I help manage an event venue which will most likely be hosting a performance this February. The room has several groups of gu10 light bulbs (six controlled by one switch and nine by another) and I was thinking that it would be really interesting to use wifi controlled lightbulbs to be able to use them as spotlights to focus attention on one spot or another, and to do things like bring lights up and down smoothly rather than just turning them on and off. I could then also change colour to suit mood.

However, this would be useless if you had to switch focus between lightbulbs and set each one individually or you can only control everything on one switch as a block so I was wondering if anyone had any experience with them and whether it was possible to get a digital light switchboard to be able to control them.

Searching the internet is a bit hit and miss, mostly product adverts, and the ones I've looked at don't look right for the use.

I think the ideal would be able to use a tablet or PC to see all the lightbulbs connected (up to 20), group them arbitrarily in up to four or five groups, be able to control the light levels simultaneously, and be able to change the colour of groups, even if you could only change one group's colour at a time.

Also, it would be good to know whether any solution was reliable in terms of security, or whether it would be better to get a separate router to control them all without letting them access the internet.

 

I can't help you find the light-bulbs themselves, but I highly recommend using a router that is not connected to the internet.

 

Definitely agreed here.

1. Smart tech has a very poor history when it comes to security. Wouldn't at all be surprised if you got pwned with internet access.

2. Speaking as someone who lights performances, always put your stuff on a separate network. You do not want to have to compete with every idiot who wants to reddit cause he's bored. Wired is preferable, but that isn't really an option here it seems.


Regarding LED Wifi Bulbs, Immet, to group them in the way you want, to control them from a tablet or pc over wifi, and to have them shine brightly enough to use as spotlight-esque lighting, I seriously doubt you're going to find anything that will work with the bulbs having to fit into GU10 shaped sockets. Unless you get a full on theatrical setup with a proper light board and DMX to control the lights, and even then, I'm not sure what lights you could use that are small enough.

I don't know the exact details of what resources and budget you have and what the venue is like of course, so I won't say it's impossible, but given what you've presented, I'm not sure how you would get bright enough lights that you could control well enough to use.

 

Thanks. I thought that would be the case, but I thought I'd check to see if anyone had any ideas.

I can see quite a few GU10 LED wifi variable colour lightbulbs on Amazon and searching on the internet and they don't have to be a solid spotlight brightness, but they all seem to have individual methods of controlling them which don't fit and while a few of them have an API I am not willing to spend however long designing and creating a program to do it.