Over time, lighting technology has also consistently developed and improved. The market now sees many new variants of LED bulbs and the smart bulb is also one of them. This bulb looks like any other light bulb but it comes with some amazing features that make it stand out. Smart bulbs are really useful for homeowners. These easy-to-use bulbs are a must-have for your home. There are some noticeable advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs and this blog will try to throw light on these advantages. But before that let’s learn about a smart bulb.
What is a Smart Bulb?
A smart bulb is a LED light bulb with an in-built technology that allows it to connect to a common network such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi that can be remotely controlled. These blub are a valuable part of the smart home or home automation trend. Now that you have a basic idea about a smart bulb, it’s time to learn about the major advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs and the benefits of smart bulbs.
What are Advantages of Smart Bulbs Over Regular LED Bulbs? What are Benefits of Smart Bulbs?
These days every other device is turning smart just like smart bulbs. For most smart lighting systems, you could just pop them in your electrical sockets and download their respective apps. There are many advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs, 7 such benefits of smart bulbs are mentioned below-
1. Ability to Change Light Colour, Temperature, and Brightness
Smart bulbs help you eliminate the need for dimmable LED bulbs, dimmable transformers, and dimmer switches. Such bulbs help you enhance the aesthetic of your room pretty easily. Unlike regular LEDs, you can control smart bulbs’ color, temperature, and brightness through an app. It helps you create a mood to match your situation. You can set the perfect lighting for watching a movie, taking a nap, or reading a book.
Additionally, you can also customize the ambiance for your daily routine, like turning on just the lights by the door when you are heading out, or having dim lights in the morning (to let your eyes adjust slowly. An additional benefit of changing colors is that they boost your sleep quality and lessen eye strain.
2. Remotely Controllable
Once you have set up a smart bulb, you can enjoy its flexibility and convenience from anywhere, whether you are working in the next room, lying in bed, or even a state or country away. To switch on and off smart lights, you don’t need to be physically near them. You just need to open an app and access the bulbs with a few taps on your smartphone.
In case you don’t want to get out of bed or couch to turn Off/On the lights, this feature becomes very useful. Additionally, using this feature, you can make it look like you are home when you’re actually not.
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3. Can be Added to Smart Home Routines
Using the smartphone app or your smart home platform, you can set up automation as well as routines to turn your lights on and off based on your daily routine.
Any tasks added to your routine can be executed by a smart assistant after receiving a trigger like a simple voice command or after detecting events like sunset and sunrise. For example, when you say sweet dreams to Siri, your smart assistant will automatically close the curtains, turn off the lights, and sing a lullaby to you.
On the other hand, if you aren’t using any smart assistant, you can try IFTTT automation with your smart bulb.
4. Option of Group Control
The worst part about using normal light bulbs is the sound in your head that says you must have left the bulb On in the next room. In such a situation, you have no choice but to go from one room to another and just check if you’ve really left the bulb on. Good for you that smart bulbs have solved this problem for you.
These bulbs give you the favorable option to use the Group Control Option on the app. With a single tap, this feature allows you to turn a particular group of bulbs or everything on/off at once. Additionally, you can change also change the brightness of the bulbs to your liking. You don’t need to configure the bulbs one of one.
5. You Can Create Schedules
Setting schedules is one of the most practical benefits of smart bulbs. If you are frequently using a particular bulb at a particular time, it may get tiring to manually switch it on and off it every time. To simplify this process, you can automate this task by creating a schedule for this on the smart bulb’s app.
This feature is also really helpful for people who fall asleep with the bedside light on. You just need to create a schedule at night that turns off your beside bulb at a specified time. You can turn the bulbs back on in the morning.
Additionally, you can sync your lights with sunset and sunrise to make the most out of this feature. This way you won’t have to set a schedule ever again.
Also See: How Do Solar Lights Turn On At Night?
6. Controllable Via Voice Commands
This is also one of the major advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs. The smart bulbs have the capability to connect to a smart home assistant. Because of this, you use voice commands to control your light. For instance, you can simply command Alexa to turn off your bedroom lights. This especially helps when you are all cozy in your bed and don’t have the sheer will to get up and switch off the lights.
Additionally, you can also command your smart assistant to change the light’s brightness and color however you want. You can automate the smart bulb by running the color from a warmer shade of white at night to prepare your body for a good sleep to a bluer shade of white during the daytime to help you be more productive.
7. Saves Energy
There are many advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs but this one has a deeper impact. These bulbs don’t just make your life easy and convenient, but also help you save energy. LED bulbs already use less electricity than other bulbs, and while still giving the same warmth or brightness as any other bulbs. However, using smart and energy-efficient bulbs in homes means that fewer fossil fuels are being burned and thus there are fewer toxic gas emissions.
