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.
Signify is launching new Philips Hue lights and App features that provide additional ways to personalize the lighting in your home. The Philips Hue luster bulb now also comes in warm-to-cool white and color light, and the Philips Hue panels are available in new shapes. The Philips Hue app has two new features: the brightness balancer, which equalizes individual lights’ brightness in your Entertainment area, and additional time slots for motion sensors.
It’s time again to show you a small Hue installation from my own four walls. Nothing spectacular, but maybe something to stimulate your thoughts and reflections. The focus is on the Philips Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip for the PC. This has been on the market since last September and is available in three different configurations: for monitors from 24 to 27 and 32 to 34 inches or triple setups with three 24 to 27 inch screens.
Regardless of whether it’s a large or small provider: When things don’t run smoothly, the most important thing is good support. Those who offer fast and good solutions can gain points with their customers. I tried the Philips Hue support this week and would like to tell you about my experience.
“Never change a running system” – this is a more than well-known wisdom from the IT world. The Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync Box, for example, has not received a single firmware update in the past year, with the last update dating back to 29 October 2021. If you have encountered one problem or another during this time, you might be helped with an update now.
Approval documents already suggested it at the beginning of the year, then yesterday the first product photos surfaced. Signify, the manufacturer of Philips Hue, will launch a smart home camera. However, not in the Hue cosmos, but for the independently operating WiFi system of the WiZ brand. Works with Nest has since been discontinued However, the topic of Philips Hue and camera is not entirely new.
I really don’t want to know how much money some of you have already put into your Hue installation. We’re certainly no longer talking about a few euros here, but three-figure or even four-figure sums. So far, the costs have been limited to the purchase of hardware, but that seems to be changing this year.
At the weekend I allowed myself a little fun on the German Hueblog website. Fittingly for April 1st, I published an announcement about the third generation Hue Bridge, which of course does not exist yet. I actually managed to fool many of you with this April Fool’s joke. Some of you were even deeply annoyed that I had led them around by the nose.
Fabian
Frederick