FabianIt's finally time again on Sunday night: the 2024 Super Bowl is on. The Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas. If you're watching the sporting spectacle on your TV, you can create an even more impressive atmosphere with your Philips Hue lamps. All you need is an app.
OnSwitch Plus (App Store link) has been available in the App Store for several years and has already been downloaded more than 2.5 million times. The application actually focuses on scenes and animations, but there is an exciting extra around the Super Bowl: real-time game synchronisation.
What OnSwitch Plus offers around the Super Bowl
After connecting to the Hue Bridge, you can select the lamps you want to synchronise and then sit back and relax when the Super Bowl starts.
“Our Super Bowl LVIII special event will broadcast a spectacle of colour and sound that reacts in real time to touchdowns, sacks, interceptions and even the national anthem and half-time show,” say the creators of OnSwitch.
What's particularly exciting is that the effects are to take place in real time. OnSwitch also uses a mixture of human “event producers” and real-time data from the game itself for the Super Bowl. This means that the effects should reach you faster than the TV picture.
However, to ensure that everything is perfect in the end, you can freely adjust the delay. The easiest way to do this is while the game is already running, as OnSwitch Plus also displays the current playing time in minutes and seconds in the app. You can then simply adjust this value to the display on your TV.
OnSwitch Plus also supports other sports
In addition to the SuperBowl and the NFL, there are other sports in OnSwitch Plus that can be synchronised with your Philips Hue lamps. These include the NBL, MLB and the English Premier League. The lighting effects are always adapted to the sport, for example in basketball for a 3-pointer, in football for a spectacular slide and not just for goals.
From a German perspective, there is unfortunately still no support for the German Football League, which I would personally be very happy to see implemented. In any case, you will need the premium subscription in OnSwitch Plus, which currently costs 39.99 euros per year. At least you can try out the premium package for three days free of charge, for example for the Super Bowl at the weekend.
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