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Comment by Phillipharryt | Hacker News Reader

I remember this being brought up on reddit. Yes it's ridiculously lengthy, but having a procedure instead of a reset button is actually a smart idea. So they've taken a kernel of a good idea and went overboard on trying to protect users from accidentally resetting.

Having a procedure allows you to reset bulbs in hard-to-reach places or a whole set of lights in one room can be reset using the one lightswitch.

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> having a procedure instead of a reset button is actually a smart idea

I can't think of any user friendliness benefit for this. Are you thinking about component cost?

> allows you to reset bulbs in hard-to-reach places

They didn't have to remove the switch to do that

This way the bulb only has one form of input, current. It is far more basic and probably cheaper that way.

Reset all the bulbs in a room at once.

So one should expect many bulbs to need resetting at once? I would hope the need for resets would be very sporadic.

Well I would assume if you find yourself in a situation you need to reset a lightbulb in a light fitting, it's likely you would need to reset them all seeing as they're all being used for the same purpose/connecting to the same network.

You reset them because they stopped working correctly, otherwise you would reconfigure with an app or something. If you say one needs to reset them all, you mean that they have all broken.

I cant help but feel that there is a mismatch here between how electrical circuits and electronic circuits are wired. With electronics you have separate signalling and power but with electrical they are combined i.e. the “on” signal turning on the light switch is combined with power deliver of the electicity that powers the light bulb. Arguably for this to ever work properly your lights must always be “on” and their luminesnce mediated by a separate signaling channel. Then reseting is merely a matter of turning it “off” then “on”. Though perhaps a technical help desk would still be required...

Ever have a parent call and need help troubleshooting a wifi router over the phone? Imagine trying to walk them through this.

IKEA just has a turn off and on 6 times and it works well. Takes under two seconds.

Yeah, for the toddler who just discovered light switches.

There are a lot of things you don't do it you have a toddler. Putting a smart bulb on a light switch the toddler can actually reach can be one of them.

Why not have both?

Imagine if your phone needed a factory reset after getting malware and the procedure meant the all the phones in the family got a factory reset, does that seem convenient?

This is a terrible analogy and I hope you see that. They are completely different use cases. Do you have your family phones situated in your ceiling all linked together in a fitting? This procedure is inconvenient, but the idea of using a procedure is very smart.

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