When Philips announced the cheaper non color changing bulbs coming soon, along with a physical switch, I decided they were worth looking into. I picked up the starter kit with 3 bulbs and the control pod, along with one of the bloom lights.

Setup was pretty easy, including tying it to their cloud service. This allows control from outside the home, and is key for geofencing to work when outside WiFi range. The magical/creepy side of setup mirrors Nest, where their servers seem to be watching for new devices, and notice a web signup request from the same IP. The site knew initially that my bridge wasn't powered on, then knew it was up and running without refreshing the signup page. To confirm the bridge is correct, the page then asks for the button on the bridge to be pressed.

Out of the box, the app provides timer based schedules, along with geofencing capabilities. I haven't made use of the timer ones much yet, but the slow fade in capabilities may be useful as an alarm clock. Geofencing has been working very reliably, and it's been pretty cool seeing my apartment light up as I walk back toward it at night without doing anything manually. The app is also central to setting the desired color of each bulb. Conveniently the picker offers both the standard full range of colors, along with a separate band up top that corresponds to typical lighting color temperatures.

Last weekend I spent some time getting my NAS ready to control the lights (compiling support libraries on an ARM processor takes a little bit of time). The bridge they provide runs a web service with a RESTful interface. One of my first goals is to use one of the lights for notifications of the backup status of this board and my e-mail server. So far I can turn on and off the lights, make them blink, but having issues changing colors accurately. Found out the bulbs don't have pure RGB LEDs in them, but ones that are slightly off. The bulbs expect all color values to be sent as a 0-1 range for the intensity of the 3 different base colors, and the library I picked has some bug in it's attempt to map them to a 0-255 RGB range. Conveniently for debugging though, the phone app will update the color picker screen every few seconds from adjustments made elsewhere. (Bulb 4 in the screenshot should be in the green area, but the bug is throwing it into yellow).

I think beyond notifications, I may try and get Flux like adjustments to the lighting working at night.

Anyone else here have some of the Hue lights? Curious about your experiences after having them for a while.

Looks like the Hue engineers are already working on integrating with iOS 8 features:

https://twitter.com/philipshuedev/status/474624625997918209/photo/1

Will be interesting to see what they do with the new HomeKit.

That sort of integration will make Hue very popular no doubt. The only place to buy Hues is from the Apple Store in Australia interestingly. That would be some sort of coup for Philips (not that they're some little startup by any means).

They are not cheap though. I bought some cheaper units from LimitlessLED ( http://www.limitlessled.com ) . They also need a Wifi bridge to the 802.15.4 mesh and it's somewhat proprietary but it seems to work very well. It's very responsive controlling via the phone app.

Although I would say that no BC version is somewhat short sighted for a country like Australia.

I'm pleased to see that Philips is releasing white bulbs with the intention of bringing the price down. That has been my primary issue with the product. I'll discuss my other one later. For now, here are my impressions of the Hue system in the reductive format of a pros and cons list (my apologies):

Pros:

- I really like that you can get precise control of light levels all around a room. With the systems I use, when it comes to recessed lights I have to dim all of them as a group.

- The geofencing and installation seem really easy to set up and use.

- The various colors as an indication of something's status intrigues me. I like your NAS project, Tom.

Cons:

- I apologize. I simply cannot understand the colors. But this is only a half-con for me now that the less expensive bulbs are coming out. Tom, is there any word on an MSRP for those? Your link didn't mention anything. Anyway, I recognize that this is a subjective thing, so this isn't a negative for everyone.

- Tom, I'm curious to get your impression of the brightness of the bulb at 2700K, which is the temperature of the Cree LED bulb. Cree lists their 2700K bulb at 800 lumens, and the Hue site appears to indicate that at that temperature the Hue has an output of half that. In the end it wouldn't be the end of the world for me, since my lights are dimmed most of the time, but some might find this an issue.

- I'm still concerned that Hue is such a siloed product (this is and has been my second big issue with the product). Its inclusion in HomeKit would be a step forward, but clearly only for iOS users. I'm also still unclear on how/if HomeKit can share its scenes, settings, and connected devices with other iOS users in the same house. Does each user have to set HomeKit up separately? Another reason for my dislike of these siloed products is that you have to have separate control units for each thing. The new Hue switch, for example, only controls Hue devices. It can't unlock your front door, for example. Perhaps HomeKit will address that.