Apart from reduced electricity use, smart lighting also credits motion-sensing technology, which is yet another way to save energy. When you walk into a room, the motion sensors turn the lights on and when you leave the room, these sensors turn off the lights.
These motion sensors can be used for safety and security as they are able to send alerts to your security system or mobile phones. They can be really helpful when you are away.
Also Read: Do Solar Lights Attract Bugs?
Disadvantages of Smart Lighting
After learning about the advantages of smart bulbs over regular led bulbs, let’s also learn about the disadvantages of smart lighting. learn about the Nothing in the world is perfect, especially devices and systems. There is always a scope for improvement associated with them. Smart lighting also has certain shortcomings that you should know about. These are a few disadvantages of smart lighting-
1. Expensive
It is one of the major disadvantages of smart lighting. Smart bulbs are much more expensive than regular lightbulbs. A standard incandescent bulb can cost you around a dollar, whereas, a non-smart LED light bulb can cost you about $5. On the other hand, a single smart bulb can cost you around $15 and such a bulb comes with additional hub expenses.
The good news here is that smart bulbs are mostly LEDs, and thus they can last an incredibly long time. In fact, many LED bulbs have an estimated lifespan of about 25,000 hours. This means you can use such a bulb for eight hours a day and expect it to last for about eight years. So, even if it’s expensive to invest in a smart bulb but is still worth it.
2. Requires an Additional Hub
You are now aware that smart bulbs are expensive but setting up a smart lighting system that’s not the only expense you’ll need to bear. Smart bulbs need a hub that acts as a controller. It communicates with your phones, and commands as well as schedules all the bulbs around your house.
Depending on the brand, the price of smart lighting hubs also varies. Mostly such hubs are used for more than one smart device around your house and this makes it a bit affordable. You can also get home security systems that act as hubs for smart lights and other such smart devices around your house.
3. Requires a Steady Wi-Fi Connection
For working, smart bulbs connect to a hub via wifi. The hub can communicate with your phone. Whenever the wifi goes out, you lose your ability to control the smart bulbs and things become frustrating.
However, the good news here is that even if your wifi is out, your smart bulbs will continue to function- they will just function as a regular lightbulb. It will have a default basic temperature and color. Additionally, you can turn it off and on with a usual light switch. But if the wifi connection in your home isn’t stable, smart lighting isn’t the right catch for you.
How Do Smart Lights Work?
A smart light is connected to a central controller and wirelessly receives instructions from it. This central controller can be a software smart home platform or a hub. Usually, a lot of smart home hubs link devices that are connected together on the same Wi-Fi network. Smart lights connect to the internet through wireless networks as these lights are Wi-Fi enabled.
Some smart lights need a dedicated smart hub to connect wirelessly. The hub is then plugged into an internet router. Additionally, the hub acts as a gateway between your phone/tablet and the smart light. The job of the hub is to process commands sent from your phone or tablet and then forward them to the smart bulb.
To use smart lights without relying on hubs, connect the lights directly to the Wi-Fi network of your office or home.
Certain smart lights aren’t completely dependent on wireless communication for all their smart features. They have sensors for detecting changes in their environments. For instance, smart bulbs with motion or daylight sensors don’t need internet connectivity or hubs to switch on and off the light. They can do so themselves when they sense motion.
Do Smart Bulbs Waste Energy Even if They are Turned Off?
Yes, smart bulbs do waste energy even if they are turned off. They are vampire devices which means that they use electricity in standby mode. In order to be turned on remotely by your phone or another device, the bulb still needs to be connected to Bluetooth or the internet. This connection needs a small amount of power to be always ready to control the lights.
On standby mode, a single smart bulb doesn’t use much energy and thus will not increase your electricity bill significantly. However, if you have 20 to 30 smart bulbs throughout your house, you’ll see a significant effect of their standby power usage on your electricity bill. After this, let’s see smart bulbs vs regular led bulbs.
Smart Bulbs vs Regular LED Bulbs: What’s the Difference?
A smart bulb is a LED light bulb that is internet-capable. It allows lighting to be controlled, customized, and scheduled remotely. Such bulbs are pretty successful products in the growing category of home automation. Most smart bulbs have a lifespan of 25,000 hours.
On the other hand, LED light bulbs are electric light bulbs that produce electricity using a light-emitting diode (LED). The light-emitting diodes produce light when the negatively charged semiconductors are applied voltage. This causes the electrons to combine and lead to a unit of light. LED bulbs have a lifespan of about 50,000 hours. This should have cleared all the differences between smart bulbs vs regular led bulbs.
With this, you have learned everything about smart bulbs. Now transitioning from traditional bulbs to smart bulbs will be easier.
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