New Philips HUE devices

The new White bulb starter kit with 2 bulbs and new bridge is listed at $79 which is a pretty good deal considering you are getting a new bridge too.

Oh man this just keeps getting better! @fightingmajor did I see in a previous post your in the St. Louis area? I’m just across the river up in Jersey county, IL. Let me know if you find this locally!!

link please? i can’t seem to find it on their website

It comes and goes as they sell out of inventory. Word on the street is that everybody will get their full inventory around November 1, and at that point The new Hue models should be at a lot of retailers. :sunglasses:

I got my dimmer switch from Amazon, and it’s gone in and out of stock three times in two weeks. Obviously popular.

And I wonder if Phillips have a requirement for their authorized retailers that they can’t list it if it’s out of stock? I know that when it does go out of stock, the link, even from a past order, goes to a different model that is in stock. That’s not usual Amazon procedure.

Quick question. It looks like the new hub offers SIRI integration, but it seems to me that in order to do that you need the homekit hub as well. Am I misunderstanding? Other than homekit intergration, what else does the version 2 of the Hue Hub offer?

Three different issues: HomeKit with the Hue Bridge, Siri with SmartThings, and HomeKit with SmartThings

The new Hue bridge has HomeKit integration. The new SmartThings hub does not have any HomeKit integration. That would require a hardware piece which is not in that hub. Maybe a future model but not this one.

If you have the new Hue bridge with HomeKit integration, you will be able to use HomeKit with it directly, bypassing smart things, just like you could use a third-party control app with your Hues. You can still control your Hues from SmartThings as well, but you can’t use HomeKit to control smartthings. I hope that makes sense.

However, before the Amazon echo came out, some of us used “hey Siri” to create voice text messages which were sent to IFTTT and that gave us voice control through the smartthings IFTTT channel.

This is not HomeKit integration, it’s just using Siri as a voice input. It would work with anything that you could control through an IFTTT channel. So you will see a lot of forum topics about using Siri with smartthings, but that’s not a HomeKit integration.

I am quadriparetic with limited hand function, so this was a big deal for me. Smartthings was the only inexpensive hub, and I’m talking about the V1 version, that had reliable voice control. Since I already had an iOS device, and unlimited texting on my mobile plan, it didn’t cost me anything extra. In fact, I ended up buying an Apple Watch specifically to get voice control of smart things.

The main difference between the IFTTT method and real HomeKit is natural language use. To use the IFTTT commands, you have to use very specific phrasing. So “hey Siri, tell House hashtag central underscore Television underscore on.”

Now with echo I can just say “Alexa, turn The TV on.” And if my housemate says “turn on the TV” it still works.

If you want more information about the Siri method without HomeKit, see the following topic (this a clickable link) .

For HomeKit integration with smartthings , you’ll just have to wait and see what model smartthings puts out in the future.

Thanks that helps a lot. I did not realize that Homekit did not really have a hub.

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Here’s the link:

Best Buy

thank you!

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Homekit has a hub. It’s called AppleTV and you need it to use HomeKit.

AppleTV is only needed to provide a Bluetooth connection if you want to trigger events while you are away from home.

Starting with iOS 9, AppleTV is not required for remote control of the other devices, they can use your iCloud account.

Andy if you are at home with your iPhone or tablet connected to your local Wi-Fi, you don’t even have to own an Apple TV to make HomeKit work.

So it’s not a hub in the usual sense of home automation. It’s more of a bridge for remote connection.

Hmm that was not my understanding of it but I believe ya. You would think they would have made it mandatory as how do they make their money? I guess by getting some fee for devices using Homekit? Seems like a big slip up on Apple’s part especially with the new AppleTV about to come out.

The words on the new bulb is to denote that it is now an RGBW bulb. In addition to 16 million colors, it can do true white anywhere from 2000-6500K. I tested this on the bulb I have directly connected to ST, and it looks great!

It’s essentially a tunable white and color bulb in one.

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I know, but it’s still weird branding. It’s an engineer’s description.

BTW, the following article has a lot more information on how HomeKit works with Hue and a little more on the Echo issue: it’s not SmartThings. It’s some issue between Echo and the new Hue bridge if you previously had the old Hue bridge. Report it to Amazon support.

I got two of these and they are pretty nice. I didn’t judge them via ST app but using two third party apps (not native hue app). The colors and ambience they claim is well justified. Would have preferred a few more lumens thrown in because of the shades we use on our lamps. Still on the old hue bridge.

I bought a couple of Lightstrip Plus (which incidentally, are REALLY bright).

They sort of work with ST but the colours are wrong, i.e. in the Smart Lighting app if you select “Daylight - Energize” the normal Hue bulbs go the correct colour but the Lightstrips went bright aquamarine.

the normal Hue app works perfectly though and the colour match between normal bulbs and the LightStrip Plus is pretty good.

Another niggle to work around :wink:

i guess this is my question as well. i am hoping that the v2.0 hue hub will show current states of bulbs better than the v1 hue.

i still have my ST v2 hub sitting in the box, and wont use it until there is a better migration to it, although its been a week since I have been on here and that may have taken place.

If anybody is interested, Amazon it appears has the Hue Bridge (new one) as a solo product available and my expected delivery is for next Wednesday (Oct 21). If you are a previous owner, you may wait till Nov 1 to get a 33% discount at Philips web site (meet hue). Not sure if they will be able to meet the demand as they claim its on first come first serve basis till it lasts for previous owners only!

Got to have one! Is it actually twice brighter than the hue bulbs?

The Lightstrip Plus is confirmed as a Gamut C device; whereas the bulbs are Gamut B (even the new 800lm ones). Thus they need different color points to produce the same shade. Should provide much better greens and aquas.

Here’s the color space chart, and the link after will show the XY coordinates by color for each Gamut. ST uses Hue/Sat to set colors. At full saturation, you can think of Hue changes as tracing around the edge of each triangle, then moving toward center of triangle as you decrease Sat. Daylight - Energize is probably right where the red triangle and black arc intersect, so instead you went way left to the blue line.

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