In addition to the new hub, Philips is slashing the price of its Hue Luxe bulbs, which will now be known as Hue White, The Verge reports.
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Seamless interoperability Philips Hue personal wireless lighting is a seamless ecosystem covering bulbs, lamps and controls, so that you can operate all of your lights at home using any smart device including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple Watch, or when away from home through MyHue portal. So with only one command you can unlock the front door, turn the lights on and the heating up, truly transforming how you experience and interact with your home.
For example, Philips just announced its new Hue 2.0 bridge, which will be sold as a standalone piece of hardware and included in the updated Hue starter pack, supports Apple HomeKit. Voice commands related to dimming Hue lights (or lightening them) to a specific percent, are also part of Hue’s new Siri compatibility. To smart-homemakers, that means that you can control your lights just by talking to Siri. In its studies of how lighting affects people and our quality of life, Philips has come up with what it calls “light recipes” for when you need a certain kind of mood in your home. According to Philips, this kind of lighting increases melatonin production in our bodies, which encourages us to relax. Most notable is the hub’s soon-to-arrive ability to work with Nest’s Weave system, which uses Thread networking to connect up to 250 smart home products with Nest’s thermostats, smoke detectors, and cameras. Philips’ new bridge will also work with Nest Weave, but that integration is still forthcoming.
Yianni says that beyond the new bridge, all you need is an iOS 9 device to start talking to your lights through Siri. Other than voice controls with Siri, everything that you can do with Hue on an iPhone will be the same on an Android phone. While the first wave of HomeKit devices only launched a few months ago, Hue’s support already feels long overdue.
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Philips is finally on board with Apple’s HomeKit platform thanks to a new version of its Hue LED light hub. According to Ars Technica, Philips is also adding support for other smart home frameworks, which could allow Hue to communicate directly with other products, independently of a local Wi-Fi network. It’ll cost $60 by itself, but Philips is also offering a program where owners of the existing bridge can trade it in for the new one for $40.
