Ladislav Soukup Home automation is a hot topic lately. Philips also decided to join the ranks of manufacturers of smart "toys" and prepared smart light bulbs for customers Hue.
The basic set consists of a control unit (bridge) and three light bulbs. At any time, you can buy additional bulbs and match them to your control unit. Alternatively, buy another set and have more control units (I didn't have a chance to test this, but apparently it shouldn't be a problem). Today we will look at that basic set.
What actually makes Philips Hue smart? You can turn it on or off using your iPhone or iPad. You can adjust its intensity. And you can set it to color or color temperature of white color. And you can do much more. The control unit is connected to the Internet and the web portal meethue.com, through which it can be controlled, as well as via a mobile application.
Installation
Installation is easy. You screw in the bulbs (it has a regular E27 socket) and turn on the light. Then you turn on the control unit and connect it to your home router via an Ethernet cable. Then you can already pair the iOS application or the web interface on the aforementioned meethue.com web service.
Pairing is simple – you launch the application or log in to your profile on meethue.com and press the button on the control unit when prompted. This completes the pairing. We tried pairing one controller against multiple meethue.com accounts and three different iOS devices. Everything went smoothly and the control works for several household members at the same time.
How does it actually light up?
Not so long ago, the problem with LED bulbs was their directionality. Fortunately, this is no longer the case today and Philips Hue is really a full-fledged light bulb with quite pleasant light. In general, an LED is slightly "sharper" than a classic light bulb or fluorescent lamp. Thanks to the ability to set the color and especially the white temperature, you can set the light to your liking. The bulb "eats" 8,5 W and can produce up to 600 lumens, which roughly corresponds to a 60 W bulb. As a light bulb for the living room, it is perfectly sufficient in most cases. Moreover, subjectively, I would say that it shines a little more.
Control – iOS application
The application works reliably, but from a user point of view it did not suit me very well. It will take some time to get the hang of the app. On the home page, you can prepare a set of "scenes" for quick control. The advantage is that you can synchronize these scenes with the web portal. The direct option to set the color and intensity of the light bulb is hidden in the application more than it should be. I did not find this option at all on the web portal.
Features include a timer and automatic on and off at specific times. Perhaps most interesting is the ability to turn on or off depending on the location of your iPhone (geofence technology). The light can change intensity stepwise or smoothly over 3 or 9 minutes.
So you can use the basic functions as a pleasant alarm clock - you let the light in your bedroom slowly come on a few minutes before getting up. In the same way, you can automatically turn on the dim light in the corridor or at the front door in the late evening. You can smoothly change the intensity according to the time. At the entrance, the light can turn on by itself when you approach the home and turn off after, for example, 10 minutes.
IFTTT - or who's playing...
For toys, there is an option to pair your account and control unit to the service IFTTT and start writing the rules… For example, blinking in the kitchen for a new Tweet or changing the color of the light according to the last photo you uploaded to Instagram.
I can imagine a lot of applications, but I haven't come up with anything essential for home use. That is, if you don't want to use your lights as a notification mechanism (for example, flashing before The Simpsons starts). Additionally, IFTTT sometimes has quite a long delay from the event to the triggering of the rule and action.
Final verdict
Philips Hue is an interesting toy, especially for geeks. But most people will probably get tired of it rather quickly and it will become just an ordinary light bulb controlled by an iPhone/iPad. At the same time, this is probably the most interesting function for most owners – the ability to control the lights from the bed or sofa. Adjusting the color temperature is very interesting, but most people end up with two colors anyway, warm (slightly yellow) for normal operation and cool (slightly blue) for reading. But that depends a lot on the preferences of the specific user.
The big plus is in the open API. On the one hand, you can write your own application / implementation for your smart home or wait until someone comes up with the brilliant idea and the application gets into the App Store.
There is probably no easy answer to the question of whether to buy or not to buy. It's cool, it's new. You can pull yourself up in front of your friends. You can light up without a single step. You can "magic" when connecting to other services. But on the other hand, you will pay for it... quite a lot (4 crowns for the starter kit).
We've had it at home since spring and we're happy with it. I would recommend lights against a white wall, then the colored light will stand out more. Overheating according to your own photos is good. Otherwise, we also control the system from a Mac. I personally wonder how long it will last under normal use. In addition to light bulbs, you can also get a strip with LED diodes from Philips.
I'll just add that Philips Hue can now be paired with Philips TVs equipped with the Ambilight function. In this way, the light bulbs will get a completely new dimension of use. I react in the same way as Ambilight, i.e. depending on what colors the scene on the screen contains... useful for example at a home party... it looks really effective in combination with music clips.
if someone likes it, and it doesn't require effective phone control or self-control based on the TV, but the usual is enough. a remote controller for RGB bulbs costs a couple of hundred.
It's an overpriced somarina.
in my opinion, a light bulb with its own driver, on ebay for a couple of pounds, would do the same thing. it can be good, you can use the remote control to set the intensity, i.e. mute, etc. and any rgb color. it can be nice for a child's room or a bedroom. it's up to a few hundred.
That may be so, but the question is how long the driver will control and above all, do not learn to do anything else: "The big plus is in the open API."
It certainly won't do the same service, Hue has a lot more options. It's expensive, but since it has no one to compete with, we probably won't see a price drop just like that.
Well, I've already tried controlling multiple units and that's the problem. The application in the iOS device is paired with only one unit, and to control the other unit, re-pairing is required, so it is practically unusable. The only useful thing is to have more bulbs, you can control up to 50 of them from one unit and you can also create groups from them and then control them separately, create a lot of your own buttons for any bulbs or their groups, their intensity and the color of the lighting. But in the finale, I almost exclusively use only three choices - all full, all muted and all off. It's nice to use colorful music for a party - the color of all the bulbs changes randomly and independently to the rhythm of the music. You can also set the stroboscope. On the contrary, setting the color of the light according to some picture seems completely stupid to me. I ended up making a matrix of a few primary colors and used that in that case, otherwise I didn't find it interesting.