- Lastly, I still consider price a factor. I know they're working on that, but price-wise the Hue system only seems feasible for apartments. There are far too many light bulbs in my home to replace them all with Hue bulbs. And even if I could, a single controller can only support 50 bulbs (I don't believe that two controllers can talk to each other to combine the networks, but that may have changed).

- A minor issue: I assume that you have to leave all your light switches in the on position, right? Training guests might be challenging


Don't get me wrong, I love all the focus on home automation right now. It's probably my biggest hobby, and since we moved into our home almost two years ago I've slowly worked to get the entire place onto my system. I can now remotely control almost every light in the house (there's a couple in the basement and back yard that I haven't gotten to), and there are a dozen other things on my system like the thermostat, front door lock, ceiling fans, cat feeder, motion sensor, garage doors, etc. I'll be curious to see where this all goes.

Hey, those look wonderful! And no snoopy "cloud service" involved, either.
Shame about the shipping cost though. Probably okay for ordering lots of the bulbs, but shipping for the kit alone is USD$42 postage to here.

Cheers

Yeah to Australia shipping wasn't too bad. About $80 for two RGBW bulbs + bridge + remote delivered.

With the white bulb on full I'd say they are around the 60-75W equivalent for the 9W bulbs I received. Not quite enough for me.

One thing that is quite limiting is that the bridge only supports 4 groups. Every bulb has to be in at least one of those groups and everything is controlled via those groups. So say for example you had 5 rooms you couldn't control them individually.

You can address each bulb specifically for whatever reason. That is a significant limitation. e.g. you might have a few bulbs in a room and might want to notify something with a coloured flash. All or nothing if they're in one group. So "scenes" etc are not really possible.

The "solution" is more wireless bridges but having 3-4 or more of those seems rather silly.

Very simple commands though to control. A few UDP bytes is all you need and you can broadcast too.

I did find a thread elsewhere that the inventor/owner regularly posts to. His original scheme for control was much more complex and capable. In the end he had trouble getting funding, so he vastly simplified everything and brought the costs way down in the process.

Lots of bang for the buck for nearly-ordinary people, though!

Cheers

How is the color temp on the Limitless LED bulbs? Hue gives some helpful numbers about the color temps they're able to reproduce, but I don't see any of that info on the Limitless site. They only describe the white bulbs as "warm white."

The prices are really good on those, and I wonder how they match up feature for feature with the Hue. It does have the problem, though, of not interacting with other home automation products and standards.

Ok, my apologies, the Limitless site is just laid out a little weirdly.

Apparently their bulbs have white colors in the 3000-6500K range. 3K would be pretty close to the Cree bulbs, though I'd like to see what that 300 difference looks like.

Also, I was very surprised to see that the Limitless bulbs apparently have some integration possibility with the Vera controller that I use, among others, though they don't offer much information about that...

I am going to take a look at mine and see if it's hackable/reprogrammable somehow. I'd prefer just to directly address the bulbs so presuming they have some sort of unique MAC address. Got that thread handy of the owner? I'm not sure how much he does and how much is just sourced from China or similar. They do ship from NZ though.

BTW: I note the BBS says "Re: drakino" but threaded view doesn't reflect that. Bug?


Yes it is quite badly organised. There is an "API" there too.

There are two main bulb types. RGBW (i.e. a colour and white bulb combined) and the "Dual white" where I presume it just changes the proportions of cool vs warm... I didn't buy any of these.

I'm thinking about getting a bunch of wireless remotes and setting it all up with a Ninjablock. I need to work around the 4+1 (apparently there's one extra group) limitation though.

One thing I found is that whilst it's good that it remembers the last on state (i.e. colour or white, brightness etc) when you turn them off, they take a while to properly turn off. i.e. when you come into the room and the light switch is on already which is of course necessary for them to work remotely. So you turn the switch off and then back on. However you need to turn it off for 5 or more seconds I presume for whatever CPU to run down whatever capacitance.

