In both of the cases you’ve described, the light switch is effectively a circuit interruptor rather than what I’m talking about. My lights are 100% powered 100% of the time and there is intelligence in the light which responds to commands (wifi or Zigbee depending on manufacturer) and controls the brightness and color of the bulb in response (including turning the bulb completely off).
You can’t do that with a wall switch and wall based dimmers reduce the power available to the smarts in the bulb. That’s one of the reason older bulbs would start flashing below a certain dimmer setting and why newer ones shut down well before reaching the lowest possible illumination level.
“Circuit breaker”, no… That’s a specific term for a protective device which interrupts a circuit based on a current demand in excess of the circuit breaker’s rated current for a specified minimum amount of time. By “circuit interruptor” I am referring to any device which reduces or blocks power being provided to the end device vs. the device being internally controlled and always powered.
Imagine having to control your TV from a light switch instead of having remote.
Now that we have lights with more capability than merely on/off/dim, it’s worth having more sophisticated ways to control them. Personally, I like using voice, but dedicated handheld controllers (like TV remotes) or even wall-mounted controllers (in fact I am working on prototyping one of these) are also a possibility, not just phone apps.
Anyway, coming back to the subject at hand, if the developers want to do RBAC, that’s great. Why isn’t it even in the roadmap, then?
It seems to me that despite all the support for the idea in this thread, there’s also a LOT of comments presumptuously expressing reasons we shouldn’t want it. Those are very frustrating and seeing that attitude come from a moderator in the forum is particularly disheartening.
You missed my point completely. Smart light switches do not need to cut the power to the lights, they can just send commands to the smart light bulbs.
And smart light switches and relays are exactly that.
Honestly, it’s a matter of personal preference and I’m not telling your what you should do. I’m just pointing out a rather obvious possibility your seemed to ignore. Personally I could not imagine not having light switches in my house. Sure, your can automate some things, you can voice command some other things, but all of that comes with drawbacks and I would not want that to be the only way to control lights in my home.
Some things specifically related to this are mentioned in the State of the Open Home 2024 presentation.
I haven’t really noticed. People are commenting on various semi related topics, like how you should control lights on your home, but I don’t think anyone really thinks we should not have a better role based permission system.
Well, ok, if you think that “improve privacy” is equivalent to “add RBAC”, then sure…
From my perspective, that sounds more like improving the existing ability to hide things from some users than resolving the inherent security problems and lack of ability to create distinct roles for different users of the system.
At least I’m not the only one that thinks that. I could definitely see “Improve privacy in user, guest, and public access” as doubling down on visibility in the UI.
Like, I’ll gladly eat crow if we do get RBAC. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it never comes.
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