This year in Russia the demand for controlled LED lamps has grown sharply. This is primarily due to the emergence of a large number of interesting models. Among them is Gauss Wiz.
A smart lamp differs from a conventional one in that a microcomputer with a wireless communication module is built into it, in addition, many lamps have LEDs of different colors and color temperatures.
Such lamps can be controlled from a smartphone, using voice assistants, wireless remotes and switches, and in some cases even conventional switches, turning them off and on several time.
I recently talked about a new series of Gauss smart lamps (https://ammo1.livejournal.com/1177634.html). In that review, I measured the parameters of the lamps and talked about their capabilities.
Gauss's series of smart lamps turned out to be unique, none of the competitors have anything like this, and about this
worth telling separately.
Now on sale you can find smart lamps with three types of control:
1. Bluetooth. The most primitive and cheapest lamps. Controlled directly from your smartphone.
2. Wi-Fi. They are connected to a home router and can be controlled both from a smartphone and from other devices.
3. Zigbee. Requires an additional gateway for operation.
The main advantage of Zigbee is its ultra-low power consumption. But for lamps powered from the mains, the consumption of the wireless interface does not matter. Zigbee has other advantages: the ability to use a MESH network (devices interact with each other, bypassing the gateway), a large number of devices in the network is permissible, and work over long distances.
PHILIPS HUE, IKEA TRÅDFRI, Xiaomi Aqara lamps work with the Zigbee protocol, and despite the common protocol they are far from always compatible - Philips lamps are unlikely to be controlled by an IKEA dimmer.
Lamps with Wi-Fi are now the most popular and inexpensive. Their main plus is connecting to a home router without a special gateway: you can buy one light bulb and it will work. Disadvantages are associated with the peculiarities of Wi-Fi operation: due to the clogged Wi-Fi 2.4 MHz range (all smart lamps use it), the stable communication distance is reduced, cheap household routers do not support the operation of a large number of devices (even though routers provide for addressing up to 255 devices, many of them are difficult to "pull" 15). However, if the number of smart lamps in your apartment does not exceed a dozen or you have a powerful router, it is quite possible to use lamps with Wi-Fi.
The lamps Gauss, Yandex, Xiaomi Mi, Hiper, TPlink, Navigator and many others are controlled via Wi-Fi.
There are three types of smart lamps:
1. Constant color temperature white light lamp: on and brightness control.
Almost all smart lamps can not only turn on and off on command, but also change the brightness.
2. Variable Color Temperature Lamp: Controls color temperature, power-on and brightness.
Many smart bulbs are equipped with LEDs with two color temperatures (typically 2700K and 6500K). These lamps can smoothly change the color temperature from warm to cold light by mixing the light of two types of LEDs.
3. Lamp and Variable Color and Color Temperature: Controls color, color temperature, power on and brightness.
These lamps are equipped with five types of LEDs: white "warm", white "cold", red, green, blue. As a rule, the brightness of colored LEDs in such lamps is much lower than that of white ones. Most lamps of this type give either white light with a variable color temperature or colored light. Only a few lamps (including Gauss) can combine white and color LEDs to create white accents.
The Gauss smart lamp range includes all three types of lamps, so you can choose the one that best suits your application.
Looks like only Gauss has filament smart lamps, including those with decorative bulbs. And also, in addition to lamps, there are smart lamps and even smart tapes.
Probably the most amazing Gauss smart lamp is the variable color temperature filament lamp. Two of its threads are "warm", two are "cold", and the "warm" ones have a color temperature of 2200K, which allows make the light not only cold, neutral and warm, but also "super warm", like a candle or an open fire.
But the main difference between Gauss smart lamps and competitors is not even in the range, but in the software. And I am talking not only about the mobile application, but also about the cloud software, and the software of the lamp itself, its "firmware". A lot depends on it:
- Power-on behavior. Many lamps, each time they are connected to the network (turned on by a wall switch), turn on in one specific mode, regardless of what mode they were in before turning off. Alas, many Chinese lamps turn on in the coldest light mode. Gauss not only remember the state, but also allow you to choose in which state to turn on (in the memorized or explicitly specified);
- Dynamic modes. Most lamps can only light up constantly, Gauss can change brightness and color according to the program (imitation of fire, relaxation modes, party modes, sunrise and sunset modes, color change modes depending on time days);
- Ability to match colors and white light. Most bulbs cannot turn on white and color LEDs at the same time. Gauss knows how and thus adds accents to white light;
- Ability to control conventional switches. Gauss smart bulbs allow you to use a conventional switch to select two preset modes. In order to change the mode, you need to quickly turn off and on the switch. I have not seen such a function in other smart lamps (it happens only in simple uncontrolled lamps with two color temperatures or three-stage dimming);
- Convenience of adding a new lamp. Some Chinese lamps have to struggle for tens of minutes before they successfully bind to the application. Gauss can be added in a few seconds, and you can add multiple lamps at the same time. Also, I have never met anyone like that.
Cloud software influences the speed of lamp control and their compatibility with voice assistants and smart home systems. For Russia, the most important is the support of Yandex Alice and the IFTTT service. Gauss has it all.
How convenient it is to control lamps from a smartphone depends on the mobile application. Gauss Wiz is perhaps the most user-friendly application I've ever met.
Of course, Gauss smart lamps also have disadvantages. Perhaps the most significant one today is the lack of wireless switches. The remote control will appear soon, but it's still not that - you need a wall-mounted switch. It is not always convenient to control by voice or from a smartphone. Often you just want to press the switch on the wall. The function of controlling a conventional switch helps a little with this, but if you turn off the lamp with a conventional switch, you cannot turn it on from a smartphone or voice. Of course, you can still use switches to control Gauss lamps, for example from the Xiaomi smart home, but this will require a tricky setting through IFTTT, which not everyone is capable of. I hope that over time, Gauss will have its own convenient and beautiful switches that are not inferior in uniqueness to lamps.
It is important to understand that all smart lamps are not aimed at those who "build" a real large smart home with many devices and centralized control (however, they can use them too through the same IFTTT), but to ordinary people who can simply buy one or more smart bulbs and use their capabilities without any additional equipment and complex settings.
For six months of using voice control of the light, I was so used to saying "Alice, turn off the light" before going to bed that I want to say this even at the dacha, where the lighting is not yet controlled. :)
If you want to make the lighting help you wake up in the morning (dawn mode), it will change with your mood and time of day, created coziness in the house with color shades and was controlled by voice, try to start using smart lamps. Gauss Wiz is a great option for this.
© 2020, Alexey Nadezhin
The main topic of my blog is technology in human life. I write reviews, share experiences, talk about all sorts of interesting things. I also make reports from interesting places and talk about interesting events.
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