What we have here, in essence, is a desk lamp…oh, and a flashlight…and a motion sensor.

If a desk lamp with a flashlight and a motion sensor intrigues you, then read on…

UNBOXING
I previously reviewed the iHaper B2 White Smart Bulb, and was actually quite taken aback at the quality of the box, considering the product itself was essentially just a smart light bulb, and they clearly aim to impress with the packaging for the DL1, with the minimalist white carton and silver foil letterpressed name on the front. It’s properly luxurious! The front only really has the lamp and the HomeKit logo on the front, whilst the back give you the lowdown of the product itself, which is as follows;

• Input voltage: DC 5V 2A
• Rated power: 3.2W (16 x 0.2W LED modules)
• Battery capacity: Lamp – 2600mAh / Flashlight – 800mAh
• LED working life: 25,000hrs
• Rang of CCT: 3800-4250K
• Luminous Flux: 80-160lm

All the main parts are made of some sort of metal (except for the central three-way joint) – presumably, aluminium. The parts do feel really well made and have enough heft to not feel lightweight or flimsy. The coating on these parts too has a slightly matt look and feel, with an off-white or even every so slightly pearlescent look to the finish, which only adds to the premium feel. The inside of the box has all the parts of the lamp separated into sections, for easy transportation and assembly, all held in place with foam, along with a manual in English and Mandarin. Those parts are, the base of the lamp, which is sort of like a two-toed duck’s foot, the stem of the lamp, the lamp section that contains the LEDs and the touch-sensitive control, and the aforementioned flashlight, that sort of counterbalances the LED section, albeit only in a visual sense. You also get a USB-C to USB cable to power the device, and three grey half-globe rubber stops, presumably to replace the neon red/orange ones the lamp comes fitted with if they’re a little gauche for your taste. Personally, I like the red/orange-grey look – very Habitat!

INITIAL SETUP/CONSTRUCTION
Putting it all together was fairly simple, with the main stem sitting inside the hole of the base of the lamp. The section with the LEDs and touch-sensitive controls then locks into place with a simple twist, with the flashlight clamping itself into place with a very satisfyingly powerful magnet. Once that’s all done, you only then need to place the USB-C cable into the slot at the base of the stem section, and plug the standard USB end into a powered USB port. Speaking of the USB cable, this is only the second device I’ve got with a USB-C connection (the other being a Mi Air Quality multi-sensor with colour screen), and after having dealt with micro USB leads of one variety or another, USB-C really is a delight by comparison, with no issues of which way round the plug needs to be – essentially just like the Lightning cables for iOS devices. The provided cable also has matching trim to go with the red/orange caps on the lamp.

Once you’ve put the lamp together, there are pretty much two positions for the lamp, with the LED section either being at a 45° or horizontal angle. You can adjust the foot of the lamp to be at any position in between these two positions, by simply adjusting where the hole of the foot sits in relation to the stem, as long as you’re not blocking the USB-C port of course. The section for the USB-C cable is just a plain black strip with a small ridge to let you know the limit at which the base can be angled to, along with the iHper logo and a small red LED to let you know it’s being powered.

MANUAL CONTROLS
Taking a closer look at the other aspects of the light, we can see that to control the light manually, there’s a touch-sensitive strip at the top of the arm containing the LED lights, that’s broken down into an on/off icon and four dots, each of which lights up when activated by touch. So, to increase or decrease the brightness, you can simply press on one of these dots to get straight to a relevant brightness level, or slide your finger up and down the strip to adjust the brightness accordingly. When I say ‘accordingly’ though, that’s a very loose term in this case, as each dot on the touch-sensitive strip doesn’t correspond to equal amounts of brightness levels;

• power icon = off or 5% brightness
• dot 1 = 10% brightness
• dot 2 = 20% brightness
• dot 3 = 50% brightness
• dot 4 = 100% brightness

It’s a little confusing to use at first, as when you slide your finger downwards to reduce brightness, eventually you hit the on/off button, which should be taking you to 5% brightness, however, it instead turns the light off. Personally, I’d prefer to decide separately as to whether I want to turn the light off, as I can simply do that by pressing the on/off button without having to slide my finger across the control, so to me this is a bit of an oversight, albeit a minor one. The light temperature itself is pretty much a mid-white, so not too cool and not too warm, sitting somewhere between 3800-4500K, and it’s not tunable, unlike the Mi Desk Lamp Pro. You can actually get even lower than 5%, via the Home app, and each level from 5-1% does have a distinctive brightness level.

placed in the middle of the lamp, where the stem, the LED section and the flashlight all connect, is a small motion sensor, with an even smaller recess containing a blue LED. The flipside of this section contains a mode/reset button. This button activates/deactivates a special ‘automatic’ mode that illuminates the blue LED and works thus, once activated;

• if you are away for more than 5 minutes the lamp will adjust to the darkest mode automatically (5% brightness). If you are back within 30 minutes, the lamp will readjust back to its original brightness level before you left. If you are away for more than 30 minutes, the lamp will turn off, and will not reactivate on your return until you turn the light on again.

