From my point of view, it was already a big step forward when Philips Hue added White Ambiance models to its filament collection in late summer 2021. The different shades of white are a real added value, because previously you had to rely on 2,100 Kelvin with the Hue White Filaments and thus on a very warm light setting.
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.
Approval documents have already suggested it earlier this year, now we can deliver the first pictures. The French manufacturer WiZ, which was taken over by Signify a few years ago, will probably soon bring a surveillance camera onto the market. The first product photo shows the packaging of the “Home Monitoring Starter Kit”.
After the rather small novelties in January, the next new products from Philips Hue will probably be available in June. Here, too, the market leader in smart lighting will apparently concentrate on model maintenance, at least that's what the first products that I was able to find for you on the web suggest.
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.
It is now more than a month since Philips Hue announced on 10 March within its in-house app that you can now manage access to your luminaires. Member management was activated. But this new function has no real function so far. In the settings for the respective home, you can find the corresponding area for management, but there is no indication of how you can add a new member.
In recent years, Ikea's Trådfri products have become a popular and, above all, affordable alternative to the originals from Philips Hue. Now the Swedish furniture store has launched a new light source. The new addition is a filament lamp with a globe form factor and a diameter of 95 millimetres. The colour temperature is fixed at a warm 2,200 Kelvin, and the maximum brightness of the dimmable lamp is stated at 470 lumens.
The Philips Hue development team seems to be working more in the background again at the moment, because the latest update to version 4.39 once again does not include any new functions. Instead, we can look forward to 10 new scenes. “As the weather starts to change, so does the Hue scene gallery,” reads the update description.
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.
If you use an iPhone or iPad, the paid application iConnectHue (App Store link) is particularly useful for configuring switches and other accessory products. The industrious developer Stefan Göhler and his team constantly deliver new updates and functions. Since today, version 4.17 of the universal app for iPhone and iPad is available for download.
Fabian
Frederick