FabianLast night, Philips Hue unveiled its new hardware at an exclusive media event in Berlin. We’re still working on our event video, which will go live by tomorrow morning at the latest. First up, there’s a “major” software update for you, as it jumps from version 5.73 to 6.0.
First and foremost, the update focuses on support for the new products, most of which are available now. You can find a complete overview of all the new features in this blog post.
Apart from that, Philips Hue notes in the update description: “Improved the SpatialAware scanning experience. Exclusively available with Hue Bridge Pro.” And further: “Discover scenes tailored to your room with new recommendations in the Scene Gallery.”
And there’s much more to come in the future
In addition to the backup feature, which has already been covered in detail, there will be even more new features coming directly to the Hue app in the future. At first glance, I seriously underestimated the Custom AI Behaviors—I initially thought they were just another AI integration. In fact, however, they’ll allow you to create impressive automations that weren’t possible before—I’ll share more about that with you tomorrow.
By the end of the year, Sonos integration will also arrive, bringing not only support for switches but also another feature: an alarm clock with light and music. Philips Hue is also working on a way to adjust the direction of color gradients. This wasn’t really necessary before, but that’s changed with products like the Festavia light curtain or the controller for Nanoleaf Shapes panels. Here, it’s actually desirable to have color gradients run not just from left to right, but also, for example, from top to bottom or even diagonally.
Was there any discussion at the event about Hue secure cameras and ad Philips promised at some point in the future Apple HomeKit support for the cameras?
Hey Fabian, I saw you had a quick hands on with the Hue Tap Dial connected to the Sonos speaker. How did it perform in your experience? Was the volume control with the dial smooth?
Hard to tell, because it was extremely loud when I tried it out. But as far as I remember, volume control was quit smooth! I will definitely give it a try when it’s available 🙂
I have just released an app “ControlZ”, and one of the reasons behind this was the reuse of Switches to drive other integrations… It Integrates Hue, Home, HomeKit, Z2M, deCONZ, Sonos and Doorbird and designed to simplify configuring Scene and Automation. I was truly surprised the Hue Tap Dial can now download this natively.
We dont need AI, we need a light switch.