It was easier when a light switch was just a light switch

A long time ago, in a hardware store far, far away, I found a light bulb that I could turn on and off with my phone.

It was wonderful.

Today, many years later, my house has 92 smart devices, crowded networks, mesh repeaters, several wireless protocols, virtual switches, local servers, and a few other things I have probably forgotten to document. What began as one magical light bulb has become both a financial black hole and a do-it-yourself version of hell.

Sometimes I think about the old days, when turning on a light required one finger, one switch, and absolutely no account password.

The bulb that started everything

The first device was just a bulb. I knew nothing about smart homes, protocols, cloud services, or the emotional consequences of naming six different lights "Lamp 1."

I only knew what the box promised: a Feit Wi-Fi bulb, millions of colors, and compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. I could use an app to make it blue, red, warm white, cold white, brighter, dimmer, on, or off.

That sounded like the future.

The word Wi-Fi was especially reassuring. It meant the bulb could connect directly to my home network. I did not need a separate Zigbee coordinator or a brand-specific gateway. Matter complicates that comparison because it can run over Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or Thread, but I did not know that either. At the time, my reasoning was much simpler:

Who needs another little box just to turn on a light bulb?

I was wrong about many things. This was only the first.

The bulb was smart, but I had nobody to talk to

The first problem appeared immediately: the package said the bulb worked with Alexa and Google Assistant, but I owned neither an Alexa device nor a Google speaker.

Apparently the smart bulb was waiting for me to become a smarter customer.

I chose Google and bought a Nest Mini. Once everything was installed, linked, authorized, updated, and given permission to know far more about my house than any light bulb should, I could finally say:

"OK Google, turn on my bulb."

And the bulb turned on.

Magic.

Well, not exactly magic. My voice went into the Nest Mini, the request was interpreted by Google, the command crossed into the Tuya cloud ecosystem behind the bulb, and a message eventually returned through my Wi-Fi network to the bulb sitting three meters away from me.

Depending on the app, account region, and current data-center mapping, that cloud trip can involve infrastructure in Oregon, Virginia, or somewhere else. Tuya documents several regional data centers and assigns accounts according to location. Choosing the wrong country during setup can create a surprisingly international relationship with the lamp beside your bed.

I did not know any of this. I only knew that I could speak and create light.

Besides, how many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

Surely this could not become complicated.

If one smart bulb is good, an entire house must be better

Google Home could control more than one device, so the obvious next step was to buy more bulbs.

I put smart bulbs in the kitchen, the office, the bedrooms, the hallways, and the bathrooms. Soon the house was full of Wi-Fi bulbs. Every ordinary lighting problem now had a software solution and at least one firmware version.

From the bedroom at the back of the house, I could shout toward the Nest Mini in the living room:

"OK Google, turn on Lamp 1 in the main bedroom."

Then:

"OK Google, make Lamp 1 in the main bedroom red."

This worked, provided Google heard the whole sentence, understood which room I meant, distinguished Lamp 1 from the other objects I had also named Lamp 1, and did not answer from the wrong speaker.

The logical solution was another Nest Mini in the bedroom.

Then one in the office.

Then one in the kitchen.

This solved some problems. It also revealed that the Wi-Fi signal was weak at the far end of the house. The bulbs there were not unreliable because the future was bad. They were unreliable because the router was too far away.

So I bought a mesh Wi-Fi system to spread the network through the house.

Please note the progression: I had started with a bulb because I did not want to buy an additional hub. I had now purchased multiple speakers and expanded the entire wireless network so I could avoid walking three steps and touching a switch.

Efficiency.

Then my family discovered the fatal flaw

My family had spent their entire lives doing something very strange: when they left a room, they turned off the light at the wall.

Like normal people.

Unfortunately, a smart bulb with no electricity is not smart. It is not even a bulb in any useful sense. It is a small, colorful object with no pulse.

Someone would flip the wall switch off. Later, I would say:

"OK Google, turn on the bedroom light."

