OK, this is a long-ish review.
A couple of years ago I bought a pair of Nanoleaf bulbs for the bedroom - to serve as reading lights, as well as dim night lights for when we had to get up. We’ve gradually become an “Apple home” - with a couple of 1st generation HomePods in the bedroom as well. The original bulbs integrated well into HomeKit (now called “Home”), and we could ask Siri to set the lights - by name - to whatever level of brightness we wanted.
Then the bulbs aged, and their power supply to the LEDs began to go on the fritz. The lights would flicker a lot, but sometimes settle down to a steady level, usually not the level we wanted. Then sometimes they wouldn’t turn off.
I called Nanoleaf, and after several email exchanges (including a video of the flickering lights) they sent the two new bulbs that prompted this review.
Alas - trying to integrate the new bulbs into HomeKit failed. The error message said things about needing a “border router”. A what?
So it turns out that during the time since I bought the original bulbs technology has “advanced”. Sigh. After some time with Google I learned that the new system depends on “Thread” as a transport layer and “Matter” as the higher level layer of a way to control “the internet of things” - IoT. So, what to do?
Our house doesn’t have “Thread”. Our HomePods are all 1st generation (which can manage Matter but not Thread), and we don’t do TV (newer Apple TVs can do it). Our mesh WiFi network is older (and works great, thank you) and though newer mesh WiFI hardware does Thread, ours doesn’t.
OK, in order to use the new bulbs I need a Thread border router. This is getting expensive, just to have lights that work. Back to Google.
The least expensive border router turned out to be the Zemismart M1 Hub. About $50. So I got one. After several days of trial and lots of error I figured out it wouldn’t do the border routing thing. It’s a cool little unit, and perfect if you’re a hobbyist into Zigbee and other home automation games. And maybe a network engineer too. The vendor refunded my money (many thanks!).
So, back to Google. The next cheapest border router is an Apple HomePod mini - about $100 retail, $70 used ($85 after shipping and tax). I bit the bullet and ordered a used one. Just to get my bedroom lights to work.
And I waited and waited. Turned out the used HomePod mini came from Montana, and the shipping post office was snowed in for a week. Once it was on its way, it spent an extra day in a distribution center in LA, but finally arrived.
I have no use for another speaker - I’m only using it for the border router feature. And since it was a used unit I had to find out how to reset it to its original factory settings - then it was pretty easy to get it set up in my LAN.
So, after many days of messing with network foo, and $85, the bedroom lights work! And they work a lot better than the old ones - they respond a lot faster, hold a steady brightness, and the “gamma” for low levels is a lot better too. (Gamma is the relation between the light output and the level you told it to set.)
So finally we’re happy with them. Yay!