This thread (elsewhere) seems to have really good info on LimitlessLEDs, with frequent postings by the owner/founder:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?topicid=113569&page_no=1

The Lee Valley LED strip lighting claims about 3000K colour temperature -- which I verified using my DSLR. No noticeable difference from the Cree lights to my eyes, though the DSLR indeed can tell the (slight) difference. I don't recall exactly how even the spectrum was for either, though at the time I checked them it looked good for both.

Cheers

I think their target is $40 for the white bulbs. Still a bit higher then the dimmer compatible LED bulbs from other vendors, but also factor into my decision a bit on the apartment friendliness side. Since the Hue bulbs are the dimmer too, there isn't any electrical rewiring I need to worry about to install a dimmer switch. This has been the first time I've been able to have the areas where I spend the most time have dimmable lights.

I'll admit the color aspect can seem a little gimmicky at times, though I have discovered some real uses for it beyond notifications or party lighting. I've been trying to tie my schedule somewhat to daylight hours. At night, I'm working to avoid too much brightness especially before bed and now have f.lux on all my computer screens. The colors allow me to set the bedroom lighting to a low red color. Instead of being blasted with sunlight like light just to crawl under the covers, I can do so easily with the dimmer red light. The usage of f.lux and having dimmer lights has made enough of a difference that bright screens now annoy me at night.


Not really able to comment much here, since I installed the Hue lights around the same time I moved. I lack a good baseline.


HomeKit is still mostly a mystery to me, I need to dig into the WWDC sessions on it. I know so far it will grant an easier way for Siri voice control to just control any device that is compatible as a group with others, even if they are in different "control silos".


For control from the app, yes. However, if the switch is turned off, it does shut the bulbs down as expected. And if the switch is turned back on, the bulbs default to coming on in a basic white color. One could buy Hue bulbs and never plug in the control pod, and people wouldn't know anything was different.

We've got 3000 and 2700k here, hard to tell the difference

The apartment-friendly aspect is definitely one of the important pros that I meant to mention. It's also why I mentioned that apartments seem to be the situations best-suited for the Hue system due to price and the limitation on the number of devices. The $40 price tag is actually pretty good now. A $10 Cree bulb is much cheaper, but adding another home automation solution would bring the price back up to at least that. The only time it would work out as more expensive is for large circuits of recessed lights.


Fair enough. I have no problem with the color capabilities. I want more options for users. I just want all these devices to work together.


There definitely needs to be more info on this, though. The reason I ask is because in order to accomplish what they're talking about, where you say "time to go to bed" or whatever, there needs to be a great deal of setup in order for that to work. Your phone needs to know that this means to lock the front door (and other doors), turn off the lights you want to turn off (my goodnight scene doesn't turn off all my lights), and set the thermostat to what you want. What I'd like to know is if all that is set up on the phone, in which case I'm wondering how that would be shared with another resident. Or a guest. I'll definitely be watching to see how this is implemented.


That's how I figured they worked. And I don't think you'd buy the bulbs accidentally when there's a $10 bulb right next to them


I should mention one more minor issue I have with the Hue bulbs, at least the A19 model: they don't look like bulbs. Like I said, it's minor, but it can be a problem in certain situations.


Good to know!

This might finally get me to watch one of these terrible movies:

http://www.cnet.com/news/sharknado-2-syncs-with-philips-hue-for-smart-bulb-light-show/

Now that's a compelling use for the color changing feature of the bulbs. Thanks for sharing!

I find it hard to believe that "Sharknado" and "Compelling" could be referring to the same thing.

The only thing that made Sharknado 1 compelling to me was when Mike/Bill/Kevin riffed it in the live show a couple weeks back. That was hilarious, and indeed compelling.

I agree that internet-controlled lighting is an interesting space and that this is one particularly novel and original use for it. Reminds me of my friends who had a MIDI controlled lighting rig for their live musical performances. It was cool.

It will be tough to ever top the goal light/siren that goes off when a team you selected scores whether you are watching the game or not.

Heh, I mostly meant the concept was compelling. I haven't even seen the first Sharknado.

I'm guessing you didn't see this...

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/25/sharknado-philips-hue/

Sharknado with Hue.... I'll pass..

(This looks pretty cool though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cpQpGYtjR0)

I'll agree that the technology is very cool, but in actual practice I would really dislike it. I can't imagine watching a movie like that. I can see it being a subjective thing, though.