Google would pause and respond with some version of:

"Sorry, I can't connect to that device. Please make sure it is connected and try again."

I knew exactly why it was not connected. A member of my family had committed the terrible offense of using a light switch correctly.

I issued new household instructions: never turn off the wall switches. Lights must now be controlled by voice.

This policy was elegant in the same way that removing all the door handles from a house would eliminate the problem of people closing doors incorrectly.

Voice control is useful when your hands are full, when you are already in bed, or when you want to control a whole room. It is less useful when somebody is standing beside the switch and must announce a formal request to a cloud service in order to leave the bathroom.

There had to be smart switches.

There are smart switches. Far too many smart switches.

Of course there are smart switches: many, many, many types.

I bought one for each room. Then I discovered that the intelligence in the switches I had chosen was not the intelligence I needed.

Those switches were designed to make ordinary bulbs smart. They connected to the home automation platform so I could ask Google to turn the switch on or off. When the switch turned off, it physically cut electricity to the circuit.

That is perfect for a normal, dimmable light bulb.

It is terrible for a Wi-Fi color bulb that needs continuous power to remain online, receive commands, change colors, and participate in scenes. My new smart switch was smart enough to kill my smart bulb.

I had successfully automated the original problem.

Back to the internet. Back to product descriptions. Back to the increasingly dangerous belief that the next purchase would make everything simple.

The switch that is not really a switch

Eventually I found the kind of device I actually needed: a wireless button.

It looked like a wall switch, but it did not directly control the electrical circuit. Pressing it could change a virtual state in the Tuya ecosystem, toggle one or more devices, or activate a complete scene. One press could turn the room on. Another could turn it off. A different press could set several bulbs to specific colors and brightness levels.

This was much closer to the dream. The smart bulbs would stay powered, my family would get physical controls, and nobody would have to shout "OK Google" into a dark hallway.

So I made my next bulk purchase: battery-powered wireless buttons for the rooms.

They did not require an electrician. I did not need a screwdriver or have to disconnect a single wire. I simply attached them to the walls with double-sided tape.

Much easier, right?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: a house full of battery-powered switches would be very inefficient if each one maintained a full Wi-Fi connection. These buttons used Zigbee, a low-power local radio protocol designed for networks of devices like switches, sensors, and lights.

Zigbee devices do not usually join the home Wi-Fi directly. They communicate through their own mesh network and need a coordinator or hub to connect that network with the automation platform.

Yes: the little box I had avoided when I bought my first Wi-Fi bulb.

I bought the Tuya-compatible hub. It was not very expensive, which is a dangerous sentence in home automation. I paired the buttons, created the scenes, assigned the actions, tested the rooms, changed the actions, tested everything again, and explained to my family why the new switch glued beside the old switch was the correct one.

At last, my house had physical buttons, colored lights, voice control, wider Wi-Fi coverage, and a Zigbee hub translating radio messages into cloud commands.

Simple.

One finger used to be enough

There is a special kind of satisfaction in building a system that responds exactly the way you imagined. A button beside the bed can turn off the entire house. A scene can set the kitchen for dinner. A voice command can change every light for a movie. When it works, it still feels like the future I saw in that hardware store.

But the future has invoices.

It also has batteries, firmware, device limits, naming conventions, Wi-Fi interference, cloud outages, account regions, protocol bridges, family training, and a drawer full of gadgets that were almost—but not quite—the right solution.

That first bulb did not save me from buying a hub. It introduced me to a hobby in which every solution is allowed to require two new hubs, a server, and a weekend.

And this is only the beginning.

In future articles, I will continue the story through multiple protocols, local controllers, motion sensors, cameras, temperature sensors, infrared blasters, Alexa, Google Home, Smart Life, Home Assistant, Apple Home, and a few other systems currently running in my house.

All of it, ultimately, so I can turn off a light.

Sometimes I miss the old switch.