With the launch of the Hue Play HDMI Sync Box in 2019 and the Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip the following year, Philips Hue has managed to take the TV experience to a new level. On the PC, however, where a Sync Box is not even necessary, we are still at the technical level of 2018.
It will probably take a while before there are new products from Philips Hue – presumably there will be new fodder here in June. A little faster are the Dutch colleagues from Innr, who have already presented a new and a revised product today. And as befits the season, it's off into the garden.
Do you want to control your Hue lamps via a browser on your computer? Then take a look at the Online Hue Controller by Jakob Lykke. The developer from Denmark has created a tool that is certainly not perfect, but nevertheless great. The handling of the open source project is very simple, but a little trick is necessary.
It should be common knowledge by now that Philips Hue does not necessarily offer the cheapest products. This is quite understandable, after all, quality and performance are in many cases better than with cheaper alternatives. Moreover, one has to consider that Philips Hue, in contrast to some other manufacturers, also takes care of software development.
It's that time again: a year is coming to an end. It's not quite over yet, but I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year. And in 2022, I will of course be happy if you visit my blog regularly. If you still have a little time left in the remaining hours of 2021, you can take a look at the highlights of the year.
In the past few weeks, I have repeatedly received a few enquiries on the subject and I also keep stumbling across it on social networks: The “Ambilight+Hue” function of Philips TVs. In principle, the whole thing works very simply: in the settings of the TV, a connection to the Hue Bridge is first established and then the lamps that are to extend the Ambilight in the room are selected.
If you have been wondering in the past few weeks why the geofencing of your Hue app no longer works properly, then I can tell you today: It's not your fault and it's not the fault of Philips Hue that your lights no longer switch on and off reliably when you come home or leave home.
A few days ago, Philips Hue published an interesting announcement on the official developer website for all developers working on applications around the Hue system. The second version of the Hue API, which was launched a few weeks ago, can now also be used by them. The new interface is not yet completely finished, some special functions such as dynamic scenes, the gradient technology or also the fast transmission of status changes can already be integrated in third-party apps.
Philips Hue on the Apple Watch, that was a no-brainer until a few months ago. With the launch of Philips Hue 4.0, however, not only have the popular widgets disappeared, but the Apple Watch has also been dropped – and without replacement. But it seems that Philips Hue has not quite finished with the Apple Watch yet.
A few weeks ago I praised the software development team of Philips Hue: Currently, new features are delivered almost every two weeks. Now the release of version 4.8 is imminent. With this update, Philips Hue will introduce a feature that many of us have been waiting for. The dynamic scenes introduced a few weeks ago will be a bit better with the upcoming update, when you will also be able to freely adjust the speed of the animation.
Fabian