Cree Connected LED Bulb Teardown

[electronupdate]

This bulb can be remotely controlled via the "Zigbee" protocol. Home depot seems to stock a large collection of remote-controlled bulbs and controllers... it was not particularly clear which, if any, of the controllers work with this bulb, so I just tore it down to see how they added the zigbee function. Surprisingly complex and expensive looking silicon to do the remote control.

Video at the link below:

 

[idleprocess]

Along with everything "IoT", home automation has fragmented standards and is distressingly dependent upon all-too-hackable RF to do its things.

A little curious that a tarted up $15 4Flow bulb requires a $100 ZigBee hub to work. The hub will surely outlast the bulb, at which point there's apt to be another learning cycle as the replacement bulb (a generation or two later) looks smells tastes differently enough that one has to spend unwanted time futzing around with integrating it. At least it supports dimming, but that doesn't explain the complexity of the ucontroller since that's surely implemented via other guts.

A weird value proposition. Perhaps Cree thinks that some of us are pre-planning for home automation and are just waiting for ZigBee to become the winning standard / cheaper?

 

[JoakimFlorence]

With all that complex circuitry in there, one would think they could have added different wavelength LEDs in there to make it color tunable. Or at least make it high CRI. Who wants to spend so much money just to be able to wirelessly turn off and on a bulb?

Making it high CRI doesn't necessarily have to come at the cost of lower efficiency, if they incorporated red wavelength emitters in there. Normally this type of design would create a lot of added complexity, but the circuitry in that bulb is already practically like a computer!

 

[SemiMan]

Zigbee is mainly expensive due to the relatively small volumes being MFG and relatively low level of competition unlike say BTLE mesh which is as complex but for which the ICs are often MFG in far higher volumes and/or MFG on fine pitch processes. Zigbee has been around for 15 years and never achieved market promises. W.r.t complexity, IC seems really complex, but that's the case of $0.30 in volume micros today based on cortex-m, the bigger cost is in the large flash/ram driving the die size which would make this costs more. It seems complex, but it's all relative.

w.r.t. Color, that would add a lot of cost. Double the number of LEDs, increase either complexity, add a second analog channel driver, add temperature feedback for red mixing, increase number of connections, likely add complexity to the driver so that dimming looks right at low levels, add more connector pins, higher failure hence higher warranty costs, higher support costs, etc. etc.

Oh, and Anders Hoveland, why are you posting under the name JoakimFlorence now?