While most smart-home product producers are in a race to the underside as a part of a long-running worth warfare, a number of distributors are taking a decidedly totally different method. Witness Luke Roberts, a brand new model that wishes to mix sensible expertise with luxurious design.
The Luke Roberts Model F is a hefty pendant lamp designed for everlasting set up. The bulbs are hardwired into the lamp and may’t be swapped out. The fixture is designed in two items: The wiring and a few electronics are housed in a base unit that’s instantly mounted to the ceiling. The pendant itself dangles from this unit instantly from its twine.
This a part of the lamp is a saucer-shaped system a few foot throughout which accommodates a whopping 300-plus LEDs. These LEDs are organized into 100 “segments” which every act as a unit. Eighty 4 of these segments intention downward from the underside of the lamp, and 16 are aimed to fireplace upward and supply oblique lighting. The uplights could be tuned to any coloration within the rainbow, however the downlights are tunable white solely.
The distinctive design of Luke Roberts’ Model F pendant lamp permits it to solid white tunable gentle down and any coloration of sunshine upward. And each are directional.
The downlights should all be tuned to the identical coloration temperature, however you might have immense management over the particular places the place the sunshine is emitted. Through Luke Roberts’ app, you possibly can “paint” the fixture to, say, solely emit gentle from the correct aspect of the unit, and go away the left aspect darkish. You can drop pinpricks of sunshine across the fixture, or you possibly can go away the entire thing uniform.
The uplight is much more versatile. Here you possibly can choose a number of colours to look concurrently, so you can also make the uplighting half purple and half inexperienced, or paint a design to appear to be a rainbow, with a dozen totally different colours sprayed throughout the highest of the fixture.
This a part of the app enables you to configure the Model F’s uplight to solid a number of colours in numerous instructions, .
Each half of the fixture could be dimmed independently, and you’ll create quite a few scenes inside the app to suit your temper for various instances of the day. With a complete accessible output of 4,000 lumens down and 1,400 lumens up, there’s no scarcity of lighting energy right here. Total energy draw beneath full load is 75 watts.
To set up the Model F, you’ll have to be a bit extra snug with electrical work than wiring an ordinary change or outlet receptacle. Not solely will you be working over your head on a ladder, the connections inside the bottom could be tough to handle. You’ll discover two units of spring clips inside, certainly one of which attaches to your family wiring. The different set attaches to the wires that result in the pendant. The drawback is that every one these clips are difficult to work with, particularly in cramped quarters. It’s troublesome to get the wiring results in catch on the clips, and greater than as soon as throughout my set up I used to be pissed off to discover a wire had fallen out. The excellent news is that there are solely 5 wires in complete that have to be linked this manner, but it surely’s a design that finally wants a revision.
As famous, the pendant hangs instantly from the facility twine, and this lets you modify the peak at which the pendant hangs (as much as 4 toes beneath the ceiling). Excess wiring is coiled up inside the base, and a sequence of metallic hooks is designed to carry the twine in place the place you need it with out slipping. As with the connections, getting the wire wrapped simply so takes some doing, and once more it’s difficult by having to work overhead.
You’ll love or hate the Model F’s completely trendy industrial design. There is not any in between.
After I had the {hardware} handled, it was time to show to software program. Luke Roberts has its personal app, and because the system doesn’t combine with another sensible residence gear, you’ll want it. The excellent news: Setup is simple. I put in the app and it linked to the lamp mechanically, with no pairing required. The unhealthy information: It’s Bluetooth solely, so that you’ll have to be in the identical room because the lamp to make any configuration modifications or to show it on and off. And as with all sensible gentle fixture or bulb, if you happen to wire it to a circuit managed by a wall change, you’ll wish to ensure that change stays within the on place so you possibly can management it with the app.
Within the app, you’re rapidly dropped right into a handful of preset configurations, any of which you’ll be able to tweak to fulfill your wants. Paint the uplight with varied colours and fine-tune the downlight by portray the place you need gentle to be emitted. Each half of the Model F has its personal dimming system, and an built-in directional system enables you to align the system’s lighting design with whichever path you take into account “up” inside the app.
Working with the Luke Roberts app isn’t all the time intuitive.
The app is minimalistic by design and isn’t instantly intuitive, requiring a whole lot of uncommon tap-and-dragging in an effort to launch the enhancing wheel or to “erase” a coloration. Getting to the dimming system is especially troublesome, and there’s no technique to simply make impromptu brightness modifications. It’s a lightweight designed to be tuned to a sure theme, after which left that method till you’re prepared for one thing totally new relatively than continually being fiddled with.
And to be sincere, the sunshine seems to be nice. Whether you need a moody candlelight impact or one thing nearer to a highlight—or each, in fact—you’re lined. The aesthetic of the {hardware} itself may very well be extra polarizing—the design is decidedly trendy and stark.
A number of further options embody one that permits you to decide which scene the lamp ought to begin off with (a preset, the last-used scene, or a “smart” selection that the lamp determines primarily based in your utilization patterns). There’s additionally one that provides the choice to cycle by scenes by turning the sunshine on and off rapidly; in any other case, there’s not way more to the app. The product helps Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri, however configuring the lamp to work with these digital assistants is convoluted. You should undergo 11 steps, for example, to link it with Alexa.
The Model F is available in your selection of three colours—white, grey, or black—and every is priced at a whopping $799. This is a high-end product with a high-end price ticket. The value alone will render it a non-starter for a lot of potential patrons, however if you happen to’re on the lookout for an expensive trendy gentle fixture with a smattering of sensible options—and also you don’t thoughts that it could’t be built-in into the remainder of your sensible residence system—it’s doubtlessly value saving up for.