Few inventions have attained the same level of ubiquity in modern society as the lightbulb. Though every area of life these days is becoming digitized, connected and automated, you would think that there wouldn't be much room for improvement where the lightbulb is concerned. It's supposed to do one thing: light up a room so you can easily find your way around.
However, as smart home technology continues to widen its reach and become more sophisticated, companies are starting to show us that there's so much more to the lightbulb than we originally thought. One of those companies is Sengled, which showcased several Wi-Fi-connected lightbulbs at CE Week in New York Wednesday.
What's so special about Sengled's bulbs is that they not only connect to Wi-Fi, allowing you to control them from anywhere in your home through an app as the LED and Wi-Fi repeater Boost does, but some of them also pull double duty, serving to light your home in addition to performing another function.
That's the case with Snap, launching this October. It may look like one of those LED bulbs that you would have on the side of your house to light up your front porch or backyard at night. Yes, it does do that, but it also doubles as an IP camera that has a microphone and speaker to capture audio and video from outside of your house and store it later in the cloud. You can use this as a home security system to monitor what's going on outside of your home on iOS and Android devices even when you're not there. You can also draw up to three zones within the app so that you can be notified when there's activity within that area.
Also pulling double duty is the Pulse, which works as an LED lightbulb and JBL Bluetooth speaker in one. The lightbulb connects to an app that lets you adjust both the brightness and volume of the speaker. Pulse came about as the result of trying to figure out a way to get rid of bulky and cumbersome stereo systems and wires in the home, Sengled's Marketing Manager Ben Thacker told Tech Times at CE Week Wednesday.
"Why not bring us a product that really solves problems and is fun and see what people think about it," Thacker said.
Like all of Sengled's products, all you have to do is screw in the lightbulb as you would normally, download the app and it will connect with almost any Bluetooth-enabled device. Because the bulbs can get as loud as really any speakers, the company recommends that you only have eight bulbs per room, Thacker said. Because of the size of these speakers, some of the bass frequencies can get lost, so there is also a subwoofer adapter available to retain that rich, deep sound.
When Thacker demoed the Pulse during CE Week, I almost expected to have my eyes blinded by strobe lights or be hypnotized by a string of different colors. It seems like the Pulse would be a raver's dream. However, the Pulse only emits that normal pale yellow hue you see from most lightbulbs, and Sengled intends to keep it that way.
"We made a conscious effort to stay away from any color changing or strobing," Thacker said. "We don't want to make anything that's gimmicky or trendy. We just want to make the best product we can."
That's no matter. You can always supply your own glow sticks anyway.
