is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
After repeatedly leaving customers without smart control of their lights, Sengled has been booted from Amazon’s Works With Alexa program. As first reported by TechHive, beginning August 1st, Sengled’s Alexa skill for controlling its line of LED lights, plugs, switches, and sensors with your voice and routines is no longer available.
In a statement to The Verge explaining the decision, Amazon spokesperson Lauren Raemhild said, “We hold a high bar for the Alexa experience. Sengled has experienced a series of prolonged outages over the past few months that have not been resolved, preventing customers from being able to use Sengled’s Alexa skill to control their light bulbs.”
The future doesn’t look bright for Sengled, which has been silent since the problems started appearing earlier this summer. There appears to have been no communication to customers from the company (Amazon did reach out to its customers about the outages), and no indication of these issues on its website. Repeated attempts by The Verge to contact Sengled have been met with no response.
If your Sengled bulbs were Wi-Fi, you’re out of luck.
There is some good news. If you own Sengled bulbs that use Zigbee, BLE Mesh, or Matter, rather than Wi-Fi, they can still work with Alexa by bypassing Sengled’s spotty servers and connecting to a compatible Echo speaker or Eero Wi-Fi router (this may require setting them up again). Another option is to connect Zigbee bulbs to third-party platform hubs that support the protocol, such as Home Assistant, Hubitat, or the Aeotec SmartThings hub.
But if your bulbs were Sengled’s Wi-Fi ones, you’re out of luck. These won’t connect to Alexa, although they will still work with Sengled’s app, for as long as Sengled’s servers are still running. Users have started reporting problems there, too. All of which goes to show that relying on cloud services to turn your lights on is a fragile solution.
A common thread with these shutdowns is that the products relied on cloud servers. At one time, it was easier and less expensive for a company to develop a cloud-based controller than a local system, as they don’t require a hub or bridge and can be simpler to set up and use.
However, companies have to maintain those servers, as well as API connections to smart home platforms and voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant, which can be costly and resource-intensive. When the business model no longer pans out, history shows us that if they can’t sell it, companies just shut it down.
... continue reading