{"id":849,"date":"2013-07-30T08:45:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T22:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=849"},"modified":"2013-08-06T22:36:14","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T12:36:14","slug":"philips-hue-review-light-em-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/features\/philips-hue-review-light-em-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Philips Hue Review: Light ’em up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Philips<\/div>\n

If you have a passing familiarity with the Philips Hue lights, you might be saying, what’s the big deal with these things? I can switch my expensive lights off with my phone. Whoop-de-freakin’-do<\/em>. I am officially a wanker.<\/p>\n

Well, exactly that’s what I thought too in the first week of using them. But, I gave them a couple of weeks, and I discovered some neat tricks. Stuff that made me go back and re-think that assumption. Some neat uses that actually\u00a0made my life easier in some small, measurable way.<\/p>\n

It even got me started thinking about how other connected appliances could impact on our lives. About how one day, my washing machine could chat to my phone about what clothes were available for tomorrow. Where my WiFi-enabled jaffle maker could cook me a sympathetic afternoon snack after a particularly brutal work session.<\/p>\n

Oh crap. I’ve wandered back into wanker territory again.<\/p>\n

\n

Firstly, what are they? The\u00a0Philips Hue<\/a> is a set of WiFi-connected LED light bulbs. The Hue starter pack<\/a> (sold exclusively through Apple Stores for $249.95) contains 3 bulbs, along with a white hockey puck-esque bridging unit you connect to your router. The bridge acts as a gateway between your home network and the bulbs. Once it’s set up, you can to talk to the bulbs via a universal iOS<\/a> or Android<\/a> app.<\/p>\n

\"Philips<\/div>\n

The bulbs themselves are 8.5W Edison screw-type LED bulbs. That’s around the equivalent of an incandescent 50W bulb, or 600 lumens.\u00a0In practice, I found them plenty bright for the living room, bedroom or standard lamps.<\/p>\n

Update from @tweethue<\/a>:<\/strong> the bulb dimensions are 110mm in length & 62mm in diameter.<\/p>\n

They also feel substantially heavier<\/em> than a regular bulb, because of the all the\u00a0extra components built into the base<\/a>\u00a0including power & networking boards, as well as a Zigbee<\/a> controller (the home automation networking protocol that Hue bulbs run off).<\/p>\n

Any colour, any brightness, any time<\/h1>\n

Therein lies the voodoo powers of these Hue bulbs; you can dynamically change 3 characteristics of any Hue bulb in your house: the brightness, the colour, & when they switch on or off. You can also program them to respond to other events, or serve as a notification for something else. More on this later.<\/p>\n

Important to know is that you can still use your standard light switches to control them. So if you’ve turned them off with an app, but the light switch is still ‘on’, that’s fine; you can toggle the switch to off, then back on again and they will light up. So you don’t have to dick around with your phone all the time to get your lights to work. Cool.<\/p>\n

Here’s a quick video run down of what the bulbs look like once you’re set up & running.<\/p>\n