Philips’ hue enables the user to create and personalize light via an app on their smartphone or tablet. Wireless light control allows creative use of light around the home. Philips has unveils hue, a web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue allows the homeowner to create and control lighting using a smartphone or tablet. Philips hue was made available exclusively from Apple stores from 30 October. A starter pack includes three bulbs that simply screw into existing lamps, and a bridge that plugs into a home Wi-Fi router. The user simply downloads the hue app to start experiencing light in a completely new way. Philips hue can be setup in minutes. The intuitive app allows users to remotely control home lighting to help secure the home and personalize the home lighting experience with custom settings and program timers to help manage daily schedules. Philips hue is upgradeable and future-proof, with the potential for more features to be downloaded and enjoyed in the future. With its energy-saving LED light, Philips hue allows the user to tune shades of white light or create any colour. In addition, Philips hue can:• save favourite light scenes for each room or time of day and recall them in an instant• use any photo on a phone as a colour palette to paint the room with light and bring memories back to life• tune white light from warm candlelight to vibrant, cool white light• create ambience or complement decor with the colours of the rainbow• control and monitor lights remotely when householders are not at home for security and peace of mind• set timers to help manage the daily routine. The app for Philips’ hue also features LightRecipes: four pre-programmed lighting settings based on Philips’ research around the biological effects that lighting has on the body. These scenarios adjust bulbs to the optimum shade and brightness of white light to help users relax, read, concentrate or energize. Jeroen de Waal, head of marketing & strategy at Philips Lighting commented: “Philips hue is a game-changer in lighting – a completely new way to experience and interact with light. In the way phones, media and entertainment have been revolutionized by digital technology, now we can also personalize light and enjoy limitless applications. Philips continues to redefine the possibilities of LED technology, and hue pushes the boundaries even more, not only in offering great light quality, but in how lighting can be digitized and integrated with our world to further simplify and enhance our lives.” Philips is opening up the hue app to the developer community and has created an open source platform at www.meethue.com inviting developers to explore the app and unleash even more possibilities to show what light can do. You can share light scenes or get inspired on the meethue.com community site. Philips hue uses the open ZigBee Light Link standard so that it can be integrated with other ZigBee certified systems. Building on the success of its AmbiLight experience, Philips is developing future product features, such as allowing hue to integrate with other media including sound and video. Philips is also working on features such as geo-location services, allowing hue to sense when users are close to home and to automatically turn on the lights, or turn them off when they leave. www.meethue.com
