I don't know about his particular setup, but remote control lights do have their uses.
I've got a couple of wifi-controlled Philips Hue lights. There isn't a simple "on" or "off" for these - they can be set to just about any colour and brightness. One, for instance, is set to wake my daughter up with an artificial sunrise over the space of about 15 mins in the morning, is off automatically during most of the day when there's no one in the house, and goes a very dim red at night.
As my wife has a habit of forgetting that they switch themselves off, she still fairly frequently physically switches it off at the wall. If it's still of at the point that the "dim for the evening" program is due to run, then it doesn't get triggered and I have to dig out my phone app to kick it off.
So I've just built a little switch using a Pi and a very cheap (in both senses of the word) touch screen running a web page with buttons on it that triggers various actions on the light such as setting the dimmer colour.
I'm waiting for the day when there's a cheap and good off the shelf switch that does this kind of thing properly for home automation.
I've got a couple of wifi-controlled Philips Hue lights. There isn't a simple "on" or "off" for these - they can be set to just about any colour and brightness. One, for instance, is set to wake my daughter up with an artificial sunrise over the space of about 15 mins in the morning, is off automatically during most of the day when there's no one in the house, and goes a very dim red at night.
As my wife has a habit of forgetting that they switch themselves off, she still fairly frequently physically switches it off at the wall. If it's still of at the point that the "dim for the evening" program is due to run, then it doesn't get triggered and I have to dig out my phone app to kick it off.
So I've just built a little switch using a Pi and a very cheap (in both senses of the word) touch screen running a web page with buttons on it that triggers various actions on the light such as setting the dimmer colour.
I'm waiting for the day when there's a cheap and good off the shelf switch that does this kind of thing properly for home automation.