The Philips Hue Sync Box is a fun way to extend what’s on your TV to the lights in your room, but the original box has lagged behind on features for a while now. Today, Philips has announced a new Hue Sync Box that supports HDMI 2.1 and more.
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Philips Hue customers will soon have a new way to control lighting around the home. Signify will add a new brightness feature through an update to the Philips Hue app. Users will also have access to expanded automation tools.
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The Google Home app has been undergoing a reinvention in over the past year, and one of the best new features is improved control over TV devices. If you happen to own a Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync box, Google Home also just became the best app you can use for quick controls.
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After showing up earlier this year in a false start, the Philips Hue app seems to now be rolling out its “Natural Light” scene to more users with the ability to change the color temperature of lights in your home throughout the day.
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Smart lighting can breathe new life into your home, and one of our favorite options is Philips Hue. It’s recently been uncovered that Hue is preparing a new “Natural Light” mode which is designed to mimic real outdoor lighting conditions, and it looks pretty sweet.
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As the market for smart home products expands, the joint forces of Google, Apple, and Amazon are coming together to form a new standard in “Matter.” This week, the company behind Philips Hue announced that a future software update will make all Hue products fully compatible with Matter.
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It’s been quite some time since Google announced that the “Works with Nest” program would be shut down and replaced, but the effects are still being felt. Next week, Philips Hue is dropping support for Works with Nest.
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Google Assistant is one of the best ways to control your various smart home products, Philips Hue included. If you’re still using a Philips Hue v1 bridge, though, Google Assistant is cutting off support in the next few days.
Alongside new images of the OnePlus 7T, an exclusive report about Google’s next Wi-Fi system, and more, news today included details about NBC’s new streaming service “Peacock” and more.
Smart speakers are used in many households for controlling smart lighting products. Currently, one of the most popular smart lighting options, Philips Hue, can’t be connected to Google Assistant due to a bug, but thankfully, both companies are at least aware of the problem that takes away the ability for Google Home to control the smart lights.
Philips teased back in January that it would be launching outdoor Hue lights later in the year, and it has now provided details of the products – including pricing and availability.
The company says that it will be offering three types of outdoor lights in the USA and Europe in July …
Google Home is capable of a multitude of things, and for a lot of users, one function of Home that’s the most helpful is using it to control smart home devices. Philips Hue light bulbs are the most popular connected lights on the market, and according to numerous reports on the Google Home Help Forum, they simply aren’t working for a lot of people.
Back at launch, Google Home wasn’t very friendly with smart home products, but over the past few months, Google has worked with more new companies to expand what Home is capable of. Personally, I love using smart home products, and I do so quite often in my home office. Here’s what I’ve been using.
Philips has announced that it is extending its range of Hue bulbs, adding an E14/B39 ‘candle’ bulb to fit smaller lamps. This will be added to the E26/A19, bayonet and GU10 fittings.
The new bulbs will be available in both white and color versions, as with the existing range, and will hit Europe in April, reaching the U.S. ‘later this year.’
Philips says that the candle bulbs will be particularly useful for bedside table lamps …
An update to the Philips Hue system has blocked access to some third-party bulbs, including GE Link LED (above) and Cree Connected LED, citing ‘interoperability issues.’ While existing bulbs already linked to the Philips Hue Bridge will continue to work for now, the system is not currently allowing additional bulbs to be added, and Philips says there are no guarantees that this won’t change in future updates.
We are seeing an increasing number of interoperability issues with these untested third party products, which are causing increasing confusion for our installed base. They are also hampering our ongoing development and damaging the consistency of experience for the Philips Hue ecosystem. Next to confusing differences in setup and resetting, we’ve encountered a number of such issues over the years including 3rd party lights which do not turn off when we fade them to off, lights which do not react correctly to scene recalls and lights which stop proper functioning of our Wireless Dimmer Kits.
This will disappoint many, as one of the promises of the Hue system was support for third-party bulbs. All is not yet lost, however.
