Member management: The function that is not a function

It is now more than a month since Philips Hue announced on 10 March within its in-house app that you can now manage access to your luminaires. Member management was activated. But this new function has no real function so far.

In the settings for the respective home, you can find the corresponding area for management, but there is no indication of how you can add a new member. An invitation link, for example, as is standard in other smart home systems, cannot be sent from the Hue app.

This is the current status of the member administration

Currently, the status is as follows: If you are connected with a “foreign” account to the same WiFi network as the Bridge and add the account to the Bridge, which is only possible by pressing a button on the Bridge, you end up in the member list. New members are automatically classified as administrators and must then be manually downgraded by an existing admin to the status “lighting”.

Even with this lower status, it is still possible to delete lamps and scenes or even entire rooms. Switches can also be configured or automations can be created and changed. There is no restriction of access rights so far. In principle, the function is completely useless.

The Member Administration should offer this

So far, the member administration does not offer any real functions. In my opinion, the following points would be essential:

• Adding new members by invitation
• Actual limitation to the control of luminaires
• Connection with existing account to further bridges

So there are still some construction sites Philips Hue has to work on. Why the member management in its current form was released at all is not explainable to me.