Philips Lighting  announces a new range of LED bulbs designed for intelligent home lighting.

A new web-enabled smart LED home lighting system, Philips hue allows the user to control light wirelessly, and create and personalise the light using an app on a smartphone or device.

The intuitive Philips hue app can be set up in minutes, and used to remotely control and personalise the home lighting experience on a smart device with custom settings and program timers helping manage daily schedules. Philips hue is upgradeable and future-proof, with the potential for more features to be downloaded in the future.

The Philips hue starter pack consists of three bulbs that simply screw into existing lamps, and a bridge, which is plugged into the home Wi-Fi router. The home lighting experience begins with a simple download of the hue app.

Michael Downie, General Manager of Philips Lighting ANZ describes Philips hue as a game-changer in lighting, explaining that the intuitive hue application introduces a completely new way of interacting with and experiencing light. Philips continues to be the global leader in LED technology, providing innovative and unique solutions for home lighting. Philips hue takes it one step further by providing great energy-efficient LED light quality integrated with the latest technology.

The Philips hue app features expert LightRecipes - four pre-programmed lighting settings based on Philips’ research around the biological effects of lighting on the human body. These scenarios adjust bulbs to the optimum shade and brightness of white light to help one relax, read, concentrate or energise.

Philips has also announced the next phase of its connected lighting journey with the next generation of the hue app (version 1.1) that can now hook up to the user’s essential internet services via their smartphone or device, enabling the hue bulbs to act as indicators for weather, stock quotes, sports scores, email, social media and more.

They can be set to behave in specific ways, for instance, changing colour to indicate rain, blink when an urgent email is received, illuminate gradually as the sun sets or even flash in one’s favourite sports team’s colours when they score. This is made possible through internet automating service, IFTTT (If This Then That), meaning the home lighting can now connect to the world in innumerable, exciting new ways.

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 enables a smartphone or tablet to detect when the residents are approaching or leaving home and trigger hue’s bulbs to turn on/off automatically, or change colour or light setting.

The recurring schedules feature allows the user to programme hue to enhance their family’s daily routine and create settings for activities such as waking up, homework or bedtime without the need to reset each day.

Philips has opened 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 to enhance their life. Philips hue uses the open ZigBee LightLink standard so that it can be integrated with other ZigBee certified systems.

The Philips hue introduction pack includes:

  • 3 hue light bulbs of 600 lumen (40 watt equivalent)
  • Each hue light bulb covers all shades of white, from warm white light to cool white light, and a wide variety of colours. Each hue light bulb uses 80% less power than a traditional light bulb
  • A hue bridge to easily set up the lighting network
  • A power supply for the hue bridge
  • A LAN cable to connect the hue bridge to the router
  • A download instruction for the app
Note: the hue introduction pack can be extended with up to 50 individual hue bulbs.

Key capabilities of Philips hue home lighting system:

  • Tune shades of white light or create any colour
  • Save favourite light scenes for each room or time of day and recall them in an instant
  • Use any photo on the smart phone or device as a colour palette to paint any room with light
  • Tune white light from warm candlelight to vibrant, cool white light
  • Create ambience or complement the decor with the colours of the rainbow
  • Control and monitor lights remotely when not at home for security and peace of mind
  • Set timers to help manage daily routine
  • Tune light for going to sleep or waking up refreshed