If there’s ever a Guinness World Records for the most steps in a reset process in electronic equipment, I am very sure General Electric (GE) C smart light bulb will bagged the title without any challenger. It may be the premise of a good joke like, you know, the classic “how many * it takes to change a light bulb” joke? But in the case of C, it would be “how many steps does it takes to reset a smart light bulb?” Well, think you get the idea.
The instructional video by GE was originally posted in January this year, but it just went full-on viral a couple of days ago because of the complexity of what should otherwise be an easy task. So how many steps are there exactly? Oh, not much, its just 12-14 steps, depending on the generation of the smart light bulb and the firmware. Basically, the process involves an ultra boring act of physically turning on and off the light several times and for a different duration each time.
Just picture yourself doing the follow steps:
- Start with bulb off for at least 5 seconds
- Then turn on the bulb for 8 seconds
- Turn off for 2 seconds
- Turn on for 8 seconds
- Turn off for 2 seconds
- Turn on for 8 seconds
- Turn off for 2 seconds
- Turn on for 8 seconds
- Turn off for 2 seconds
- Turn on for 8 seconds
- Turn off for 2 seconds
- And then turn it on one last time
If the bulb flash on and off three times, then go ahead and pop the champagne because, the reset is a success, if not, well then, you just have to rinse and repeat. Now, if you can’t already feel the pain reading those steps, you are not human, or you are the engineer responsible for this atrocious resetting protocol.
You see, the thing is, when you count by seconds (especially one that is this precise), chances are, you will miss by a second and if that happens, it is almost certain that the entire process is f*ck. The most flabbergasting part is, you won’t know until you complete the process. Urghh. I know exactly how that feels! And in the event the steps didn’t work, you will be left wondering, “did I miss a step? Did I timed wrongly? Or did I have a different generation bulb?”
You see how messed up is this reset process is? The above is steps are meant for firmware version 2.8 or later, btw. I don’t even want to bore you with the longer steps for firmware 2.7 or earlier. Man, I cringed just thinking about it. Seriously, no one would have imagine that resetting a smart light bulb would be such painful process, like, ever.
Needless to say, people are upset with this reset process and since the time it went viral, it has also turned into a joke. Trust me, the comments with the video are more entertaining.
Image: YouTube (GE Lighting).
Source: MarketWatch.