This mode works by using the motion sensor to detect your presence, so assuming you’re using the desk lamp at your desk and you’re also working there, it’ll detect your constant movement and keep at the level you’ve set, only turning down once you’ve either not moved for 5 minutes, or have left to get a coffee or take a restroom break. The motion sensor can be used just like other motion sensors via any HomeKit app, in automations and for triggering other HomeKit devices.

With the lamp part looked at, we now should focus on the flashlight portion. This isn’t actually the first HomeKit product I’ve owned with a built-in flashlight, with that honour going to the Eton Blackout Buddy Connect Charge. The flashlight, which is, of course, detachable, is 14cm/5.5″ long and sits comfortably in the hand. The connector that magnetically (did I mention satisfyingly?) connects to the lamp also contains a recessed on/off button for the torch. The torch has a removable cap, which is part of the overall aesthetic of the lamp, as the other section, with the main LED light, also uses the same cap. It is removable though, and whilst the light is decent enough with the red cap on, once removed, the flashlight is actually quite bright and creates a quite sharp ‘spot’ of light. I don’t have the number on how bright it is in terms of lumens, but it’s more than enough for minor emergency situations. Given that this is detachable, it does contain its own lithium battery, as in fact does the lamp itself, so essentially both can run without mains power. The manual states the lamp can run for approximately 4 hours on a single charge, and also takes 4 hours to fully recharge, although it’s not entirely clear whether this applies to the flashlight too, or indeed whether the lamp relies on the power from both batteries combined to achieve the 4 hours of power free light it claims.

SETUP FOR HOMEKIT
This is a great lamp, but it would be just a lamp (and flashlight) if it weren’t for HomeKit integration. The lamp comes with two instances of the HomeKit code; one in the manual, and one next to the touch-sensitive control panel on the lamp itself. It’s a strange place to have the code, but I guess for many people the top part is actually out of sight for the most part, so no matter. As ever, installation is as simple as adding an accessory by scanning the QR code, assigning it to a room and naming it, so nothing to see in that respect. Once it has been installed, you get two devices – the lamp, that, of course, allows for adjusting the brightness, and the motion sensor, which I previously mentioned can be used just like any other motion sensor. The previously mentioned ‘automatic mode’ for the motion sensor is totally separate from general HomeKit automation, however. Having tested the motion sensor for the past 7-10 days, as part of an automation, I’ll be honest and say it’s not massively fast. It works, but it’s a little on the slow side. As it can be used in automations, it’s not limited to controlling the lamp though, so it’s still a welcome addition nonetheless. The torch is merely an added bonus to the lamp and is not exposed as a separate device in HomeKit, which is a shame, as the Eton device, which I mention in the previous paragraph, does see the nightlight, flashlight and motion sensor, all as separate devices. The lamp itself can still be seen by the Home app even if it’s not connected to mains power, which is great, and generally, the lamp itself has been well behaved, only showing up once with the ‘no response’ issue, which I pretty much take in my stride these days.

Whilst I use the Home app for 95% of the time, it’s always a good idea to download the relevant company’s own apps, if only for checking if there are any firmware updates. In the case of the iHaper app, it’s a fully functional HomeKit app, and it doesn’t look especially ugly which seems to the case for a lot of third-party apps. Unfortunately, every time I’ve tried to either sync this lamp with the cloud (in case I want Google or Alexa integration), it has failed consistently. Not only that but whenever I go to the settings for the lamp to see if there’s a firmware update, it’s constantly stuck in ‘checking’ mode. You really would think, given all the attention to detail they’ve lavished on not only the product but even the packaging, they’d get their app sorted. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be the case. Hopefully they’ll fix this, but for now, I’ll just rely on the lamp as it stands at present.

CONCLUSION
As this is a desk lamp first and foremost, it’s the kind of device that you generally would operate manually much of the time, and so you then have to ask yourself whether paying the extra for HomeKit integration is worth the extra cost. well of course it is!! In all seriousness though, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of automation in your day-to-day items, even if you don’t use them often, and with the addition of the torch and the motion sensor, bundled together with a rather unique design, it had me sold on the first day I saw it late last year. If I had to choose between just one desk lamp – the choice being either the Mi Desk Lamp Pro or the iHaper, then I’d veer towards the more traditional Mi lamp, as it’s not only more adjustable, it also has the option for cool and warm light. That doesn’t detract from the unique and funky design of the iHaper though, and thankfully I don’t have to make that kind of decision, so I’ll keep both.

The post iHaper DL1 Smart Desk Lamp (review) appeared first on Homekit News and Reviews.

