Late last year, Philips Hue introduced the Natural Light feature. A 24-hour scene that adjusts colour temperature throughout the day, always providing the optimal white light for your well-being: Cool, activating white tones in the morning and relaxing warm white in the evening. In the last few months, the smart scene has already received several updates, including the ability to switch between time periods faster or slower if desired.
I’m ready for the weekend and ready for my holiday. Starting Monday, I’m disappearing to Greece for a few days. But I will still keep at least half an eye on Philips Hue in the meantime, among other things the launch of the Hue Secure cameras is coming up. And I have already prepared a few articles for you for the coming week.
Voice control with Alexa has actually always been a pretty reliable story. Apart from the fact that you can only pair a bridge with the Alexa Skill, of course, but that is hopefully something that will take care of itself with the upcoming Matter update. However, it is not yet time and in the social networks and also here in the comments I have been reading more and more complaints around the topic of Alexa and Philips Hue for about a week.
In the context of the numerous announcements this week, one little thing has unfortunately been somewhat overlooked. However, in case of an emergency, this little thing could be worth its weight in gold for all of us. From October, Philips Hue will finally offer spare parts for its products. “Lose a power cable in a move?
Actually, it was supposed to be ready in spring, but in the end it took a little longer than planned. In the context of the IFA announcement, Philips Hue has now announced that the Matter update for the Hue Bridge, which was promised last year, will be rolled out in September.
Later this week, Philips Hue will unveil its first smart home cameras, marking its first attempt at a whole new product category. And this despite the fact that the market is already more than saturated. Right off the bat, I can think of numerous manufacturers that already offer smart home cameras.
At the beginning of the year, Philips Hue increased the prices of numerous outdoor products and ceiling lights. A price increase of up to 20 percent or up to 40 euros was noted in February. But that is far from the end of the line: the Hue Festavia string lights, which was launched last year and quickly sold out, will cost 219.99 euros when it returns.
I have reported about BridgeWrapper several times in the past. With the small Alexa skill, more than one bridge could be connected to Amazon’s voice assistant. A feature that Philips Hue itself has not been able to get up and running until now. Unfortunately, it already became apparent at the end of last year that BridgeWrapper was too successful.
What I have suspected since the beginning of the year, I can now confirm: Philips Hue will bring smart cameras to the market – and pretty soon. But what exactly would such a camera have to be able to do for it to be interesting for you? The facts are still quite limited at the moment.
Philips Hue usually introduces new products around the International Consumer Electronics Fair in Berlin. Signify CEO Eric Rondolat has now revealed what we can expect this year during a conference call. One thing is already certain: Philips Hue will get a home monitoring system, similar to what Signify’s second brand Wiz already got a few months ago.
Fabian