[nja]

I live in a 300sf studio in a tenement building built in 1917. There's a single overhead glass dome fixture for each room, but with 10ft ceilings they don't shed much light at all. I've added several hue lamps around aimed at the walls so there's plenty of light (I've also added some under-counter ikea halogen lights on a tp-link smart plug). If I had added these bulbs as regular bulbs, I would have to go around turning on/off each bulb every time I wanted the lights on/off. Instead, I can say one command to my google home (picture: walking into the apartment with hands full of groceries -- "ok google lights on" - done) or tap a button on my phone. I've also set up a cron script on a spare raspberry pi to change the color temperature when the sun sets (like flux but for the apartment lights), which helps with sleep cycle and eye strain. By this point, all but one of the dim overhead lights has burned out (I'm responsible for changing bulbs per my lease, but also since I'm living in a small apartment I don't have room for a 10ft ladder, so it's always a hassle to replace them) and I just don't use the wall switches at all.

Is this a major life improvement? Nah, not really. But having lived here for almost a decade, I can say that I like having a reasonable level of light, and the convenience that comes with the smart lights makes that less of a pain. Not like my lease would let me put in more outlets or light switches (the whole apartment is on a single 15A slow-blow fuse circuit).

But thanks for the _order_ to stop buying smart bulbs. Not like anyone has slightly different use cases for these things than the "_horrible_" replace-a-light-already-on-a-switch case that you demonize.