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 my opinion, the Hue Wall Switch Module is one of the best extensions for the Hue system. It not only solves the light switch problem, but can also be configured individually. In our (german) community there is a rather exciting question about this, which I would like to take care of for you today.
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.
In social networks and also in comments here on the blog, I have stumbled across an issue again and again in recent months: Android smartphone users report that they can no longer find the Philips Hue app in the Google Play Store. Today I would like to explain to you what is causing this problem.
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.
Even though there are apps and voice assistants, in my opinion there is no way around smart switches for Philips Hue. It is simply incredibly practical to be able to control the light directly from the sofa or in passing. There’s one question I keep stumbling over, the most recent of which was posed by Marian in our Community section: I intend to use a smart ceiling light with the Friends of Hue switches from Senic.
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