As time went on, we moved into a new home and the smart lighting world continued to innovate. Hue and other early smart bulbs required hubs. Later, vendors like Govee introduced smart lights that connect to your Wi-Fi router. Now, Hue offers a mix of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and hub support, with more advanced features reserved for the hub. But our secret has been to ignore most apps and rely almost entirely on Alexa for smart home control. The exception to that has been the gorgeous color animations that Govee downloads to some of its lights. The Govee approach works with Alexa. We program a lighting effect once, and then, whenever Alexa or an Alexa routine turns on that light, the effect runs automatically. Today, our home is a mix of Hue bulbs, Govee lights, and a few outliers, like the uplights I mention at the end of this article. Without a doubt, automated lighting is a fixture in my home. And after you see some of these great choices by Govee and Hue, it may be in yours as well. One note, though: Most smart lights seem to like the 2.4Ghz band. You may need to do some serious fiddling with your router to get them to work. But it’s worth it.
Frequently asked questions
Here are a few questions I’m pretty sure some of you will ask. This is great for an atmospheric corner, although the recharging might be a pain. Where I think this will get a lot of use is with photographers, YouTubers, and videographers who want to create a spot of light or a mood in their videos. Just plant it where you want the light, and the mood will follow. You can get quite far with one kit, but the Govee app allows you to link together more than one kit, so you can create entire walls of light wild enough to rival your local club. Use them at home, in a meeting room, in a lobby, or as accents in a retail establishment. No matter how you arrange them, they are very cool. But it’s the price that’s the big change. I spent $60 each on my first Hue bulbs back in 2014. This kit gets you four bulbs for $21.99 or less than $6 each. You can now get ten bulbs for what I paid for a single bulb. Of course, since 2014, I’ve populated my house with Hue bulbs. They’re in almost every room and made a huge difference in the quality of life. My only wish: that there were 150W and 200W equivalent bulbs for a brighter presentation. Hey, Philips, get to work on that, please! What sets these lights out is their internal microphone. They can listen to the sound in your room and pulse and dynamically change based on those sounds. There have long been apps that tie to Hue lights to do this, but Govee’s solution doesn’t require the app to be open or your phone to be listening (or even on). The more expensive version ($89 instead of $129) includes two free-standing Flow-style lights that allow you to direct more light away from your TV. In my case, I have a rather large TV (don’t judge me, I need my science fiction!), and the larger kit does provide better immersion. Either way, the Immersion products up the TV watching experience to a surprising level. We did a lot of research and finally found lights that seemed to work. We bought one, tested it, compared the light level from these to our Hues, and confirmed that a Hue bulb at 100% matched one of these lights at 20%.
Our process
Usually, it begins with sitting on the couch, at my desk, or in bed and deciding that I really don’t want to move to change a light. Sometimes, it’s because I left a light on, and my wife wants me to turn it off – but it’s not a smart light. In general, we’ve added smart lights wherever we’ve seen a need or found an inconvenience. We bought most of our lights with our own money, but recently Govee and Philips both sent me some products to test. I probably wouldn’t have bought the fancy accent lights on my own, but getting to see them has shown me just how cool they are. I’m definitely down with augmenting the TV lights and may look at using some of the speciality lights with my studio when I film videos. As for the rest of the process, it’s mostly been trial and error. We tinker a lot with our environment, especially since we work from home. Don’t be afraid to try something. Oh, and using them with Alexa gets past the Tower of Babel that is all those vendor-specific apps. You can probably do the same with Google Assistant and Home Pods, but I haven’t tried it. So what about you? What’s your smart home setup like? Let us know in the comments below. You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.
