So, its been two months since I wrote about this. Plenty of time to report back my "findings."
I initially started out with the 3 light bulb with bridge starter kit, and have gradually added bulbs and lamps as I've went along, linking them to the bridge, and using apps to control them.
There are a myriad of apps out there that you can use to control the lights. Some are simply to set "scenes" - where you can group a particular set of lights (like the TV room, kitchen, bedroom, etc) and then set a scene using a particular group. I like to use a TV scene in the TV room when I'm watching TV, and then when I go to bed, I'll tap an off button on the main Hue app to turn all the lights off and then go to bed.
The biggest drawback with this is this... You have to take the phone out, turn it on, find the app, tap around till you get to where you want, just to turn on/off the light. Whereas you can just flip a light switch.
Here's my "set-up"
I have 5 regular lightbulbs. I also have:
1 Bloom lamp
1 Iris lamp
1 light-strip
1 Disney Storytime light
That totals nine lights linked to the bridge.
They're grouped this way:
I put one regular lightbulb in the Kitchen.
One bulb in a lamp on my side of my bed in my bedroom.
The Disney Storytime light is on the other side of the bed.
I put a bulb in a lamp in one of the kids rooms.
Two bulbs are in regular lamps on end tables in the living room.
The light strip is set up underneath the cabinet that the cable box, Apple TV, etc are set up in.
I put the Iris Lamp and Bloom lamp on the floor in corners of the living room.
There is an app called StoryLights - where if you have a philips hue light, you can link one bulb to the story, (there are three within the app) and then you can read the story to your children, and the light bulb will change color on each page. One of the stories has a peacock with 8 different colors in his tail, and you can tap each color (orange, blue, purple, etc) and the bulb will change color. It is awesome to see.
The Disney Storytime lamp takes this to a different level, where you link to their Disney Storytime app - (20 stories I believe) and it will do the same thing as the Storylights. It can also change all other bulbs linked to it so it makes storytime more immersive.
To make these bulbs all work, they need to be left on at all times. What this means is this - you can turn off the light via the app, but its still "on." For example, in my kitchen, I have a pendant light that my bulb is in. There's a light switch dedicated to that pendant light. I have to leave that light switch on all the time for the light to work. I'll control it via the app, and turn it off, but the switch is still "on." If you wanted to turn it back on, without the app, you'd have to flick the switch off then back on again to "activate" the light again. It would go back to a regular white light, not the last "color" that it was on before, if any.
I had some difficulty adding lights to it for the first time. They say you can add via the app, but I found that virtually impossible. I had to download a software program onto my Mac and then I open that up and add lights as I go along. The program isn't in the Mac app store, and its not a very well made program, but it gets the job done.
I have set these lights up using IFTTT, and for the most part, they work fairly well. Here's one way I use this.
I have an Automatic in my car. This is a device that links to my phone via bluetooth and will track my miles, keep track of how the car is operating, etc. Using IFTTT, I linked Automatic to my Hue. There's a recipe where if my car is turned off in a specific geographic area (like my house), then it turns on my lights via the Hue. For the most part, it works very well. My issue is that my house has a lot of natural light, so they'll turn on at 12 pm even if I don't need it. I wish I could tailor the recipe to turn on after dark.
I also linked my lights to the Nest Protect system via the IFTTT. I found this cumbersome as they want you to link each individual Nest Protect (smoke/co2 detector) to it and then do a recipe. So they have a CO2 emergency, CO2 notification, smoke emergency, and smoke notification. This is 4 different ones, and I have to set up a notification for EACH of those, for EACH of the devices (5 in the house) so that's 20 different recipes. I wish you could just do one for all of them. But IFTTT doesn't allow further customization. Anyway, I set this up to change my lights to red in case of any alert notifications. It works, but there is a lag time, and its not obvious. I didn't time it, but it felt like about 10-15 minutes before they changed color, and it wasn't very obvious. I would have liked a blinking light to get my attention.
My ultimate dream is to improve the notification system, to different light recipes. My dream is to do Star Treks red alert, where they're pulsing and you hear it. I'd love to have my lights and a sound system pulsing when there's a fire or a notification. I think there's a way to do this, and I just have to figure it out. I don't think it can be done with IFTTT as there are limits to it.
An aside, after doing all this, I've come up with an idea for a possible business, so stay tuned.
