Philips Hue has a new accessory that’ll make it even easier to automate the lighting in your home: a motion sensor. In such situations, any motion sensor would come in handy, activating your lights in an instant so you don’t have to struggle yourself.
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Much like a movement sensor for a home security system, the new Hue add-on is created to fit discretely into a room or hallway, and monitor for anybody walking past.
The motion sensors will sell for $39.95, with up to 12 supported on a single Hue bridge. Its job: to keep the sensor from turning on lights unless you actually need them. This means that if after an extensive period of time no movement has been detected in a room, the application will then proceed to turn off the lights autonomously. The colours however, can be set using the app.
This little sensor is a lot more powerful than it seems, each sensor has a 100-degree detection angle (both vertical and horizontal) as well as a range of 16 feet. While the sensor has limited field-of-motion detection, it can control the lights in any part of your home, so walking through your front door could trigger your upstairs bedroom lights to turn on. They’ll go on sale in October. Given that these cheaper lights can be useful in a bathroom or a hallway, the new BR30 and GU10 form factors will work well above your bathroom mirror in those pesky recessed ceiling lights. It also has a built-in daylight sensor so it can turn lights on and off based on the time of day, and it has an instantaneous reaction time, adjusting lights within.5 seconds of being activated.
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Sridhar Kumaraswamy, Business Leader Home Systems at Philips Lighting said: “As the leader in connected lighting, we constantly seek to evolve our system and make it simple and easy to use”. While having so many options could confuse some people, Philips is hoping that it will encourage most users to make their smart lights work for them by letting them decide which way they prefer to interact with them. Called Hue Motion Sensor, it will first launch in the U.S. and will be available starting October at $40.