• Siri Voice Control: iHaper smart LED desk lamp is designed for Apple users. Combined with HomeKit smart home system, you can adjust the brightness directly by voice commands, so you can free your hands and concentrate on learning or working.
• Detachable & Multifunctional: Unique branch structure, it can be split into 2 parts for different scenes, the larger “twigs” for table lamps, the 14cm/5.5inch “twigs” can be taken down as emergency flashlights (remove the silicon cover).
• Eye-Protection: Use high-quality LED beads, no stroboscopic, no blue light, providing vision protection for you and your child; 4 brightness levels, support touch control, height adjustment and angle adjustment.
• Energy-Saving: Support human body induction and auto adjustment, it will automatically turn on when you come close, and dim or turn off when you are away for a certain amount of time; 7W, 40W equivalent, it’s energy-saving.
• What You Get: iHaper DL1 smart LED desk lamp, USB-C charging cable, 3 extra silicon covers (red), user manual, 18 months warranty and lifetime technical support.

The post iHaper DL1 Smart Desk Lamp appeared first on Homekit News and Reviews.

So, what is it? Well, the Blackout Buddy Connect Charge (which I’ll henceforth refer to as the ‘BBC’) is essentially a flashlight, with a night-light, a motion sensor and a power bank. It’s also endorsed by the American Red Cross, which is proudly emblazoned across the front, so that can’t be too bad, right? But why all this in one device? Well, it’s clearly for emergency situations first and foremost. Imagine if you will, with the power cut to the lights, and your house is pitch black, the night-light will let you know where it is, as will the flash light, which turns on when the power is cut. The flash light will also help you manoeuvre to a safe place, being that its self-powered. Should your phone be low on power and you need to call someone for help due to not being able to escape your situation, then the BBC can also charge up to two phones, as long as you have a suitable USB cable designed  for your phone. It also has a motion sensor, so if for any reason you are in complete darkness and need to find your way to safety, the motion sensor will turn on the night-light as an additional aid.

NOTE: Be aware that Eton do make other versions of this product that aren’t ‘smart’, so if you intend to get one for yourself, make sure it’s the ‘HomeKit’ variety.

We’ll go into all these functions in a bit, but to start, as always I’m going into the packaging first, you know – it’s my thing…

As far as boxes go, this is pretty standard, but it protects the device well enough, so no complaints as regards strength. The front lets you know that it works with the ‘Big Three’ and also lets you know of the aforementioned connection with the American Red Cross. The rear goes into a lot more detail about the product, along with requirements etc. You also get to see that it is an ‘officially licensed product’ of the American Red Cross, which also has a ‘shout out’ for the ARC, which is a nice touch, as they do a great job. One side of the carton lays out the basics in icon format, while the other side lets you know the four basic functions. If you saw this on a shelf and still didn’t know what it does after all this, then you probably need something else…

Once into the box, we get to see the device itself, which is held in place by a moulded plastic tray, as is standard these days. once totally removed from all packaging, you only have the two things; the ‘BBC’ itself and a manual. The manual itself is quite informative and it does pay to read it for some of the finer points about setup and other details. It also contains one of three copies HomeKit codes, so don’t throw it away unless you’ve committed that number elsewhere. The other code appears on the side and rear of the ‘BBC’ itself.

At first glance, the device is actually a fair size, although it does sit fairly comfortable in the hand. It’s slightly shorter and less wide than my iPhone 6s Plus, coming in at 70mm wide, 135mm tall and 28mm deep, although the front of the device is rounded, so the edges slope off, making it nice enough to hold.

Going over the externals of the device, three of the four edges have something going on in some way or another; The all important flash light is situation at the top of the device, which consists of three white LEDs in a mirrored surround. The flashlight can be turned on via your smart phone, but will not turn on when pressing the button positioned on the front of the device, except when it’s not plugged into mains electricity, which once disconnected from the mains, automatically turns on anyway. The bottom consists of a night-light with a diffuse enclosure, which is approximately as large as the flash light and almost as bright. One side of the device accommodates two USB ports, both designed for charging phones, or similarly powerful devices that use a USB cable for charging. Next to these ports is a switch that controls the behaviour of the night-light; Auto allows the night-light to turn on and off automatically based on the amount of surrounding ambient light. SW allows the user to control the night-light via their smart phone or voice assistant.

The rear of the BBC, is simply the electrical pins and printed info regarding certification, power output etc, but in this pretty boring face is something far more useful…

the pins can actually rotate 360 degrees, so you can have this device at pretty much any angle you like.  It may seem like a small detail, but in Taiwan, where I live, even though they use the same voltage and plug type as  North America, for some reason buildings all have the dual wall sockets placed horizontally, not vertically, which isn’t of much use to some devices. With this adaptive plug, it’s not an issue at all, so I’m not stuck with a night-light that shines on a wall, instead of the floor, where it’s most useful.

