FabianThe software development of Philips Hue continues to progress. A new firmware for the Hue Bridge is currently being rolled out, software version 1968096020 has been on its way to you since Thursday. In addition to the usual bug fixes, the new version also delivers some real improvements. For example, the brightness for sleep automations is said to have been improved.
Philips Hue writes about another new feature in the release notes: “Added support for the upcoming All-day scenes.” I would like to explain what this is all about in this article.
A month ago, I was already able to tell you that Philips Hue is working on two new 24-hour scenes that technically work in exactly the same way as “natural light”. The upcoming Golden Hours scene appears to be a slightly more pronounced version of the previous natural light. The day should start here with soft morning tones and ring in the evening with the more relaxed glow of the golden hour. The second new all-day scene, called Nature’s Colors, is inspired by the colors of nature. Both scenes change their colors automatically throughout the day.
Completely manual All-day scenes also planned
But it gets even better: Philips Hue will apparently allow us to create our very own “natural” scenes. You can simply select the scenes you want and then combine them into a All-day scene. This way, the light will always shine exactly the way you want it to throughout the day – no matter when you switch the light on or how long you leave it on.
Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly when Philips Hue will release the new All-day scenes. However, the firmware update that has now been released suggests that it won’t be too much longer.
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Indeed, already on my bridge for a couple of days
What we really need is the ability to skip forward to the next scene within the all-day scene without taking me out of the overall cycle. Life is not perfectly predictable.
Having to have an all-day scene and a separate time-based scene cycle on the dimmer switch is just incoherent.
I am curious how this improves upon the already available Natural Light scene, as you can already edit and select any scene for any of the time slots?
Also, each the benefits you list above have been possible with Natural Light: lights switch on to scene configured for the current time slot, (optionally) auto adjust the start of the evening scene timeslot based on sunset, and lights that are on in the scene will cross fade to the next scene at the start of the next timeslot.
What am I missing?
For me, the key part missing is that the light DON’T switch on to a scene after having been turned off. Not if done with the app, Google home automation, or with my button aurora dimmer. I desperately want ONE feature: to set the natural light as a default and then never mess with my lights again. I don’t know about you, but I have to reactivate the natural light scene after every time a light is turned off. I hope this is part of what they will update/fix soon