If you've embraced the smart home with Philips' Hue connected lights, and you're an Xfinity Home subscriber, your fancy lighting options are now becoming even cleverer. The two companies have announced a deal this morning which sees Hue light control brought under the umbrella of the Xfinity Home app. There, it joins IoT gadgets like Nest's smart thermostat and August's connected locks.
Amazon has dramatically improved how Alexa, its smart assistant found, works with connected bulbs, allowing users to control color and white light temperature by voice. The tunable lighting control update, announced today, allows developers to integrate color and temperature control with simple voice commands, and is compatible with some of the most popular connected bulbs on the market. It's a feature which has been much-requested by smart home fans.
Another day, another Philips Hue bulb, and the number of lamps, lights, and fixtures you can give a connected upgrade continues to increase. Philips has added an E14 candle bulb to the Hue line-up, its range of ZigBee-linked, app-controlled LEDs. According to the company, it's one of the most requested sizes from existing Hue users.
Philips' Hue connected bulbs have clinched coveted ENERGY STAR certification and could potentially get more affordable, the light specialist will announce this week. The certification, which Philips plans to detail at the ENERGY STAR Products Partner Meeting, makes the company's Hue platform one of the first connected lighting systems to qualify not only for ENERGY STAR's badge of approval, but utility subsidies that could make upgrading to smart bulbs considerably cheaper. I caught up with Todd Manegold, senior director of Hue product marketing, to find more.
You can control your connected lighting by app, from your smartwatch, by voice, and even by a good old-fashioned button, but Philips' latest addition to Hue only cares when you're around. The Hue Motion Sensor takes a hands-off approach to smart lighting, triggering scenes across any of Philips' bulbs, lamps, or luminaires when you walk past, either for convenience, security, or both.
There are plenty of ways to turn on connected lighting, from an app on your phone, through smart switches like Logitech Pop, to voice control via Alexa or Siri, but Philips wants to make it as simple as moving into the room. The new Philips Hue motion sensor does away with physical or voice controls altogether, and instead triggers different individual bulbs or whole lighting scenes via movement instead.
Philips looks set to add hands-free smarts to its Hue lighting system, with word of a new Hue Motion Sensor sneaking out ahead of the gadget's launch. A mainstay of many smart home installations, Hue's wirelessly-enabled bulbs can be controlled by various means, including the company's iOS and Android apps, from a smartwatch, the Hue Tap switch, and basic scheduling, but if you wanted motion-triggers you had to look to third-party platforms.
It can be tough sometimes, being an Internet of Things cheerleader. A world of devices that silently talk between themselves should be making my life easier; instead, it's giving me a serious headache.
Philips has a new Hue light set for smart home fans, and this time the connected bulbs aim to bring every shade of white light into your bedroom or living room. The Philips Hue White Ambience kit introduces a new bulb, which although only offering white light - rather than the colors Hue is perhaps best known for - can be adjusted in light temperature.
In the smartest Smart Home, everything plays nicely together, and IoT smartplug maker Zuli is further joining up its dots with the addition of Hue support. The Zuli smartplugs, which differentiate themselves by using Bluetooth to figure out when rooms are in use and adjust devices accordingly, can now command Philips' color-changing LED bulbs too.
Philips has reversed course on its controversial decision to block third-party connected bulbs from its Hue system. The company had found itself facing the ire of smart home enthusiasts earlier this week, when a firmware update for the Hue bridge prevented bulbs from other manufacturers from connecting, even though they use the same ZigBee wireless standard.
Challengers for the throne of connected lighting have come and gone, but Philips' Hue system remains the best-known of the wireless bulbs. It's color-changing and white lamps are now available for a number of sockets and fittings, but one thing has proved consistent: the central bridge that controls them all.
