Philips Hue and voice control with Alexa have been around for what feels like forever. Okay, except for those times when the Hue skill isn’t working properly again. As far as I know, the problems from the summer have now been resolved. And who knows, maybe you’re in the market for a new speaker?
Voice control of Philips Hue with Alexa has now become a whole lot easier, at least if you use more than one Hue Bridge in your household. After what felt like an eternity, Philips Hue has finally delivered a feature that many of us have been waiting for for years. “Now you can use Alexa to control multiple bridges in your home”, says the update description for version 5.45.1, which is now available for download in the Apple App Store and will soon be available in the Google Play Store.
Amazon announced the new Echo Hub last autumn. At first glance, this appears to be an Echo Show 8 without a speaker, as the Echo Hub is so flat that it can be mounted on the wall as a smart home control panel. It is now available to order in Germany and other European countries at a price of 199.99 euros.
Voice control and apps are a great thing, but sometimes you want to control your lamps and the many other smart homes directly on the wall. Classic switches offer few options, more options are available with the new Echo Hub. Echo Hub is an Alexa-enabled smart home control panel with an 8-inch touchscreen and a customisable smart home dashboard.
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.
Just earlier this week I informed you that the Hue switches now also appear in the Alexa app as Smart Home devices. However, there wasn’t much you could do with the switches in the Alexa app yet. This has changed today, because the individual buttons of the switches can now be used as triggers for Alexa routines.
With the introduction of Matter, Philips Hue wants to finally change the course here sometime in spring, the story should be settled anyway. Perhaps they are already the harbingers. In the Alexa app, switches from Philips Hue are currently showing up, at least for the first time. So if you take a look at the devices section of the Alexa app and are surprised that suddenly numerous new devices have been found, then these could be accessories such as the Philips Hue dimmer switch or the Hue Tap Dial Switch.
For years, users with large Hue installations have been tormenting themselves with an annoying problem: Philips Hue’s Alexa Skill only allows the connection to one bridge. A second bridge can only be linked to Alexa in a roundabout way. A fairly simple solution is the BridgeWrapper Skill by Sascha Schmidt, with which you can easily link several bridges and the associated accounts.
“Alexa, turn the kitchen light on”, “Alexa, turn the reading light to 50 percent” or “Alexa, turn all the lights off”. These are just three of the many voice commands that can be used to control your Philips Hue lamps with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. This week, Amazon has launched two new smart speakers, whose names you have certainly heard before: Echo and Echo Dot.
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Although there are still some workarounds if you want to control several Hue Bridges with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, it is often not really fun. Now my YouTube colleague Justin_Tech learned some interesting details in a video interview with Hue inventor George Yianni, which I would like to share with you.