Philips says that it has created a Friends of Hue program to allow third-party products to be tested and certified for use with the system. It also stated in a blog post that third-party apps will continue to work and will not require certification. If you want to add additional bulbs now, however, you are limited to official Philips Hue products.
The company has created a FAQ, which can be seen below.
Via CNET
Q: Why did Philips change their approach toward lights from other brands?
We are seeing an increasing number of issues with untested lights from other brands. This is making Philips Hue harder to use and making it difficult for us to add new features. We can only guarantee a seamless experience if we certify them and put these products under continuous test like our own.
Q: What problems are you seeing with lights from other brands?
Next to confusing differences in setup and resetting, we’ve encountered a number of issues over the years including lights which do not turn off when we fade them to off, reachability reporting, lights which do not react correctly to scene recalls and lights which stop proper functioning of our Philips Hue Wireless Dimmer switch.
Q: What is the Philips “Friends of Hue” program?
We want Philips Hue to be open but also offer a great experience for our customers. To that end, last week, we launched the ‘Friends of Hue’ program where we will certify and test 3rd party products to guarantee a consistent and long-term interoperable experience also for these products.
Q: What has been changed in the latest software update?
Last week, we started deployment of the 1.11 software for both versions of the Philips Hue bridge (version 01029624). Alongside big feature updates to our group and scene APIs, we introduced a change, which stops untested products being able to join the Philips Hue bridge.
Q: Will my existing lights from other brands continue to work?
Lights already linked to both versions of the Philips Hue bridge will continue to work as before, the block only applies to new untested product being linked. If the lights are not deleted, nor the bridge reset they will continue to function as before (under no guarantees from Philips that future updates may not expose new bugs and compatibility issues.)
Q: Since the recent update my products are no longer working. What is going on?
In our recent 1.11 update we made changes to our implementation of scenes which exposed a compatibility issue with a limited number of 3rd party Color Temperature tunable lights which stop them properly responding to scenes created in the Philips Hue app. Philips will not fix this issue as it relates to the implementation of standard ZigBee scenes functionality in the light and would expect this software to be changed in the light as part of ‘Friends of Hue’ certification process.
Q: Is Philips Hue still an open system?
There is no change to Philips’ commitment towards an open system and ZigBee Light Link as the best standard for residential lighting control. Our lights continue to be fully standards compatible with differentiated features built on top of the standard and exposed via our bridge. Likewise our bridge remains ZigBee Light Link compatible and allows other devices to join its network. Controllers other than the Philips Hue bridge could still join the ZigBee network and control all lights inside it. The only things which is no longer possible is the control of those lights via apps from our ecosystem.
Q: Is Philips Hue still going to allow uncertified 3rd party applications?
Yes, we will continue to allow other applications to work with Philips Hue without certification. We will start certifying selected applications and products from other brands for use in joint promotion but this does not affect the existing 450 and growing 3rd party applications.
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Wouldn’t it be cool if you could tell your watch to change the temperature, turn on/off lights, or perform various tasks on your computer? Well, thanks to Android Wear and some third party services, you can transform existing smart devices around your house into fully automated tasks using a device like the Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360, or LG G Watch.
The process will slightly vary between different Android devices and “smart” devices in your house, but we’ve put together the groundwork necessary so that you can build on these ideas in your own home. The setup procedure is a bit more than some people would like to go through, but in the end saying simple commands from a smartwatch to control things in your house is absolutely worth it.
Back in May, we reported on a new piece of Glassware that controlled your Nest thermostat via Google Glass, and last month we saw GLASSTESLA, an app that lets you manage your car with Glass. Now home automation company Revolv has taken it a step further. The company has released a teaser video of a new technology developed by their Sr. Engineer that lets you control all sorts of things via Google Glass. Specifically in the video you can see office lights, Philips Hue lights, Yale Lock, and a Sonos player all being controlled with Glass. In addition to simply turning the Hue Lights on and off, the video also shows how you can change the color of the lights. The app can be controlled with either gestures or voice commands.
It’s unclear when or if this technology will be released to the public, as it is simply the “side project” of Revolv’s Sr. Engineer.
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