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Comment by stephengillie | Hacker News Reader

What if wall switches were replaced by very simple phones...or even watches. It would effectively be running the one app all of the time, defaulted to the lights in the room. There could even be some sort of hard-wire bus between this switch and the bulbs, to communicate through RF interference.

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With the drastic price fall of Android tablets (mostly the Amazon Fire) - there have been a few enterprising people that have hacked them into basically being "smart switches" for their homes.

The results are still a little too janky for my taste but the costs are getting there.

Or just use something like the Philips Hue Tap [1], which sends an RF signal (ZigBee) solely using the energy from your button press (no batteries).

[1] http://www2.meethue.com/en-us/productdetail/philips-hue-tap-...

I wish this would work with LIFX. I refuse to go to Hue but man I want a physical switch.

Since touch screen tend to break and are expensive to replace, I suggest that we instead use a simple button interface. I'm sure you could find some kind of USB button that you can hook up to the phone on your wall.

Zigbee hardware switch: $36 https://www.amazon.com/GE12722-Z-Wave-Wireless-Lighting-Cont... 7 inch touchscreen android tablet: $39 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CGSWYFM/

The zigbee switch also has a relay in it, which is the majority of the cost, but if you're controlling a bulb with a built-in receiver, you're not using that relay. There really aren't much cheaper zigbee, zwave, wifi or bluetooth wall switches.

This is what I do. I use my old android phones, on a dedicated network.

I'm also building a RPI kiosk to manage them

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