Philips is well known for its lighting products and its latest – the Hue – is a wireless solution that lets you set the brightness and even the colour of the bulb.
Philips Hue can be is controlled through a free app for iPhone, iPad or Android devices.
It is available as triple bulb starter pack that ships with a bridge that connects to your router and then links the bulbs to your network.
Additional single bulbs can also be purchased to extend your Hue network.
These bulbs actually use 80 per cent less energy than a traditional light bulb.
When the Philips Hue is connected wirelessly to your network is when the fun begins. It’s possible to control up to 50 bulbs from a single bridge.
Users are able to set the ultimate mood lighting whether it’s the shade of sunset or your favourite colour.
The bulbs themselves are screw-ins rather than bayonet caps but will still fit a wide variety of lighting fixtures.
Each Hue light has a brightness of 600 lumens and can produce numerous shades of white along with a huge variety of colours.
These colours can be selected by choosing preset lighting “recipes” designed to help you relax, concentrate, energise and for reading.
You can also simply clicking on other colour modes like sunset, underwater or choose a tone from a colour wheel.
It’s even possible to recreate a colour from a photo on your device.
Using the Philips Hue app you can control bulb brightness or colour individually or as a group.
Other interesting and useful features are the alarm and timer modes.
It can be used to wake you up in the morning by programming the light to come up to full brightness when your alarm sounds or used to slowly dim as you are falling asleep.
As a timer a bulb can be set to change colour after a certain time. For example, you’ve got something cooking on the stove and you can set a bulb to change colour or brightness to remind you to turn it off after a certain time.
The latest version of the Hue App (1.1) now includes GeoFencing so users can program lights to turn on or change colour when you come home.
And the bulbs can be programmed to work the opposite way when you leave by turning themselves off after you’re gone.
There is now also added functionality through IFTTT – a site that lets you create command recipes.
IFTTT (short for If This Then That) with Hue creates endless possibilities. And because it can link with online services like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and with the Hue on your network, the results can be quite impressive.
For example, you may use an IFTTT recipe to turn your bulb a certain colour every time you receive a Facebook notification. Or you can get Hue to change colour when it starts raining.
They say you can create lots of different moods and change the character of a space with lighting.
With the Philips Hue the possibilities are literally at your fingertips.
Philips Hue
Price $249.95 (triple starter pack), $69.95 (single)
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