Soraa announced their Helia LED bulb, with several lighting and communication innovations not found in other LED bulbs. Todd Antes, Senior Vice President of Marketing, gave us an overview of the benefits of their bulb.
Color
One problem with LED bulbs is the color, otherwise known as the temperature of the bulb. While a bulb may look fine part of the day, it might look yellow during another part of the day.
Helia incorporates BlueFree technology, which adjusts the amount of blue light emitted based on the time of day, resulting in light that not only looks great at any time, but reduces the amount of blue light which can disrupt the human sleep cycle.
Hubbub
Helia bulbs can communicate without the use of a hub, using PowerLine technology that many are familiar with for basic home networking. The bulb also offers a Smart SNAP Modular interface that currently contains a module that provides optical and audio sensors, Bluetooth LE connectivity.
In addition, the bulbs features various Presence Modes (occupancy, vacancy and off) and Learned Modes (night light and vacation), as well as variable motion sensitivity. The modules are software upgradable, and new Smart SNAP modules are on the drawing board.
Pricing
The company also announced a Helia Cloud Connect option, which promises Wi-Fi, Alexa and IFTTT integration. Pricing and availability haven’t yet been announced.
The Helia LED bulb will retail for US$49, and be available in Spring 2017.
That’s an interesting concept to use powerline.
One thing to note about that technology that is not obvious at first: Houses (in the US) have 2 legs of 110v power. In order for powerline networking to work, the accessories have to be on the same leg, or you have to have the legs joined at your main breaker panel. In other words, the electrical outlets in your house may not be electrically connected to each other.
It’s not the end of the world, but it is something to note that might be a complication in setting something like this up.