Setting up
As with most HomeKit products, this was pretty easy to install, although in the booklet they recommend downloading the Eton Home app (I think it was called), which is always useful for things like firmware updates etc. However, I have to stop here and warn anyone that is thinking of buying this, do so by all means, but DO NOT bother with the Eton Home app. Apart from the fact it’s a butt-ugly app to begin with, it’s really counterintuitive in use, kept crashing every time I wanted to check for a firmware update, but worst of all, I strongly suspect that it was screwing around with my automations! Soon after I installed the app, all but one of my 17 automations had mysteriously disappeared! Luckily I could pretty much remember them all, and just re-added the most important ones, but within about 5 minutes, they’d vanished again. This happened 3 times before I finally suspected the Eton app to be the culprit. I deleted the app, and the problem never came back. Coincidence? possibly…

When it comes to HomeKit, it works fine, and that’s good enough for me, but it also claims to work with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. I haven’t got any Alexa devices, so I can’t tell you how well it fares, but I do have a Google Home Mini, and it was impossible to set up – it was a complete fiasco. I won’t even waste your time on why, but safe to say someone at Eton should be looking for a new job.

That all aside, When I did get it all set up, I actually thought it was faulty, as the flash light would not work whether plugged into the mains or not, however, it turns out that the internal rechargeable Li-ion battery does need charging for a few hours before it becomes useable. This wasn’t the case with the night-light or motion sensor though. Once it’s in the HomeKit system, you get three tiles; one for the flash light, one for the night-light and one for the motion sensor. The motion sensor isn’t in any way customisable, being programmed to reset after approximately 15 seconds. This may be adjustable in the Eton app, but I’m not going anyway near it! The motion sensor isn’t overly sensitive or amazingly fast, but it’s good enough. The flash light and the night-light are likewise unadjustable beyond being able to be turned on or off, which is fine given that you don’t want a device meant for emergencies to be set to low levels. Even though you can’t enable the flash light via the physical button on the front (unless as already mentioned, when its unplugged or not receiving current) you can still turn it on via the Home app. If you have the night-light set to Auto via the switch on the side of the device, you will not be able to turn it on via the app, given that it’s designed to only come on when it gets dark. If you want the night-light to come on in the event of motion, it will only do this if there’s no power going to the device, so to do this in normal circumstances, you simply need to create an automation, which is easy enough.

Once it was raring to go, and the battery was fully charged, it was all working great. The torch seemed bright enough in daylight (as seen above) but was more than adequate in the dark, as was the night-light. Indeed, with both lights on, you’d have no problems seeing your way around.

As you can see from the images above, taken in the daylight, both lights are decently bright. Add to the fact that you can angle to device, it really is very amenable to a lot of situations. Having been testing this for the last few weeks, I’ve noticed nothing out of the ordinary and it’s behaved itself and responded quite well to both pressing the tiles in the Home app, to triggering automations with the motion sensor and night light without a problem.

So, looking at the device itself, is it anything out of the ordinary? After all, it’s a night-light, which you can find on some smart plugs. It’s a motion sensor, which you can find anywhere these days, but can any of these provide a charge for two smart phones while giving you a bright LED emergency light when they’re not even plugged in? I think not. When I first saw this device online, the price was around $80, which was a bit too high for me, but luckily it came down to just $29.99 for literally 24 hours before going up to $69.99, so I really had to get it. Do I need it? Well, we all need a flash light once in a while, and we always say that after realising we didn’t act on it when we previously said that to ourselves, so to me it was an excuse to not only get something for the possibility of needing it but also having something smart too, that can act in a day-to-day level as well. However, where I live (Taiwan) we do have regular earthquakes as well as typhoons, and whilst I’ve experienced some really unsettling tremors, so far nothing serious has happened, but if the worst did happen, I’m sure this would probably be helpful in more ways than one, so for the sake of $30 + postage, it’s well worth it for peace of mind.

Specs

• Wi-fi: 802.11 b/g/nm 2.4gHz only.
• Input: AC 120V 50/60Hz
• Standby power: 03.w
• USB output: 5V/1A x 2
• Total output current: DC 2A (max)
• Battery: Li-ion 3.7V 2000mAH
• Charging time: 4 hours
• Flashlight time > 30 hours

The post Eton Blackout Buddy Connect Charge (review) appeared first on Homekit News and Reviews.

• Wifi connected motion sensor
• Remote notification
• Bright emergency 3 LED light
• Two 5V/1A USB Ports
• 2000 mAh lithium battery
• Lights up when there is a power failure or blackout
• Can be used as a flashlight
• Motion activated LED night light
• Swivel movement directs light where you need it

Dimensions

5.5”x 2.8”x 1.1” (H x W x D)
140 x 70 x 280 mm (H x W x D)
Weight: 6.7 oz. (190 g)

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