Philips hue, the world’s smartest LED bulb, marks a new era in intelligent home lighting

Philips hue, the world’s smartest LED bulb, marks a new era in intelligent home lighting

Singapore – From today, Singapore can experience Philips hue, the world’s smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system that is controllable using your smartphone or tablet.

Philips hue can be set up in minutes. The intuitive app allows you to remotely control and personalise your home lighting experience with custom settings and program timers to help manage your daily schedules, all through the convenience of a smart device. An intuitive and seamless system, Philips hue is upgradeable and future-proof, with the potential for more features to be downloaded in future.

Bringing endless possibilities to help you get creative andpersonalise lighting to suit your lifestyle, a starter pack includes three bulbs[1] that simply screw into your existing lamps, and a bridge that you plug into your home Wi-Fi router. Simply download the hue app to start experiencing light in a completely new way.

“Philips hue is a game-changer in lighting. The intuitive hue application introduces a completely new way of interacting with and experiencing light. In the way phones, media and entertainment have been revolutionized by digital technology, now we can also personalize light and enjoy limitless applications,” said Mieke De Schepper, General Manager of Philips Lighting Singapore. “Philips continues to be the global leader in LED technology, providing innovative and unique solutions for home lighting. Hue takes it one step further by providing great energy-efficient LED light quality that is integrated with the latest technology, helping to make our lives that little bit easier.”

The app for Philips’ hue also features expert 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 you relax, read, concentrate or energize.

Now connected light can keep you up-to-date

The next generation of the hue app (version 1.1) can now hook up to your essential Internet services via your smartphone or tablet, meaning your bulbs can act as indicators for weather, stock quotes, sports scores, email, social media and more. They can be set to behave in any way you choose. For example, to change color if it is going to rain; to blink if you receive an urgent email or Facebook message from someone special; illuminate gradually as the sun sets; or even flash in your sports team’s colors when they score. This is made possible through Internet automating service, IFTTT (If This Then That), meaning your home lighting can now connect to the world in innumerable, exciting new ways.

New location-based lighting to welcome you home

The hue app v1.1 is the first upgrade to hue’s future-proof system and will be delivered to existing users via a simple-to-download software update. Its new ‘geofencing’ feature means your smartphone or tablet can detect when you or your family are approaching or leaving home and trigger hue’s bulbs to turn on/off automatically, change color or light setting – all without having to even take your phone out of your pocket.

Intuitively enhancing your lifestyle

The recurring schedules feature means you can programme hue to enhance your family’s daily routine and create settings for activities such as waking up, homework or bedtime – without the need to reset each day. If you go on holiday, the timer function can be set to turn lights on and off at random times while you’re away, to give you peace of mind.

Light with limitless potential

Developers are also excited about the possibilities to extend hue’s capabilities with new applications and integration with other products and services. Since Philips published hue’s open APIs and software developers’ kit (developers.meethue.com) on 11th March, over thirty new apps have already hit the market. Some of these allow hue’s smart bulbs to coordinate with music and album art, visualize your heart rate for home workouts, assist in planetary study, respond to spoken commands, and synchronize with television screens for an ambient, immersive viewing experience.

A smart solution for a smarter home

Using the ZigBee LightLink standard, hue bulbs can not only communicate with each other, they have the potential for communicating with other ZigBee-based devices such as motion sensors and home thermostats, while offering a broad signal range and using significantly less stand-by power than traditional Wi-Fi systems. Additional apps developed for hue are available through app stores or meethue.com, allowing users new ways to further enhance their lighting experiences and lives. 

Philips is opening up the hue app to the developer community and has created an open source platform atwww.meethue.com inviting developers to explore the app and unleash even more possibilities to show what light can do to enhance your life. 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.