every single person involved in these %$#@ing lights and their APIs.
[automerge]1588442189[/automerge]
Those are quite a bit smaller and, I believe, thicker. That may or may not matter to you...
HomeDespot used to sell these. The last time I was in, I actually looked for them, and couldn't find them. I was curious if the 'starter set' had a lowered price yet. Once I did see two boxes of them that were 'open box' clearance, and passed on them as the reduction wasn't really that low, and the boxes looked nasty.
Did they work? Could they all be the same color? Were they even remotely worth the money?
Putting them behind a TV would be interesting, but controlling the light color would probably get old I'd think. *shrug*
Did they work? Could they all be the same color? Were they even remotely worth the money?
Putting them behind a TV would be interesting, but controlling the light color would probably get old I'd think. *shrug*
I bought this company’s smart hub starter kit back before HomePod and it was very poorly supported and did not work well. They abandoned it to offer these other products it seemed.
Some LED lights make me insane. The flicker gives me severe migraines. I’ll even black out. I’ve fallen down the stairs from it. I’ve gotten all sorts of short and long term neurological symptoms from some of our LED bulbs. Fortunately, I can tolerate some of them, but it’s trial and error. I didn’t know the effects these could have on pets. Thanks for the article.I had to quit using LED lamps.
I have a whole house previously lit with Hue.
It was making my puppy insane, took me forever to figure out what the problem was.
I'm back to 100% incandescent and he is a comoleteky different dog ok n the evening now.
Home electronics might drive your pet nuts
Dogs and cats can perceive high-pitched noise and flicker from electronics that we can't.www.cnet.com
These LED panels are cute and if it weren’t for my concerns about similar health effects on my kids, they’d be fun accent pieces in a game room.
I agree the super cheap LED bulbs that obviously flicker at 60Hz (or 50Hz in other places like Europe) are maddening (just move your head fast it’s obvious) but the Hue bulbs flicker at far higher frequencies that I doubt humans or dogs can perceive at any level, even subconsciously. The NOISE they emit however is easily perceived by many animals, especially dogs and cats. I think it was the constant squeal in my puppy’s ears that was making him crazy.
Do you know one that you can recommend in terms of looks, usability, good app support, expandability and HomeKit support?
I remember I had an early, and admittedly cheap, flat screen monitor, and I had such headaches from it, I finally gave it away. My eyes felt tired, which was weird, and the headaches and tense shoulders (which was surprisingly linked to monitor use). I'd be wondering if the drivers also put out high frequency harmonics that could drive dogs nuts. I swear that my house fills my ears with high frequency harmonics that I don't hear elsewhere. Some think that's nuts, but I'd love to get a microphone sensitive enough to test for that.
Yes, our environments are capable of, and in many cases ARE making us sick.
LOL! Who thinks to themselves, "I'm going to paint random purple rectangles on my walls and doors." Also... why do the floor boards look like they are decking? Person must love spiders.
I think that's the best photo of the lot - I like the paint going over onto the door, I bet it's more interesting than your boring house.
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The Macrumors forum hates them - so that means they're great. If i've learnt anything it's that whatever people hate on here (which is usually 10 to 1 hate for EVERYTHING, from the original iPod to now) is actually a fantastic product.